Saying Goodbye

Honestly, this was the hardest part. From the moment we told people we were selling the house, my chest always felt tight. I kept questioning if this was still the right thing to do. Luckily, and also a blessing, we have the best friends who (though so sad and kind of mad that we were leaving) continued to support us. They would say "Even though I'm not speaking to you, I hope everything goes well. Let me know what I can do to help." They brought dinners, they cleaned, they loved on my kids, we had a fantastic going away party hosted by the Young Men and Young Women. We had goodbye dinners with Jennie & Kelwin and goodbye lunches with so many friends. Really, you carried us through this hard time and were also God's cheerleaders for us so we could do this hard thing. Realizing I don't have so many special people in these pictures and now I kind of understand the kids fanatic picture-taking! If you have a picture of us together, please send it! So in no particular order are the goodbyes we said. 

Goodbye to the Gilbert temple. The closest temple for now is Birmingham or Baton Rouge (both about 4 hours away). The one in Tallahassee (2 hours away) will be open next summer. 

The surprise party the kids at church gave us! As mentioned before, Dan does a Circle K run almost every day, so the party was soda themed! Great music (thanks Owen) and fun drinks (thanks Cassy) and really cute going-away gift baskets (wish I had a picture but thank you Lauren, Jessica, Melanie, Kirsty, Sarah, Amy, and Stacy).

And we will forever treasure the words of love from Sydney and Owen. 

 

And not to be forgotten is our annual tradition of Pie Night. For more than 13 years, we had friends over the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to eat pie (or other favorite fall treats) and this last time was so special, even though it wasn't at the right time. The always amazing Maureen Saurey gave us this beautiful book of Arizona. People wrote messages inside of love and friendship that  we will cherish forever!

The best across-the-street neighbors you could ever ask for! When you know that they will always have your back whether for a cup of sugar or listening to the stories of Sophia, we were incredibly blessed by the Mroczeks!

One more time buying Sunday soda from the Walmart vending machine (no Circle K on Sunday:)

All the kids came home to say goodbye to the house and to be together there one last time. Kass won the game of Monster with this most excellent hiding place. 

Saying goodbye to brothers. 

Finally, early on the morning of October 5th, we left a piece of our hearts in Gilbert Arizona. For "some reason" that morning I drove out a different way - past the Rigby's house. It was early but Dave was out talking to a neighbor. We stopped, all of us teary, to say one last goodbye. Typical Dave, made us feel excited about the adventure we were about to undertake. He just has a way! Another person God put in our path on this journey (though Dave and the rest of his family have been there all along:). 

The Dream House

That Dillards advise, use it if you can. We did the whole House Hunters thing where we went to get a treat and sat around discussing our options. Of course the kids were all for the dream house. Why the dream house you ask? You've seen the pictures but let me give you the specs: lots of space for animals (chickens, maybe a goat, a dog, rabbits, etc), water right on our property, the house is move-in ready with plenty of space for now and when people come to visit, space outside to add a tiny house for visitors or a music shed for Sophia, the views are incredible, AND it's only 45 minutes away from some of the most beautiful beaches! 

But it wasn't what we wanted to spend. The plan had been to invest the leftover money from the sale of our Gilbert house. If we bought this, there would be nothing left over. We went back to look at it again. Suckers, aren't we? As we were walking around, I was in the back of the house and found a patch of aloe vera - reminiscent of our Arizona succulents. I stopped to pray. God had sent us on this journey and I knew He would help us. He did. As I was thinking of all the reasons we were making this crazy move and what we were trying to accomplish with our family, He reminded me that I was making a home, not an investment. (I know it could be both but at the time I was more focused on the money side of it and I asked the question so...)

After working out the numbers, we put an offer in and it was immediately accepted! We could close in 2 weeks because we weren't financing. There was no way we needed to close that fast cause we couldn't get packed in that amount of time plus say goodbye plus celebrate my mom's 80th birthday plus have the kids finish the quarter at school. 

But we were sure gonna get here as quick as we could!

House Hunters

We headed off to Florida on August 30th and planned to stay for one week, making sure that one of the days we were there would be a Sunday so we could check out the church. While we were sitting in the airport waiting for our delayed flight, we applied to go on House Hunters! We immediately got an email back and submitted our application. SPOILER ALERT: The problem with House Hunters is that you have to already own the house you're moving into, you have to wait to move in until after filming, AND they want you for 5 ten-hour days of filming for which they will give you...$1000. We passed.

Now to tell you why the house in Defuniak Springs (see the picture in the last post) had us on a plane. Actually, I'll just post some pictures and videos and you can see how idyllic it is. The first picture is our Air BNB, which is not far from the perfectly circular lake in the middle of the town. The lake is surrounded by Victorian houses and small businesses and THE cutest little library!! At Christmas, they do a boat parade and carriage rides around the lake which is surrounded by lights.

