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Quick Update

Posted by Kathryn July 15, 2008

Three weekends ago, Tom’s dad came to visit and to see his granddaughter. He and Tom worked on the hole in the front bathroom wall, hanging sheet rock. We also went for a walk at the park and chowed down on pizza after church.

Then, two weekends ago (Fourth of July weekend), Tom and I went to Jacksonville for the NE Florida smithing guild meeting. We also went by the house the measure the rooms where we will be living with my uncle and great uncle (and their aides.)

This is Uncle Bud. He is ninety-six and still drives. Gotta love Florida.

Jay and Chrystal got to meet Kendall for the first time too.

Kendall is enamored of his granddaughter Kendall:

And an informal three generation picture:

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Her Father’s Daughter

Posted by Kathryn July 1, 2008

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Update for Beth

Posted by Kathryn June 25, 2008

Beth has asked that we discuss what I mean by “move to Jacksonville”. So here goes:

I’ve been talking for a while about wanting to live closer to my parents, even before Kendall was conceived. My mother, Tom and I talked about Charlotte or somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina or Tennessee. Then we had the conversation with Dad and he seemed surprised, even though Mom had talked to him about this, and said that he couldn’t leave Jacksonville, that his social roots run too deep. And now that we have a child, I really want my children to grow up knowing their grandparents. Tom’s dad and sister are in West Palm, a place in which Tom vows he will never live again, but Jacksonville is only five hours from them. Tom’s mother is in Seattle, and while we would LOVE to live there (Seattle is awesome), it is too far from everyone else.

So we’ve been talking about heading Jax eventually, Tom dreading moving back to the sunshine state at all. Then our housemate moved out and I have stopped bringing in an income. We record monthly income and expense by category in a spreadsheet (thank you Dave Ramsey) and our monthly expenses are higher than our income and we really don’t know what else to cut out. We talked about Tom ceasing metal work and returning to IT, but he was miserable babysitting computers. We talked about getting another housemate, but who would want to live with a newborn and can we really rent out the room as we work on the house to eventually ready it to sell? It became apparent that the best thing to do was to get to Jacksonville. Tom is planning to build his own smithing business, and it doesn’t make sense to start a business in Atlanta and then move. And we can live rent-free in Jax with my uncle (and my great-uncle, and their two aides). That takes a major expense off our shoulders until we can get our feet under us. And we can move there and then let the house in Atlanta sit clean and showable to sell without two dogs and an infant. And without a mortgage or lease to worry about, Tom will have the freedom to take journeyman postions around the country/world, working for and learning from different smithing masters.

We are aiming to move in September.

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