It seemed only fitting to start a new blog since we were beginning new adventures as a family in a new state. Or as I like to call it, our "next adventure"! 

I'll still refer to posts from the Portland blog, but will be posting on our new blog 100% from now on. 

We cordially invite you to come join us! 

http://littlefluffycloudsaz.blogspot.com

We will no longer be Oregonians in less than a week. The house is getting nicely packed up and organized for the moving trucks. 

Yes, that wasn't a typo, that was plural. 

We expect to fill two 20 ft. trucks. Or most of two trucks. We have bought with intention over the years and I don't see the point of getting rid of things just to have less to move. We are moving, we are driving the trucks ourselves, regardless of whether we have one truck or two trucks. I already had a budget for moving and two trucks and all that goes with it works with that budget.

Bean will ride along in my truck and Lulu will go with Eddie. One of us will tow the auto transport with my car behind their truck. It takes roughly three days to get to where we're going, so ideally, we should arrive sometime on Thursday.

Thursday!

Can't believe this is happening...!

I have a vacation condo set up for at least a month in the center of town. I have a P.O. Box set up at the post office in the center of town. I have doctors appointments set for our new family doctor two weeks after our arrival. Tomorrow I fax over the preliminary paperwork to get the girls registered for their new schools.

And what if we have extra space on one of the moving trucks when we head out of town?

Don't worry, I've already worked that out. 

I have been coveting something for the past year I saw on our last vacation to Sunriver. If the space is at least 9 ft. long by 8 ft high, we will take a short detour to Central Oregon after we leave the house and pick this lovely gal up. 

Do you think they would let me keep the dino-sized knotted pearls around her neck???

Our house sale finalized today. It's a done, done deal. Like, money in the bank and probably by tomorrow, the mortgage company will have received and accounted for the payoff payment.

I spent the last couple days this past week starting the next phase of our transition. The vacation rental is booked for a month and one day, and I think I got moving trucks and storage unit space reserved for the last week of July going through August.

Tomorrow, we have a couple more virtual home tours to do since we decided not to go down to look at houses in person this weekend as we'd have had to flown down and back. We didn't want to put my mom at risk, especially for the last week and a half we were here.

This post is short and brief because my brain is like scrambled eggs, completely MUSH! I have had such a whirlwind day and I need to go to sleep. I've another busy day, tomorrow.

Eddie and I can't believe we're finally to this point. We thought it would never come...So surreal!

Bean: "Momma, the sand wizard gave me some sand!"

Me: "Sand wizard? What are you talking about?"

Bean: "The sand wizard gave me some sand in my eye this morning!"

"THE SAND MAN!" yelled Lulu from her bedroom, just on the other side of the living room.

Bean: "Ooooh! Ha Ha! The sand man, that's what he's called!"

I kind of like "Sand Wizard" don't you?

"How did you sleep last night?" I asked Bean when I came into her room this morning. She was lying in her bed, staring at me through the side-rail bars on her loft bed.

"Swell, because of my crystal!"

That Amethyst Tower was the best $40 purchase I've made in ages.

We were up at the Fairy House a few weeks back waiting for potential buyers to be done looking through our house. While we were there, Bean found someone had left a little pouch of natural crystals within all the brick-a-brack. One of the crystals was an amethyst tower, and Bean fell hard for it. She asked if she could keep this bag of crystals for herself and I told her no, it belonged to the Fairy House. That, of course, didn't deter he from asking me several more times (more begging and plea's). I told her I would buy her an amethyst crystal in the future, but that one stayed put. So it did.

Less than a week later, I found a website back East that sold a pretty Chalcedony ring I had been hoping to find. Before I placed the order, I noticed that they also sold many varieties of natural rock crystals, including Amethyst, so I bought a tower for Bean before completing my order. Her Amethyst Tower included a crystal card that explained all the benefits and protections of that particular crystal, especially that it helped with anxiety and protection and protection from bad dreams. Bean suffers from bad anxiety (in which she takes medication for it) plus she has a hard time even going into another room or up or downstairs either at our house or my mom's house, if someone isn't with her. Something you'll hear her say often is, "I'm just so nervous..!.". I'm afraid it's become a crutch for her. 

But our package finally showed up and her crystal was quite pretty and impressive! It has a very nice weight and heft to it. Bean asked me to find a bag of some sort to keep it in and I had a sheer organza gift bag someone had used when they shipped me earrings a week ago. It was perfect for her to keep it in when she went to bed at night!

The next morning when Bean woke up, I asked her how she slept. "Oh, I slept so well!" she exclaimed to me as we walked to the kitchen. "My crystal just ebbed all my anxiety away!" she continued.

Ebbed. 

What ten year old kid knows of that word, let alone knows how to use it properly in a sentence?

Our kid.

This is the kind of vocabulary your child creates and uses when they are a voracious reader!

I can appreciate that natural beauty of crystals myself (depending on the birthstone chart you read, Agate often comes up as my birthstone, which just isn't so fancy when you are looking for jewelry...) but I've never been into natural crystals for decoration and to use for healing and energy. However, I can totally imagine Bean as that kind of individual when she is older. I can see it now: all her cats, a couple of Corgi dogs, chickens outside, and crystals all over in their proper positions around the house and on the counters and ledges!

Here she is showing off her treasure:

 

Our months of patience and depression have finally paid off. This past Monday we had a house showing in the morning. We were all ready for the same old-same-old feedback we've been receiving afterward when we were pleasantly surprised: this buyer LOVED the house! The buyers agent described her client to our agent as an "older hippie" and from what we could tell, the kitchen, the paint colors and the bedrooms were not a problem for her. In fact, she loved the house so much, she wanted to come back and see it again the following morning to make sure she hadn't had stars in her eyes on the first visit.

No problem!

The next morning, Tuesday, she came back, and this time, they spent over an hour and a half in the house. We took that as a good omen! Our agent had shared with us earlier, that this prospective buyer was a cash buyer, who had been set to buy a different house, but the inspection discovered foundation issues and those sellers refused to take care of it (pay). That killed the deal and this buyer walked. Our agent was so happy we had decided to take care of our foundation costs, literally a half an hour before this woman came to see our house, because that meant our agent could say to theirs, "There were foundation issues but the sellers are taking care of." 

Our agent was pretty sure that sealed the deal!

That Tuesday afternoon we got a solid offer from this buyer: full current asking price, with a close date of July 15th. Additionally, she offered for us to remain in the house, rent-free, until the end of the month before we had to head on to wherever we were going.

Next Wednesday morning is our inspection. It should be pretty uneventful. They'll do a sewer scope and a radon test. Both were done with the last offer we accepted and we had the sewer replaced when we moved in 12 years ago. Everything else has already been disclosed prior to her offer.

The buyer asked if she could come back this morning to see the house once more, before she went back home to where she currently lives, in California. Our agent shared the buyer wanted to have some work done on the inside of the house once we've vacated, like updating the bathroom to her preference, and she wanted to get the info she needed before going home so she could start getting her contractors lined up. While we waited for her to finish this morning from our go-to hangout point up the street, we saw the buyer met two different neighbors before departing. Those neighbors coming to introduce themselves and chitchat helped further cement the deal. 

Her agent emailed our agent the following when she was done:

"Sorry, we have been done. Out talking to neighbors next door. Everything keeps getting better for this house. Thank them profusely for letting us come by. She loves it more each time."

We are happy to oblige to get this deal to the finish line!