Moved!

The first load moves into the new townhouse
long after dark on Day One.

After years of hoping, hundreds of hours of work, months of delays and glitches and just plain weird stuff, we have a new home, a new address and perhaps for the first time ever, a home that actually reflects who we are.

It's a townhouse in town. It's brand-new, fresh, clean and terrific.
The move into the place actually came on Feb. 22. The deal for the house was complex and out-of-the-box. The real estate market has been awful, as everyone knows. But the developer of the condominium townhouses came up with a deal: An independent appraiser would set a price for our house in Lake Isabella.

Megan and Robert move my
grandmother's antique dresser.

We would market that house aggressively for 45 days, and if at the end of that time, the house was unsold, he would buy it. He gets out from under a high interest rate construction loan. We get a new home. This is, however, pretty far out of the box, and it took months for the developer to get the financing together. It finally came together.

Furniture, equipment and general debris
get loaded from the Lake Isabella house.

We proudly put the old house on the market in September 2005.
Ahem. The market tanked. The house just sat there. When this deal came along, it was too good to pass up. At one point, we were to close a few days before Christmas, and I declared that the first thing we'd do would be to put up a Christmas tree in the balcony over the front door. That closing date didn't happen, but I was able to keep my promise: The night we moved in, the Christmas tree went into the balcony over the front door.

Dad and Kissy Missy look on
as Robert finishes placing the
Christmas tree in the balcony.

There have been all the dozens of little things to take care of as we've moved in - including a misbehaving furnace, satellite TV (I will NOT use cable), WiMax Internet (I will NOT use cable), and the everyday stuff of living. The living room and garage are piled high with stuff. The first part of putting away stuff is to figure out where "away" is, and sometimes that's tough. All in good time. We're home.

It will be a very nice living room
once it stops being a storage shed.