How He Loves Us: The move to Sarasota Florida

Sarasota, Florida

I'M BLOGGING AGAIN!!!!!!!! FINALLY!!

Due to high demand :) I am finally blogging again and hopefully this blog will be updated frequently. I am, however, going to go back to the beginning of when we moved and telling about our journey down here. It's been an exciting yet hard time in our lives and there is a lot to share!

Our House In Birmingham

771 Abigale Lane is still ours and I miss it a lot.

We are renting it out to a newly married couple and there are on a month to month lease now. The Lord is in control of this and it's not something I think about or worry about too much. Here's a picture of our house as we were packing it up :(

The front room was where we put everything!

We had quite a whirlwind of a month in May and again in June. We packed up our house the last week of May and then left for Nashville, TN May 30th to be a part of the "Lowery Wedding!"

June started out with the wedding on the year :) ; Ashlee Franks and Connor Lowery! Our girls were the flower girls and Eric performed the wedding as the officiant. I was asked to read scripture. (We should really start a wedding company. We have all you need...Officiant, Flower Girls, and I can serve as either a bridesmaid or scripture reader. We are the whole package! haha) We had such an amazing time and feel beyond blessed that they asked us to be a part of their day. Here are some pictures of that day...

After the wedding we drove back to Birmingham on Saturday, finished packing up the house (with movers...thank goodness!) and headed out Monday afternoon. Because the movers couldn't come get our stuff until Tuesday, our amazing friend Jordan Holt, went to our house and made sure that everything got out ok. For some reason this took about 8 hours to do and poor Jordan had to endure it all! She is such a great friend to do that for us. Thank you Jordan!

That Monday night we stayed in a hotel in Tallahassee, FL with all of us in one room. That's always interesting! Then Tuesday we finished the drive to Sarasota. It took us quite a while to get there with some wrong turns and back roads but we finally arrived and there was a welcoming party there for us. We had 3 Young Life girls and a leader waiting outside of where we were staying that night, dressed in costume and holding signs for us. So much fun to be welcomed that way and to feel that special. We stayed with our committee chair, Jodi Gemma for a few nights because our furniture wasn't going to be there until Thursday!

Moving in was an adventure and instead of going into details i'll just list the things we had to deal with:

Previous tenants belongings still in the house and in the garage. We had to dispose of them because the management company said they wouldn't!!!
A flea infestation in the house!
Asking the cleaning company to come back because the house was not clean when we got here. Bathrooms were disgusting!
A few things not working in the house and a management company that didn't seem to care too much.
Had to stay in a hotel again because of the flea infestation.
Rained for a full week when we got here...not fun when you are moving to the beach and your children can't wait to go to it!
Pre-term labor...3 times!
A very hot house because the air conditioning doesn't work very well.
A $500 Electric Bill because we didn't know the AC was as messed up as it is!

...I really could go on but i'll stop. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. There was just a lot to deal with that was completely unexpected! (to say the least)

Fortunately the Lord is sovereign! And He is the Provider! Despite all of our "troubles" He has still shown that this is where he wants us. We feel very much like all of these things are Spiritual Warfare and the enemy is much at work in this place. It has proven to be a very "dark" place and we see the need in such a great way here.

Once the rain cleared up and we got moved in, we were finally able to go to the beach for the first time ever with our girls!!