Saturday, September 13, 2008

Our free Chick-fil-A

So, I've been a little busy packing around here, but I finally downloaded my pictures to my computer so I'll do some catch up.
On Labor Day, Chick-fil-A was giving free chicken strips to everyone who wore a collegiate shirt so we all donned our game gear and got an almost free dinner! Keith and the kids were all in Tennessee shirts, but I still wore my Clemson one :o) The kids had a blast on the playground but we had to twist their arms to get them to eat (I can't believe Samy won't even eat fast food!). Here are some pictures...

Monday, September 8, 2008

Trees and hills

Keith and I left early Thursday morning for our 14 hour trek to Gaithersburg in his '91 pick-up truck that has no cruise control. Crystal said, "It's like a 14 hour date night!" It was quite reminiscent of our courting days, not having the children and being in the truck, but not what I would prefer for our dates to look like :o)
The big news of the trip is we found our new home in Maryland! God very kindly and graciously provided an amazing house for us and way more than we ever thought we would get in our price range! The realtor that was helping us up there saw this house (which was out of our price range) and thought it was so perfect for us he called the other realtor and asked the owners to lower the rent $150 a month and amazingly they agreed! They had had some terrible renters and just wanted some people who would care for their house and really enjoy it and after hearing about us they agreed to lower it! It had only been on the market 5 days, so it was really unheard of to lower it so much so quickly except for God giving us favor with them. We saw about 10 other places on Friday and none even came close to this one and most of them had 2-3 other people interested in the place.

So, it has 3 bedrooms, 2 full and 2 half bathrooms, plus a garage, a finished basement, and a sun room! The best part is that its only 5 minutes to where Keith is working (which is also where our church is) and there are like 15 families from the church in the neighborhood and a few of the pastors within a couple minutes walk! There is a huge common area and a couple of playgrounds in the neighborhood, and the grocery store is just around the corner. So, we shouldn't have to be driving too much which is a really good thing because I know I'm going to get lost! As our realtor put it, the roads are like spaghetti just plopped down--all curvy and intertwining and no rhyme or reason to them. Even this traffic engineer can't figure out what they were thinking when they made this city :o)

Gaithersburg is beautiful!! I felt like I was in a neighborhood the whole time we drove around because there are just trees and hills and beautiful parks and lakes everywhere. And it was already so much cooler than Orlando, though that's a reminder of how much colder our winters will be :o)