Welcome to our little piece of the world. Both of us grew up in Atlanta area. About 3 years ago we decided we needed out of the hussel and bussel of a big town...so we up and moved to Kansas...thats right, Kansas. We have been asked MANY times why we choose Kansas. When we started looking at new places to live, we had a list of things we wanted in our new place. We wanted our new place to have seasons other than HOT and chilly, there had to be a NICU for Jenn to work at, and the cost of living had to be cheaper than Atlanta because we knew we wanted to buy some land to settle down on. We also wanted to be able to fly "home" easily..and cheaply.
After looking a few places on line, we took a long weekend trip to Topeka, Ks to scout things out. We loved it the first visit. We came in the spring and everything was in bloom. The temps were in the low 70's...it was just a great first visit. We probably drove 500 miles on that first trip. Jenn got to interview at the hospital and we met with a realtor. It was pretty clear after the first visit that we had found a place that we could call home. On our way back to Atlanta, we decided that if Jenn could get a job at the hospital in the NICU (which they were not hiring in at the time) we would take this as a sign to move forward with our plans to move. A couple of months after our visit, we got the call we had been waiting for. The hospital had opened a brand new 50 bed NICU and was now hiring. Jenn flew out, by herself, interviewed again and looked for apartments. Before Jenn even got on the plane to fly home, the hospital called to offer her a position! At that point, we knew we were going to move.
At the time of our move, ATD was almost 4 years old. To help him understand why we were moving, we called this Our Great Adventure. He loved the idea of going on an adventure. He did really well with the move considering we were taking him away from grandparents that spoiled him rotten! When we got to Topeka, Jenn started working at the hospital right away and Tom got to stay home and play Mr. Mom for 12 weeks. He did a great job. HE and ATD had a great time together. After Jenn was settled into her job, Tom started looking for a job. Once Tom had a job, we started looking for places to live. After a few months of looking, we found the perfect house on 20 acres for us. It is in a little town with then a thousand people. The school is small but has a good reputation.
Our house is 100+ years old. The people we bought if from raised 6 boys and one girl in this house..with only one (extremely small) bathroom! They lived here 50years and we got to meet all the 'kids' at an auction they held before they moved their dad out. The house needed a lot of love, but it had good bones. It had 3 bedrooms upstairs and one bedroom downstairs and the only bathroom was downstairs. Jenn, Tom and ATD shared the bedroom downstairs while the upstairs was being refinished. After moving in, we started remodeling the upstairs right away. That turned out to be a good thing because we had number 2 on the way. Tom did most of the work himself. We added a bathroom, and were still able to keep 3 bedrooms upstairs. Jenn's mom and dad came to help with some projects. After about 8 months...the week OTD came home from the hospital, we started moving things upstairs. After that big remodel we took a break and are about to get started on the downstairs. That brings us up to where we are now....as far as the house goes.
We hope to use this WebLog to chronicle the goings on in our Home / Farm. We may even back track and detail some events from the past just for posterity sake. I wouldn't count on finding anything profound here, but to those who may read, we hope you enjoy.
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