For Sale

It is officially official...we are selling our house and moving! We listed finally April 24th and have already had a few showings. It's excitment wrapped up in feelings that are bittersweet. We are excited for our move to somewhere new but are also pushing aside feelings of those we will leave behind. I have lived in MI my WHOLE life and while I have travelled much, my friends, church and family I have here make it quite difficult to leave. But to be honest, a burden to move has been on my heart for some time and have had plenty of excuses not to move...loved my teaching job, having babies, raising children, church, and so on. But I have run out of excuses and having lived out of state for two months last year...God showed me I could move away and do just fine. So we are moving and to where to you might ask!? Yes Hotlanta...I mean Atlanta! Yes it will be pretty hot and humid some of the time...but they don't have snow! Well maybe a little, but I am told it melts quickly! We are looking at a community about 45-50 miles north of the city. In February I spent a week there looking at new build and re-sale and while we did have something in the works, we have decided to wait til we sell our house here, move to Atlanta and then decide where to buy or build.

Also for anyone looking to list their house...we listed with a flat fee broker. Which means we paid him some cash to give us a MLS#, put our listing on all the important websites (and then some), and will pay an extra 1/3% of 1% of our selling cost to do everything, not the usual 3%! We still had to offer 3% to a buyers agent...but really is a great deal all around! The Realtor we have been working with, Jeff Kermath, has been helpful and great in helping us through this process. I also did tell him I would pass it along since most if not all of their business is by word of mouth. = )

(http://www.brokerdirectmlsmichigan.com)

Spring Break

During Bella's spring vacation we tried to busy ourselves outside the house so as to not go crazy! One of our adventures took us to the mall to the butterfly house! As soon as Abbey walked into the humid, warm butterfly exhibit she said yuck! Stinky! So, she didn't last too long inside, but Bella had fun admiring and holding the butterflies. With us were our friends the Roesslers...Ethan and Nolan. The afternoon would not have been complete without an ice cream either!

Our next outing took us to Splash Village at Frankenmuth. We went with some other friends and her two older girls disappeared with Bella and didn't really see much of them the whole 3ish hours we were there. But Bella did go down the covered slide numerous times and definitely got her money's worth out of the excursion! Abbey loved the water and I forced her into a few laps around the lazy river, which she ended up liking and a trip down the water slide with me. FUN! After that she was pretty exhausted and hung out by the zero depth end of the pool.

Aside from outings we also enjoyed the company of some long time friends...I have known Greg since I was 10ish as he was my youth minister. He and his wife Karen recently brought home their daughter from Russia and we were so excited to meet her and celebrate with them their newest addition to their family...Welcome AnnaFaye!

We've also made our first trip to the zoo this year. A weekend or two ago we had awesome "spring" weather!