10/19/11- ABQ and other stuff...

Okay...so it's 1:22am and I can't sleep. Those who know me best aren't at all surprised with this. I do a lot of my best thinking when I'm hopped up on Benadryl, Lunesta, or any variety of sleep aids for one simple reason. They only work half of the time. No one knows this better than my wife, Laura. That girl is more amazing than any of you know. Anyway, this post is most likely going to be all over the place.

We only have ten days until we give up the keys to the condo I've been in since January of 2006 and begin our 1400 mile drive to our new home in Albuquerque. We expect to arrive sometime on Halloween. We've already decided that our first task once we get there is to head to Target and get candy for the neighborhood kids so that they don't think we're a couple of dweebs after trick-or-treating at our house. Kids don't forget that stuff and we need to make the right impression. We've been so blessed with having a new home and good jobs right away that we need to give that good fortune back in any way we can.

I'll have that week off with the exception of a seminar that I plan to attend with one of my new co-workers. I'll  begin my new job officially on November 7 and I have to say that I'm pretty excited. I'll still be working with payroll, but this time it's for a small CPA firm that runs an outsource service within itself that's similar to what ADP does. Going into this move, Laura and I both expected that it would take a few weeks for me to find the right fit for me, but God had other plans. He does work in mysterious ways.

We'll be living in a really nice three bedroom, two bathroom mobile home for the first couple of years. It is much bigger than the condo we're in now, which will allow us to have visitors and be a lot more organized than we've been able to be here. When we got married and Laura came to live here, one of our goals was to purge as much of the stuff we started out with as possible and start over with new stuff that was truly a product of our lives together. Now we will be able to start that process. There's a stigma that goes with mobile homes, but I spent the majority of my childhood in them and we always did our best as a family to redefine that standard of living. I'm confident that Laura and I will do the same thing and it will be good for us, too. The neighborhood seems really quiet and it's well managed, so I think we'll like it.

We also got a chance to meet Pastor Chuck Kofahl of Tramway Community Church (http://www.tramwaycommunity.org/) last Friday. He introduced us to some of the staff and gave us a half-hour tour of the church before taking us out to lunch. He's been very helpful to us in our preparation for this huge change and we're happy that we'll be a part of TCC as we continue our walk with God.

Those of you who are in the core of our circle have already heard all of this, but it's still fun to talk about and I'll have this "pet blog" to chronicle everything we experience so that years from now we'll have it to look back on.