Have you ever made plans and yet things end up happening unexpectedly? Been there, but how you manage to get back on track is what’s important.
It’s past midnight, Moonlight fills our master bedroom. My wife’s asleep and I’m restless on this uncomfortable air mattress just staring at the ceiling fan. The house is so empty now, I still can’t believe we managed to pack and load everything into a pod with no help and no friends here in Florida. We’ve come along way since the day we got here and bought our first house; we were excited. But the weather in Florida was something we weren’t prepared for.
Two months after moving in, a category five hurricane (Michael) devastated the area along with half our home. The roof was torn off and all our items were damaged and spread throughout the yard. There was so much debris that we couldn’t tell which one was ours. My wife and I had to fight with the insurance company for months while I was subcontracting professionals to fix up our home. It was a stressful time as workers were up to their necks in labor and the ones that were available jacked up the prices. My wife and I had to get our hands dirty so we bought power tools and Youtube how to do our flooring, deck building, brick painting, plumbing, electrical and bought a shit load of materials to do some of the work ourselves.
After all this time we are finally done and managed to list the house. Not even on the market yet and we got an offer the next day over list price, our hard work has paid off. Thanks to this, now for the first time we get to choose were we want to go. I submitted over seventy five job applications to the state of WA and received multiple offers. With this clear chance of opportunity we decided to purchase a home in WA and we are currently in the closing process of both our home in Florida and the one in WA.
It has been a roller coaster ride going through this process and dealing with getting the house ready for inspections, re-inspections, appraisal for both homes etc. The good news is that our home in Florida appraised at list price. We bought the home back in 2018 under market value and after the hurricane, homes appreciated a lot more, due to houses being renovated and of course supply and demand. Now that our home is updated to our style it feels a bit hard to let go. But we have an opportunity to move cross country at a place we feel it will be better for our professional development and to do more as a family.
We will leave this weekend on a cross country journey to WA, it’s a forty four hour drive with the kids and dogs, this will definitely be a challenge. Meanwhile, our home in Florida is supposed to close by the end of the month and the new home in WA won’t close until our current home is sold. We would have to live in hotels, eating up our savings and we don’t know for how long we would keep that up but I’m optimistic. I will continue to write and share as we go through this important journey of our lives.
Writer Nova 