Ready to move!

This past weekend Nik and I went to Maine to find a house and see if we could really wrap our brains around moving all.the.way.UP.there. It's quite an adventure, and now that we are able to report we have housing AND daycare, we're ready to go. Yesterday.

After what seemed like months of perusing craigslist (and Zillow and Trulia and homes.com and rent.come and maine4rent.com and apartments.com and apartmentguide.com and and and and and), we found a place we LOVED. I contacted the landlord via the listing and spoke with him briefly over the phone. I talked with him about a week before we planned to visit the great State of Maine to look at houses and convinced him 1) to hold out on renting it until we could see it and 2) to rent it to us if we liked it. I win :)

The house is awesome. I wish I had pictures, but the former tenants are still moving out and I DO NOT want to show you all of the mess that is in the house now. We've had to be a little creative in being able to envision what it will be like when we move in and where we will put things. Ikea better look out. We are on the way!!!

Let me point out that the entire point of this trip up to Maine was to find a place to live. We landed at 09:33 am met with the landlord of the perfect place I just mentioned at 11:30 am. Within two hours we had a place to live, so we had the rest of the weekend to ourselves! We explored and visited and wore ourselves out getting used to the area and all the things available in our new town.

We met with a potential daycare provider on Monday before we left and loved her, so we were able to take care of that too. Ryan will start the Monday after we move so we'll have some time to unpack without him underfoot before I start work on the 29th.

About work...I landed a position with the Professional and Continuing Education Department at the University of Southern Maine as an Enrollment and Recruitment Advisor. I could not be more excited about getting started!

Now to pack...

Preparing to move to Maine

You don't realize how much stuff you have until you have to move. I can't imagine why we've kept half of the crap we have. If you're interested in going through someone else's trash to find some treasure please come to our house. It's out of control. My last day at my job is May 1st, and we will be hitting the cleaning and packing really hard after that. With plans to have Ryan's dedication at church in Mount Holly on May 13th, it looks like we'll be officially in Maine sometime mid-May.

In other news, I have a job! I will be working at the University of Southern Maine at the Portland campus. My role is a brand new one that will focus on enrollment and recruitment for the adult education and online programs. I could not be more excited. This is a job for which I applied prior to us matching in Maine, because the committee was going to stop accepting application packets on Match Day and I knew I would be so upset if I missed the opportunity and we ended up there. It will be so nice to make a smooth (hopefully) transition from one workplace to the next.

Nik has finished all of his paperwork and is trying to get used to signing MD at the end of his name. He will graduate and be a full-fledged doctor on May 4th.

Beach baby

After finding out that we're going to Maine, we spent the weekend at the beach with some friends. Despite the water being SO COLD, Ryan had a blast and played hard. Also, there's a family photo down there somewhere too. It's one of the first ones that has been taken that we don't hate.