The Final Countdown

It's finally Wednesday of our last week in MN--in 48 hours, we'll be driving toward Appleton with all of our stuff! Jeremiah's last day of work is tomorrow, and I'm only in for a half-day on Friday, so while I'm at work he'll be working with movers to get the truck loaded--then he'll set off for WI, with me following after work. So that's it! All our stuff, packed up and moved out in a matter of hours. We've spent the whole last weekend (and every night thereafter) packing boxes. We've made several trips to Target for plastic totes and bubblewrap... and it feels great to finally have everything boxed up (well... for the most part. It seems that, every time I move, there's always several things that just don't make it into boxes... for those items, we'll just shove them in the car and move on!).

It's almost surreal--we'll be back near our family in no time! I'm so happy and I can't wait to see everyone!!! :)

Goodbye, Minnesota!

It's been a month. Our biggest news? WE'RE MOVING TO APPLETON, WI!!!!!!!!!! FINALLY!!!! I've been applying for jobs in the Fox Valley for well over a year, and when I got my current job at AGA out of college, I just assumed that WI wasn't in the cards for us. Though we've really enjoyed the time we've been in Minnesota, neither of us has really felt at home here. Jeremiah misses hunting and fishing with his friends, and I especially miss my family. Over the past month I was contacted regarding a writing position in Green Bay, and it wound up being a perfect fit! I start on March 26, and Jeremiah and I couldn't be happier to be moving back. We've started to pack a few things already, and in two weeks, we'll move it all to a storage building in Menasha and we'll stay with Jeremiah's mom for a few months--until summer--when we'll (probably) buy our first house. I'm so excited! Everything is happening just as I've wanted it for ages (amazingly, Jeremiah has also found a job in the Valley, so everything is falling into place!), and I feel incredibly blessed. It's amazing how long I've spent worrying that we'd never get back to our families... but looking back, God really had a great plan for me, for us. I needed my experiences here in MN to gain an appreciation for home, to fully realize the importance of family and friends, and to get a chance and explore the big city so that I could not only answer the "what ifs" that I would've always contemplated, but also to gain the working experience I needed to open up career doors in Wisconsin. It's amazing to think that in just two weeks, we'll be packed up and living back in familiar surroundings... I am ecstatic! Things are definitely going well :)

As for things I missed posting about over the last month:
For Valentine's Day, Jeremiah and I headed to Duluth for a weekend getaway. After falling in love with the town and with B&Bs on our first trip for our "mini-moon" in October, we decided to head up and stay at the Thompson House B&B. While we were in town, we also visited Fitger's Brewery (awesome food and beer!) and the Great Lakes Aquarium. If you ever get the chance, take a trip to Duluth--it's beautiful! See photos from our trip here.

My dad & Barb came to visit the weekend after our excursion en route to their trip to Phoenix to visit Barb's mom. Believe it or not, it was actually cheaper and less time consuming for them to drive all the way here and fly out of the Minneapolis airport than if they had flown out of Marquette or Green Bay. It worked out really nicely because we got to visit them for two weekends--on their way in and on their way out--and on the weekend in-between those visits (they were gone for two weeks) we were gone to Appleton for interviews. Phew!! So this is the first weekend that we haven't had anything going on since my last post. Never a dull moment around here! And considering that we're moving in two weeks, the pace won't be slowing down anytime soon. I really, really, really look forward to establishing ourselves in Appleton where we can finally feel settled. It's going to be awesome!