its almost official

I now have 3 things in North Carolina:

1. a job
2. an NC driver's license
3. a car that is registered in NC
   

Soon we'll have a 4th - a place to live. I'm living here in Chapel Hill because I'm already working, but in 2 weeks, we'll all be living here as a family. Crazy stuff! The reason I say its crazy is because this has been a long time coming and there were times when we never thought we'd see the end. We've been planning this move for almost 9 months and 5 of those months have been spent living in Jo's parents basement.

If anybody's interested, here's a really brief sketch of the past 3/4 year:
In early-August of last year we visited Chapel Hill as a family then a couple of weeks later made the decision to move here. I also started looking for jobs then. In October we put our house in Drexel Hill, PA on the market and in early December it sold. Since I had no job, we moved to Roanoke, VA, not our destination, but a nice enough place to bide our time. I got really serious about the job hunt in early January. With some great encouragement from my wonderful wife, I decided in late January to pursue certification as a personal trainer. After much preparation, I was certified in early March. Then a week and a half ago, a friend offered to let us stay in his house for most of the summer AND I was hired as a personal trainer, all within like 2 days. And now, after having lived in my in-laws basement for almost 5 months, we are seeing our plans come to fruition.

In retrospect, things certainly didn't happen like we thought they would. They didn't happen according to our timetable either. But they happened just the same. What I mean is that regardless of what has happened since August of last year, we have almost achieved our goal of moving to Chapel Hill. And seeing the way things have happened, the scenario is definitely better than what I could have come up with. As cliche as it may sound, God is good and He is in control. I've learned over the last 9 months how true these things are and that I really believe them. Now its time to settle in and start yet another new phase of life.