The day finally arrived!  We moved into our new house!!!  We are still trying to weed through the boxes and find places for everything, but I don't feel like I'm staying in a hotel anymore.  Although building a home and moving is full of challenges on many levels, getting our townhouse ready for the renters, was harder than I EVER imagined it would be. 

Of course things just couldn't go smoothly for me. Don't get me wrong, finding renters was fairly easy.  With a listing on Craigslist, we had it rented within 2 weeks.  However, with the cost of having it professionally cleaned being around $600, I decided to clean it myself.  After all it was our dirt and I have cleaned that too many times to count, so why pay someone to clean it now?  Right?  The jury is still out on that. 

My husband and I split the house and I took the upstairs and he took the down.  Sounds fair.  Not really.  For some reason the upstairs bedrooms and baths ALWAYS take longer than the kitchen and living areas.  Not sure why, but we finished it.  All of it except the trash.  We had 12 bags of trash to set out and in our community, unless it fits into the actual trash can, it doesn't get picked up.  Sooooo, I had about 8 bags of trash to set out, after I called and asked the county to pick them up, which they agreed to. 

The bad part of that was that the electric was shut off a day early...one day before the renters were to take the keys.  Doesn't sound like a big deal, right?  Wrong!  I had a few friends over to swim in our new pool on Thursday morning and got a phone call from my old neighbors letting me know that our alarms were going off.  I know that they weren't set because that was a "discussion" with my husband and I the night before.  When I got to the house I called the alarm company, and they determined it was the fire alarms going off because the electric went off and they automatically went to back-up battery mode...which just meant I couldn't turn them off, unless I removed the batteries from them all.  You can imagine my problem being 5 ft. tall with no ladder, no chair, no...anything in the house.  Unfortunately, the alarm kept sounding until the batteries died.  Luckily you couldn't really hear the alarm from the outside of the house. 

As if that wasn't enough, I had some touch-up painting to do AND I had to set the 8 bags of trash out.  Because I didn't know the electric was off, I wasn't prepared.  I wouldn't have been able to get the garage door back down if I'd manually opened the door, so I had to literally feel my way through a VERY dark garage and drag the BIG black trash bags through my house and around the yard to the driveway in the back of the house.  Not an easy job!  I was able to patch the nail holes in the walls but the paint was in the garage and I had no idea where my husband had left it, so that would have to wait until the next day.  The day the renters were moving in.  UGH!!!

Anyway, it all worked out!  Thank you Lord!!!  BUT after that whole thing and the clogged pipe in our new house the night before, and...well I could go on and on about this experience...I WAS READY TO RUN!!!! 

So I ran on the following Saturday morning!  It felt GREAT!!!  The new Hood is not the beaches, and I don't have the friendly familiar faces running along with me, but I'm sure I was able to find some of my sanity along the way.  I rested on Sunday and Monday...well I didn't run. Today I hit the pavement pushing 60 lbs. of daughter and stroller.  I ran the 3 miles Hal has set up in his training and felt really good.  

After a way too long vacation from running, I have officially started my MARATHON TRAINING!  Did I really just say that?!  Of course I did!  I'm super excited to take this journey!  Thanks for joining the party!!!  See you at the races!!!