We had a true Florida Man (constantly buzzed and no top teeth and wait till you hear the story) neighbor while staying at this cute little house. He chatted with Dan every time we went for a walk, and one night he said "You wanna see somethin'? You can't tell no one cause I ain't got a license. Wait right here, I'll be back in 15 minutes". What? Where is he going? He comes back out of the house mere minutes later with an ALLIGATOR wiggling by the tail!! The alligator has one bloody eye socket (cause apparently that's where you have to shoot them to kill them but it didn't work this time) and his snout is taped shut. But he is MAD! Florida Man says, "Good thing I went to show y'all! This guy busted outta my deep freezer!" Meanwhile, he throws the gator on the ground and starts telling Dan all about which parts of the gator are good meat - poking the gator in said spots and making it swing around and try to bite! Good thing its mouth is taped. After the live Gator show-and-tell came the biggest gator skull we've ever seen and we've seen a few. But Florida Man knew a lot about the area and shared it all. This was the first person God put in our path to help us with this house hunt. Well, maybe you could say the real estate agents who sold our home in Arizona were the first people to help on this journey, but we racked a lot of helpers along the way!

Below is a quick video of the little town of Defuniak that I took from the car. The last building is the cute library but please excuse the fact that I am not going to spend my time editing it and I'm from the wrong generation to know how to do it right the first time 😁

Interestingly, the house that got us on the plane went under contract the DAY we got to Florida. What? God? Luckily we had several others lined up to see and a great real estate agent (Candace - a random find but also put in our path by God). Some of our houses were in the town over from Defuniak Springs in a larger town called Crestview. It did not have nearly the charm of Defuniak. That's why we wanted to be there on a Sunday, so we could try out both churches. The week we were house hunting, hurricane Idalia had just come through. After getting all ready to go to church in Defuniak, we showed up to an empty parking lot! The sign on the door said church was canceled because everyone was out helping clean up after the hurricane! How are we supposed to gather intelligence if no one is at church?!? Then God put another person in our path. A member of the ward that didn't know church was canceled showed up just as we were leaving. We were able to talk with him extensively and found out a lot of great things about the ward, but also that there are no youth. That was just not good news. Nonetheless, we kept all the houses on the list in both places and started naming them so that we would know which house we were talking about. 

Chicken House

80's Palace

Crazy Old Lady House

Goat House

 

New Kitchen House

 

Piano House

AND THE DREAM HOUSE

You drive down this magical road and you don't know what you're going to find at the end! But when you leave the trees behind, you find...

Of course the Dream House was the only house not in the budget. (Side story: when I was graduating from high school 30 years ago, my mom took me dress shopping. We started at Dillards. We found the dress. But it was $200! Which in 1993 and for a single mom was out of the question. So we kept shopping. We spent hours searching the rest of the mall and finally my mom started saying things like "You can wear it to church." "You could wear it to dances." "Maybe even your college graduation." Back to Dillard's we went and the dress still hangs in the closet - having been worn for all those occasions (not college gradation, that was a different Dillard's dress) and as part of some costumes here and there. Now in our family, we have a saying and it's "Just go to Dillard's." It means that you're wasting your time if you found the dream and you keep looking.)

Well,  we did not heed that hard-learned Dillards lesson and we kept looking. But...

spoiler alert, we chose the Dream House!!!

Texas-Arizona-Florida Perkins

Welp. I tried Facebook and Instagram for telling our story, some stuff even went to Youtube! But they just aren't the best format to tell the real stories. So here I am, back on the blog 😏 It would be impossible to fill in the details of the last 12 years to say how we arrived at this point - living in Florida with our youngest 3. It's a fun ride and I invite anyone and everyone to come on it with us! Here's how it started: the Pandemic of 2020. 

But first a side note to explain some additional family members. We had the opportunity to have Caitlyn come to live with us in the spring and summer of 2017. She and her younger sister were living down the street from us in foster care and it wasn't going well. Our oldest (Kassie) was about to go off to college so we said hey, we have an extra room! Come on over! So she did. And for the next few months, she was with us and we were able to facilitate her and her younger sister being reunited with another sister and family in Massachusetts. After Caitlyn left, both Dan and I felt good, patted ourselves on the back for a job well done in listening to the Spirit, and doing what was needed to help these beautiful girls. 

Grandma Kass (2017) & grandkids at Lake Tahoe. Caitlyn is standing on the right with the orange shirt.

