Whew, what a week!

Well, we are home again in Tennessee after an extremely busy week. It started off over the weekend with us joining our friends doing some minstrel type playing and singing in Smithville, Tennessee. We had asked our friends if we could park our travel trailer at their house until we get into our "new" house. They quickly agreed and we were to join them for a cookout. They called and asked if we could come a day early and join them at the music festival in their new home town....and bring our instruments. Ok, we did. The trailer is safely at their home and off we went to the festival. What we did was walk around the town with our instruments stopping in three locations to play and sing. It was a real hoot with people taking our pictures and singing along with us. The last place was in the middle of an intersection downtown, yes, the road was blocked off for the festival so we were safe from the possibility of being run over if people didn't like our playing! We started playing and singing going into the old favorite, "I've Been Working On The Railroad". Some small children began dancing to our music with the encouragement of their parents. That was fun. We kept going and on a couple of the numbers we had the adults clogging (dancing) their hearts out. Wow, that was something to see. We had a ball and I'd do it again in a heartbeat....with one lesson learned. Don't bother with your instument case, just carry your instrument, you'll have less to contend with while walking around.
Wednesday rolled around and it was time to leave for Michigan to sign the papers selling our farm. The trip north was smooth with one exception of running into major construction along the freeway. They were resurfaceing and it ended up taking us two hours to get ten or fifteen miles. Can you say, "Make sure you have brought along things to do if you are the passenger?" Although things were made interesting by the fact my phone rang twice....once to handle paying for one of my medicines. I ended up putting it on the wrong piece of plastic and had to call them back to get it changed over. Wow, what technology has brought us! Taking care of things while going down the road! Then the phone rang again. This time it was a doctors office wanting to set an appointment for after we return from our trip. I'm glad I could put the time and date into my phone so I wouldn't forget it. The rest of the trip was pretty quiet, thank goodness.
We arrived in Michigan in time to drop off the trailer we had rented to haul some more things back to Tennessee. Then it was off to sign the final papers for the farm. It was an emotional time. The farm is in excellent hands and will remain in the farming industry. We've known the family for years both as friends and working with them in business matters. They are already working on putting up a new barn and building a HUGE pit for either "grey" water or the odiferous stuff. I can't imagine the size of the hole. We immediately went to the bank to deposit the check for the farm. I think we held on to it for a whole fifteen minutes!
Then it was back to the farm to pack up what was left of our things. We packed, threw out, and donated for the next two days. I did work in a good lunch with my very best friend, Mary, along with closing out one of our bank accounts to move our new bank. We managed to condense things quite a bit, but still have alot of things to come down. We will more than likely do more donateing and selling of things once they are down here. We had a quick cookout with Ter's side of the family on Saturday afternoon. We truly appreciate the fact Ter's sister and family stuck around to help with packing and took some things to find new homes for. We finally pulled out to start heading back about seven o'clock, we had hoped to pull out around five but kept finding things that needed to be done. We said "Good Bye" to our former neighbors and headed out. We did make it almost to where we normally stop for the night, Anderson, Indiana. I actually slept until eight o'clock Sunday morning which is really late for me. We took our time eating breakfast and then completed the trip back. This time not running into the horrific back up due to contruction. All in all an extremely full week, but a good one.

Time has moved on....

It is now July and we have been here in Tennessee since April. Things have kind of gotten into a routine. Although, things should be changing soon. We will be closing on the sale of the farm very shortly and hopefully moving into our "new" home. Yes, we settled on a house to buy and are moving forward on being able to move in. It is a comfort we will be able to buy the house outright, no mortgage, which is a blessing. It is also a blessing we had a ready buyer for the farm in the wonderful people who have been renting the land for over forty years.
We hadn't had much success looking at houses on our own when our daughter in law suggested someone she knows from college who is in real estate. We spent one afternoon with her looking at houses and settled on one. It is pretty much everything on one level, which is nice for me, with a huge master bedroom and two other bedrooms. One for an office and one for guests. Off the kitchen/dining area are double doors which open out onto a deck, patio, and pool. Especially the pool sounds good right now with the summer heat being on. It will be great exercise. The kitchen is a nice size and the living area is a good size.
Right now Ter and our son are scheming on how to hook up a laundry area upstairs so I won't have to haul laundry up and down steps. This will be cheaper than installing an elevator which they were first discussing. We will probably turn the downstairs into a rec/exercise room. It has been fun going furniture and appliance shopping. We are learning the stores with Pat and Myla's help. We are deciding on a few things now.
One huge advantage to the location of the house is it will avoid the horrendous traffic which Ter battles now to get to work. I love downtown Nashville, but it is better to avoid rush hour times where the freeway can become a parking lot...or close to it with the slow moving vehicles backed up sometimes for miles. I have driven in the rush hour traffic and the thought of the day is be patient, and don't try any quick moves. The area where we are planning to settle is a growing town, but they want to maintain their rural atmosphere. That is ok with me! I will be happy to start really getting settled here in Tennessee. I do like it here. Oh, by the way, the house does have a huge magnolia tree in the front yard.