It has been a long while since we have updated the blog.  We have been busy.  I hope we still have readers out there.  🙂  After a long two years of being on the market, we finally sold our home.  It wasn’t easy, but we finally found the right buyer!  I could write a book about our experience over the last two years.  Some of it was quiet crazy and made you scratch your head.  Maybe one day.  🙂

We decided to get pods and move ourselves.  And how many pods does it take for the Ridlon move?  5!!  2 and 3/4 of another were all garage stuff.

NEVER again!!  Next time we move, which won’t be for a little while, we will pay someone to pack us up and move us.  The pods arrived two weeks before our closing date.  It all worked out in the end, but we were so exhausted and we had little energy to unpack/clean etc.  Thank goodness for all the help we had over the weeks before closing and for the storage space at my mom’s house, as a lot of the garage stuff (6 truck loads) are now there.  We made so many runs to the dump and goodwill.  It is amazing at the amount of stuff you can accumulate over the years.  Especially in a 3 1/2 car garage, which Mitch built years ago and where no cars are parked.  That garage had been the bain of my existence for years.  The Subi only parked in it a very few times.  I was very proud of Mitch for working so hard to empty it.

He got rid of a lot of stuff!  I was so happy to see it empty and was excited to actually park my car inside of it, but my bubble was burst when Mitch reminded me that the pods were sitting in front of the garage.  😦  So even in the end, the garage did not get used for its intended purpose.  LOL!

We gave almost all of our furniture away.  Mostly to a Halfway house project and the Goodwill.   A friend of a friend of mine helps set up half way homes for adults who are coming out of rehab for drug/alcohol abuse.  He is a recovering alcoholic and has been sober for 20 years.  He is involved in helping set up these halfway homes all over Richmond and these projects are near and dear to his heart.  They just finished a house in the Church Hill area of Richmond for women and were in need of everything.  The timing was perfect for us and it felt good to help these folks get a new start in life!

With all the furniture donated, we lived like this for 2 weeks.  I wouldn’t recommend it.

In all the time we lived in our home in the country, we had never taken a picture in front of the house together.  So we took our last day to do just that!

We sure came a long way in the years we lived on Adkins Road.  It feels like we came full circle.  We purchased the land (6.5 acres) in February of 2000, cleared it our selves, designed and contracted with Mod-u-kraf homes to build our home.  We moved in early October of 2000.  Over the years we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it and created some great memories!  I found some very early pictures when I was packing up that I will share once I can scan them in.  Will save those for a later post.

Of course we had to have a pic of the pups on our country porch.  We spent a lot of time hanging out on that porch with the pups.  It was an awesome place to be during rain storms.

We are going to miss it, but it is time to start a new chapter in our lives!

We moved in to our new home last Friday evening.

After looking at 17 homes, we decided to make an offer on this one.  It was house #13 that we saw, so I guess 13 may be a lucky number after all, at least for us, if you believe in that sort of thing.  We got almost everything on our wish list.  No garage, but a nice, big storage shed for Mitch and a one car car port, which will be converted into a one car garage in the near future.  🙂  We are still in the process of unpacking and settling in, but we love our new home and the many conveniences it has afforded us, like being able to have pizza delivery, which have not had in 11 1/2 years of living in the country.  I now have a 10 minute commute to work instead of 50 minutes one way.  The pups too are enjoying this new lifestyle.  One story living is certainly easier on the Queen.  She is started to get a bit wobbly in the rear and already has a screwed up back leg from racing, so no stairs is extra nice for her.  We are in the process of having a fence installed, so no yard/outdoor pics to share just yet.  🙂  Leash walking the pups for a month is not going to be fun, but we will make it.

The pups have settled in nicely.  I thought surely that the Queen was going to freak out, as she does not deal with change well, but she did great!  Booyah on the other hand did not.  He had major anxiety and wore a belly band for the last week in our old home and the first week in our new home.  He is doing fine now though.

Since we donated all of our furniture we got to start new.  🙂   We decided on a bonded leather set for the living room and den and are trying the no pups on the furniture rule.  So far it is working out well.  We went to Costco and purchased 8 new dog beds for the pups.

Mitch relaxing in our den on one of our loveseats.  Please excuse the make shift window treatment.  Our sellers were not as courteous to us as we were to the folks who bought our home.  They left us with no curtain rods or shower rods in ANY of the rooms.  And they did not patch any of the holes/repair any marks that were left when they removed everything.  URGH!!! 

Anywho, all the pups love looking out the big bay window.  Even our cat, Misty, has settled in and she HATES change.

The queen prefers to be wherever I am.  She has become accustomed to sleeping in our bed every night, much to Mitch’s dismay.  She has been very good about not getting on the couch though.

Cueball has become very found of the den and spends most of his time in this room.  He even sleeps in this room.  We leave the bedroom door open so they can sleep where ever they want.

Well that’s it for this post.  I know it was long-winded, but I hope you enjoyed reading about our home life transition.  We will have more to share as we get completely settled and look forward to posting pictures of the pups playing in their new backyard very soon.  Spring is just around the corner!!  We can’t wait!!!