Ok, it’s been about 18 months since our last post… I guess time does fly when you are having fun? We really haven’t been too busy over the last 18 months – it’s kind of been a slow news cycle as they say. So, there is really not a lot to get caught up on but we will list a few things that have happened and add a few photos later.

1. After the last post in January 2022, we all recovered from the holiday rush at work and we started working on the Greenville house in earnest. Fixing, painting, refinishing wood floors throughout the house, cleaning, more painting and then finally decluttering (Hint: renting a shed and throwing all the crap that we didn’t need in there 😃). If you would like to see some after photos you can visit the zillow site: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/319-Scottish-Ct-Greenville-NC-27858/51413132_zpid/?view=public
2. During the floor refinishing – Dad dropped an angle grinder (w/sanding pad) on his leg. Of course, he was only wearing shorts at that time… 🤦🏻‍♂️. So, after a lot of blood and yelling and a pound of gauze bandage with a few days rest, he was fine. Everything healed nicely and only a couple of scars are still there.
3. Finally, in May of 2022 we listed the house in Greenville and had 2 offers within 3 days. We finally settled on an all cash offer and started seriously looking for a house in the Raleigh area. Luckily we had one of Dad’s friends helping us buy in Raleigh and he helped us find and negotiate a great price on a new house.
4. Since there wasn’t a lot of driveway space in the new house we sold the Yellow Freelander (2003). Dad and Sam(?) were a little upset as they really liked the car, but nobody else was very concerned.
5. Sam finished school at PCCC in June 2022 with a Associate Degree in Welding and several certificates under his belt. He took the next year off to help us move and get settled. Sam hasn’t looked for a welding job yet, because he feels he is out of practice, but he found a place in Raleigh that rents out work spaces and he might give that a try. In the mean time, he has been working PT at Harris Teeter for several months and seems to enjoy it. He also has done a great job banking some money.
6. Alex, started back in school and should finish up for his 2nd Associate degree in May. His first was in Health Information Management and this one is in Health Information Technology. He will have an internship in the Spring and then should graduate in May of 2024. Considering he has both degrees, he shouldn’t have any problem getting a job and there are a lot of places in Raleigh for him to work. He might go back and take a few more classes to get his 4-Year degree in Coding, but the plan is to get a job and bank some money so he can put a downpayment on a house first. Alex was able to transfer from the Greenville Best Buy to the one in Knightdale – just about 25 min away.
7. We finally bought the new house in Clayton, NC (about 25 min. southeast of Raleigh) in June 2022. Dad’s commute went from 95 minutes down to 25 minutes. For some before photos, you can take a look here: https://www.zillow.com/b/106-pearsall-farm-ln-clayton-nc-BKSNhQ/ The house had been rented out for the last couple of years, so it definitely didn’t look this good when we moved in. We then rented another shed in Raleigh and started moving stuff up almost immediately.
8. After a couple of months, selling some stuff on Facebook and several trips to the dump to clean out the workshop we were finally were done with the house in Greenville. The new owners were nice but…. very needy and seemed to call almost every day for a couple of weeks with questions.
9. Before moving into the new house we did a few things: painted the entire inside of the house, had all the carpet upstairs replaced with LVP. We also had the master bathroom remodeled and Dad built a big linen closet and put in new shelving in 2 of the closets. On the outside we started some landscaping projects including putting in a raised flower bed on the side of the house…. we later found out we needed HOA approval for this – luckily they approved it. We moved everything except the big stuff and had a moving company do the big stuff. Turned out that Alex’s friend Zack worked for the moving company so that was nice and part of his tip was a big plate of Dad’s homemade cookies.
10. In September 2022, Nana and Gung Gung (aka: Diane and David) moved in with us). They also did some more painting and remodeled their bathroom.
11. By Christmas we had pretty much settled in and everyone was in a nice routine. Gung Gung spent the holidays in France/England. We did have Aunt Becky and Aunt Courtney come down and spend Thanksgiving with us, which was very nice.
12. This Spring we continued the work on the new house, installing a shed in the back/side yard. We had to jump through a lot of HOA red tape and then deal with construction delays but we did get it finished. Mom has a small space for gardening, which is now finally done and Gung Gung has a nice workshop which he is still working on – he didn’t get started until much later. We also installed an attic fan, put in new cabinets in the garage, built a counter in the laundry room (cabinets will be coming soon) and put in a cat door for Kitty. Of course, Mom and Sam have been working very hard all year in the yard and they have it looking very nice – by next year all the plantings should look great!
13. Best Buy continues evolving it’s staffing model and Dad lost his position and transitioned into a new position. Of course, all the staffing cuts means that everyone is working much harder and really nobody seems very happy. Alex’s position didn’t change, but hours have been tight and he hasn’t picked up as many shifts.
14. We did have a nice visit from Aunt Sue from France in April. Aunt Becky and Aunt Courtney also came down to visit with us and Aunt Sue. Maybe next year we can fly out to see her.
15. Dad’s Honda Accord finally died. He was pretty upset because he had the car for so long commuting back and forth between Greenville and Garner, but it did have 345,000 miles. The Honda dealership gave us a $5k estimate for the repair, but it didn’t seem like a good investment so we ended up getting a new car…. at least new to us.

Well, as we said, not much really going on… although we sure we might have forgot a few things 😉. Hopefully, this gets you caught up and we will try to get you a few photos soon. We still have quite a few project to complete around the house before we are finally finished and we will try to keep you up to date as those get completed.