Our BIG move!!

I think that most people have heard by now, but our family is moving to Greenville, SC!! We are so excited about this opportunity that God has provided us with! It's something we've prayed about for over a year. Luke accepted a job at the University of South Carolina Upstate as their Director of IT Client Services. We move down next week and he starts July 26 (His Birthday)!!

If that's all the info. you want, you can stop reading now. If you want to hear more details about how we've seen God's hand in the midst of this whole process, keep reading :)

WHY GREENVILLE?
Luke's parents, 3 of his brothers and a whole slew of aunts, uncles and cousins live in Greenville. Also, Laura's family lives in Georgia, about 3.5 hrs. away from Greenville. We're currently 8 hrs. away from Laura's family. We've wanted to be closer to family for a long time now and have been specifically praying about moving to Greenville for more than a year.

THE JOB
Luke first applied for another position at USC Upstate. He received an email from the vice-chancellor of IT (Jeanne) saying he was not qualified for that position, but that they would be posting another position soon that he was qualified for and to apply for it once he saw it on their website. Several weeks later, Luke saw the position posted on a Monday night. He submitted his application and sent his resume to the vice chancellor and got a call Tuesday morning before 10 am about an interview! We ended up driving down to Greenville after Luke got off work Wednesday, he interviewed on Thursday, and was back at work at LU on Friday. Talk about a quick trip!! We later found out that the Jeanne did not even have his application (only his resume) when she interviewed him! That in itself is a God-thing.

We got the job offer call a couple of weeks after Luke's interview and accepted the next day. When Luke called back to accept the job, he asked if they would pay any moving expenses. Jeanne told him she had never heard of them doing that before, but that she would ask. Turns out they're going to reimburse us up to $1,500 of moving costs! Thank you, Lord!

THE HOUSE
Prior to anything with this job, we had dinner with our neighbors and mentioned that once we have another baby, we'd probably start looking for another house. Now, this is before we were pregnant again. After we found out we were going to have another baby (which was a surprise to us!) and told our neighbors, they remembered what we previously said about our house. I guess you should know that our neighbors only live next to us part of the year; they also have a home in Vermont. Before they left for Vermont, they told us to let them know if we were planning to sell our house, that they were interested in buying. This is all before we knew about the job! Since accepting this new job, we have talked with them several times and they are going to buy our house!! What a blessing!! We will never have to even put it on the market! The even bigger blessing is that once everything is said and done we won't have to pay anything else on the house. This is really great considering today's economy and the fact that we bought our house at the peak of the market. What a God-thing that we won't be loosing any money! We do have a few things to fix up on the house before our neighbors take possession, but most of them are minor things. The biggest thing is that we need to replace is the linoleum in the kitchen and back door, but it's definitely something that needs to be done. We really feel that we would not have gotten a better deal if we had listed with a realtor.

THE NEW PLACE
We left Lynchburg Sunday after church and headed for Greenville to look for apartments. Our plan was to spend the day looking at apartments on Monday, and Tuesday if needed. Well, Sunday night Luke's uncle came over to his parents house to drop some stuff off and metioned that maybe we could rent Allison's (his daughter's) condo. We went Monday morning and looked at one apartment, then we went to check out Allison's condo. We knew going into it that renting from Allison would be the best deal for us. Since we only want to do a 3 month lease while we look for a house, all the apartment complexes charge an extra $100 a month for short term leases. Plus there are application fees, pet fees, deposits, etc., etc., etc. We had lunch with Allison and discussed the details if we rented her place. We would have none of those fees. Over lunch, Allison also shared with us that she was planning on moving back in on July 4, but just didn't because she was too busy. So, it's a God-thing that her condo is even available for us to stay in!

After lunch with Allison, we were going to visit 2 more apartments just to check them out. We got to the first one. No one was in the office and the door was locked. And they looked a little too ghetto for me, so we decided to head on to the next one. We got to the next one and they looked nice, but there was a sign up saying they wouldn't be back until 2:30. It was only 2:00. We didn't really feel like waiting around for a half hour, so we took it as a sign from the Lord that he was providing us another place to live. So, we left and went home (well, to Luke's parent's hosue that is).

THE PLAN NOW
We're packing up our house right now and we're planning on moving everything down Tuesday of next week! We'll have to put a lot of stuff in storage for a few months. Hopefully we'll get to know the area quickly (schools and such) and will be able to find a house we like and buy it! Our goal is to be in a house and settled before Baby #2 comes in January. We're shooting for October to purchase a home in Greenville and Luke is shooting for baby # 2 to come this year :-).