Christmas Came Early

Christmas came early in the Day house.  Yesterday Michael and I signed our papers on our land in Alabama.  We wrote a giant check for the down payment, and sent it along with all our paperwork through Fedex.  Today the sellers sign those same papers and it is officially ours.  It is so exciting!  Being so far away, it's hard to feel much different, but it feels good anyway.  :-)

So, now that half of Michael's job stuff is set up, and we have our land, the next step is to finalize Michael's job stuff.  Also, the next step is to get more money.  lol!  We are ready to hire an architect and start laying electricity, water, etc.  BUT, our bank account looks a lot sadder than it used to.  The Days are on. a. budget.

Once Michael's job is definite and he has a start date (we are thinking this will be around March, but God is in charge of the timeline and may go slower or faster), we will take a trip to Alabama to look for an apartment to rent for a year or so while the house is being built.  We will also put our house here in Maryland on the market.  When Michael starts his job, I will help move Michael there and set up the apartment, then I will leave him there and come back here to sell the house.  Kara and I will start the process of packing/moving/storing/etc.  We will probably stay with my parents a lot while here in Maryland, then live in our apartment in Alabama.  I envision us being there for a few weeks, then here for a few weeks.  Probably until the house is built!  But, we'll see how old that trip gets...

In the mean time, we are happy to be moving forward, however slowly/quickly/depends-on-your-perspective.  And I am busy working on the part of this I DO have control over, which is decluttering the house and getting rid of stuff we don't want to pay to move.  I'm up to about 4 or 5 carloads already (not counting all the stuff I straight up threw away)!  I thought I didn't have too much junk around here, but it turns out it was just very organized junk.  :-)

Now, here are some pictures of what they have been up to on our land the last month and a half:

That little sign is where our land starts.
It goes up the hill and WAY into the tree line.

The view from our land, looking left.

They added all this pink tape so we would know our property boundaries

More looking left views.

They bush hogged our property, so it looks nice with a haircut.

I'm wondering if this will be green and pretty in spring and summer.
I know we're not mowing it and treating it like grass!

It's easy to see where our property ends - look how tall that grass was!

More boundary ribbon

Our views looking right.  See that bridge down there?
All of those trees in our way of our views are
all on our property, so we can cut them down.

They roped off access to our property from the road.
It's now private property!