The Move

When I say that the month of September in the year of our Lord 2022 was a whirlwind......

The short version of the story: Justin and I have moved and are now living in Richmond!!! 😃

The longer version:

I will leave out the gory details, so as to not smear anyone, but we had been growing increasingly dissatisfied with our rental situation in Berea. The idea of moving and subsequently living in Richmond had been tossed around between us for a while, as it would leave us a lot closer to our church, many of our friends, and things we like to do. Also, it would equal a MUCH shorter commute time for me to work, and would shave a little bit of time off Justin's commute as well. 

So I get home from work one day and find a notice taped to our back door: our rent is going up! Given all the other stuff that had been going on, that was the "nail in the coffin" moment for us, and so we decided to actively start looking for places in Richmond. We did some research, I made a list, we went through it together looking at each place, and found one we really liked and put in an application. This was maybe the last week in August. A few days go by and we don't hear anything, but we were coming up to labor day so we didn't really think anything of it. Still nothing...still nothing. 

Now it's Labor Day, we are at home just looking around on the tablet and Justin says "Hey honey, what about this place?" He shows me an awesome-looking 2 bedroom duplex for rent...with a GARAGE...with two FULL bathrooms... two massive bedrooms...in a new-ish building... FIVE MINUTES AWAY from EKU...walking distance to our favorite coffee shop on one end and the gym on the other...listed on Zillow two days before. We call immediately. Again, it's Labor Day so we are not expecting anyone to answer, but sure enough we talk to a very kind man; turns out the building is owned by his aunt, he just helped her list it. He asks us a few questions about us and what we do, we mention Yoda and Wiley, he suggests we call his aunt since, again, she is the owner of the building. So we call her. No answer, but she calls us back in about 20 minutes. Y'all, she is the sweetest woman. We chat with her for a few minutes and we mention the cats... It's so funny, she asks "are they big?" LOL. When it's all said and done, though, she says cats are not a problem. She then asks if we would want to look at the place at 5pm... THAT night. Of course we say yes! Did I mention it's labor day and we were expecting almost nothing??? LOL.

4:30 rolls around and we drive up to Richmond- we ended up leaving earlier than planned, which was a good thing in hindsight, because there was an incident on the interstate that was causing traffic to back up. Our potential landlady was there early too, so we meet her at the place. Again, sweetest woman on earth. Justin and I step in and the first thing I notice is that the place is spotless. Totally spotless. Immaculate. And it even smelled new!!!! We look around and needless to say, we fall in love and we fall in love hard! It even had a tiny little backyard! Justin filled out the lease application on the spot. 

That night I am surprised we got any sleep. Tuesday the 6th, back to work for the both of us. Later that morning, I get a skype message from Justin, it says: "the place is ours if we want it". Later that evening we meet at the place again and sign the lease and make it official!!! 😍  We even made another trip to Berea and back for our checkbook so we could get our deposit paid. The days that passed were a blur of "what is happening" and "is this really happening?" and "do we really get to live there?" We really do believe that God quite literally put this place in our lap! And yes, the rent is significantly more than what we were paying in Berea, but the increase from what our new price was going to be versus what we're paying now in Richmond wasn't all that much, and we'll be spending less on gas. Way less. So in eleven days, we packed up our Berea place, purged, donated, cleaned, and moved on September 17th to our new Richmond home! Start to finish, we were done in just about 4 hours, not counting moving the kitties and taking back the U-haul. We had an awesome group of friends who were total rockstars on what was probably the hottest day of the month!  I remember not eating at all that day (oops!), and that first meal of Chinese in the new place was.... Marvelous! 

We are 9 days now in our new place, and sometimes I am still having "pinch me" moments. It has been a bit slow-going, as we have still had to clean up our Berea place, which we've been having to do in the evenings after work. So it has made for some very long days where we've been too exhausted to do anything but crash in bed. The carpet cleaners came to our Berea place today, though, so we are one step closer to closing the book in Berea for good. But as we unpack more, slowly but surely, and start finding places for all of our things, the more and more reality sets in- this is our home now! Yoda and Wiley are in heaven! No, seriously. They are so happy! Wiley was in hog heaven from day one... Yoda took a little more convincing. She spent the better part of that first afternoon hiding, first in her crate, then under the bed, then in a pile of blankets. But by that first night, she was sitting on our laps purring up a storm! Maybe they could sense we were happier? I don't really know. But I am just happy that they are happy. And so are we! Though the train tracks that run right behind our place will take some getting used to! 😉 

We cannot wait to get fully unpacked and settled so we can have friends over for game nights or movie nights or just a hang out in the back yard. Hmm...Maybe I'll have my Saturday morning coffee out in the back yard. Come on fall!!! So, here's to the next chapter of the Rabnott story- now in Richmond. Stay tuned...