Fast forward to a few months and I am in the Gilbert temple. I just felt God tell me that we needed to become foster parents. There is almost a 5-year gap between Sophia and Caroline (now Milo) and we just thought it might be nice if Sophia had a little sister near her age. I came home from the temple and was a little worried about telling Dan. As is his everyday tradition, he went to Circle K for his diet Dr. Pepper. He came out with tears in his eyes and said, "I think Circle K plays hymns on their loudspeaker. I just heard Because I Have Been Given Much in there." So now he had confirmation that we needed to move forward. God😊 So we started the process of becoming foster parents and before you know it, we had 3 more kids!! Adopted in December 2018 and sealed to our family in December of 2019. (Now we were a family of 6 girls and 1 boy smack in the middle!) Again, that part of the story is long and for several other posts but suffice it to say, that's how we gained some extra kids so when you see their pictures, you'll know who they are.

So NOW we can get to the Pandemic of 2020. At that point, we had 6 kids living at home, all of them struggling for one reason or another. It led to scrolling Zillow as my pastime. Filters included at least one acre of property, 4 bedrooms, water on the property, close to a beach, and something we could pay cash for after selling our house in Arizona. At that point, it was a pipe dream, something I thought could maybe help some of the struggles our kids were having. Meaning they could have a lot of space outside to disconnect, spend time in nature, slow down, and have less stress. 

BUT... our community in Gilbert was so good! Our neighbors, our church people, our friends, our schools, our people, and our proximity to family... when looking at the pros and cons list, it was REALLY hard to say which column was winning out. Finally this summer, only 3 of the 7 kids were left at home but 2 of them really struggling, we needed a change. You can read between the lines as to how desperate the situation had to be to leave. We had been praying for a long time to know what to do and now we were getting the answer that it was finally time to move. I guess God knew it would take a lot of time to get us warmed up to the idea. With His direction, we started searching Zillow seriously and getting the house ready to put on the market. This is the house we found in Defuniak Springs, Florida that made us pull the trigger.

On August 1st, we finally had our Gilbert house ready to take pictures. (Side note, why do I always wait until I'm selling a house to fix it? My master bath looked awesome! And for posterity, I am going to include pictures of the Gilbert house but you can skip over them.)

On August 9th, without a sign in the yard, the real estate agents brought 8 different buyers through and the next day we had an offer for over the asking price! Plus they were willing to let us stay until fall break! Our heads were spinning! That was WAY faster than we expected. Immediately we recognized God's hand in this process. We quickly got things in order and booked a house-hunting trip. First stop, the house in Defuniak Springs, FL.

The Royal Wedding

I was only 6 when Diana and Charles got married, well before VCRs and DVRs, so if we wanted to watch - it was live, baby! My mom woke us up when it was still dark and I remember being in awe of the puffy dresses, wishing I could be wearing one. (I did get a haircut kind of like Diana's later that same year:)

So naturally I wanted my kids to have a similar memory of William and Kate's wedding, even though we have a DVR. They were not thrilled about the prospect of waking up so early, right up to the very moment when I woke them up with my fancy hat on:) I told them that they were cordially invited to attend the Royal Wedding but that they must wear their finest head adornments if they wished to attend (all this in my best British accent - a bit Hermione sounding said Kassie). They actually got up and came downstairs to my Royal tea party with their fascinators and enjoyed mini muffins, juice and watermelon flowers with cantaloupe balls. All the while keeping their pinky fingers in the air and using their best British accents.
We had flowers and used the Rosenthal candlesticks (which glam up any occasion).

The table was set with our best china and we even used napkins!

Overall, the event was a success and the wedding was great, too. We had to fast forward to the "I Will" part and didn't get to see the ride home or the kiss on the balcony till after school. The girls wanted to wear their hats to school so I let them. I wish I had taken pictures of that, too, because Kassie decided to go as a member of the Royal Guard. She wore a bear hat (it is seriously the head of a bear, worn because the black hats are made of Canadian Black bears), a red jacket decorated with ribbons on safety pins. She looked like a dork. I told her (as nicely as possible) that she was going to get teased. No worries, she said. No one teased her and she came home the same as she left. Must have gone okay.

Can I just say that the girls all oohed and awed over Kate's dress. I am so glad she looked so classy and timeless. It was a good example of what a real "Princess" wedding should be like. Luckily we have a few years before we have to worry about that. But at least now they will have a frame of reference to have their own princess wedding. Pretty little girls.

http://www.turbobubblegum.blogspot.com/

Recently I decided that my personal blog was for posterity, for stuff our family did. Not for my projects and ideas. But then a couple of friends approached me about starting a blog for just that purpose - sharing our ideas and projects! So after a few weeks of planning, we are officially launching

TBG

We will be having a Grand Opening, a Blog Warming if you will with lots of giveaways so keep watching!