On December 14, 2017, we closed on our house that we lived in since March 1998. We’ve been talking about this for a long time. For many years we planned to live overseas but we decided to delay while our kids finished college. We realized that it would make life very difficult for both of them if we weren’t around. After they both graduated from Liberty, the real estate market crashed. We tried to sell our house on our own but we were advised to declutter first. Then Katie and Sean moved in with us. Katie was hired by Ironbridge Baptist Church as their Children’s Ministries Director. She and Sean were expecting our first grandchild who was born September 8, 2014. They bought their first home and moved in November to Chester. Just before they moved, Chris moved back in with us. We convinced him it was better for him financially than moving in with one of his friends.
In June of 2014, I was diagnosed with breast cancer (DCIS). I had surgery in July and radiation in August.
Strangely, I cannot recall what we did in 2015. I’ll have to come back and edit this when I remember. I know we finally got serious about selling our house and downsizing to something smaller. I think that’s when we initially started thinking about moving to Florida. We knew we were having a hard time getting rid of “stuff”, so the next best option was to have a “base of operations”—so to speak—where we could leave our “stuff” while we traveled overseas for extended periods of time.