A New Season

Over the last two years some of Ryan's travels had been to attend conferences on Lean Manufacturing systems, held in Charlotte, NC.   His company had a presence in Charlotte and he happened to know the HR manager for that facility.  As you can probably piece together, this is where God had in mind for us.  But it unfolded slowly.

Ryan was encouraged to apply for a position there in April of last year and that ended up not panning out about the time that another one opened up which turned out to be a better fit. That was in late June.

Back in May, Ryan and I had taken on the project of changing out all the siding and windows on our 60 year old house.  It was a lot of fun and a great work out.  The kids spent many a day playing outside while me, Z, and the crowbar demolished old, nasty, moldy, rotten, MDF siding.  We would tear it off of a side or two toward the end of the week and take it to the dump.  Then on the weekend Ryan and I would house wrap, install new windows, and put on new siding.  The next week we would do it all over again on another side (we had a detached two car garage so this made for many sides).

One day in May my dad came for a day and helped out! You can see the old vs new siding if you look  closely.

It was such an adventure!  The wind forever picked up when we had a 30 feet of house wrap cut and ready to put up.  And we lived for two weeks with just house wrap on the front of our house covering our main window to our living area while the custom window was made.  Then we had to hoist a 9 foot long window up into its spot! And the many hours where Ryan was perched on our neighbor's extension ladder to nail in the peak siding pieces, were some of intense prayer for myself.

We finished during Ryan's July 4th break.

Within a week Ryan had an offer letter.  God timed it all perfectly.  While the project really did not help us gain anything monetarily on the house it did set our house apart from the others in the market.  When we listed our home there were over 200 homes for sale in a city of 11K people. And for us, a long time on the market would have been very costly and difficult with many weeks of separation.

Ryan started flying back and forth, doing two jobs, in August.  His company paid at the beginning, but in mid-September he was to start full time in Charlotte and any travel or hotel stays were on us.  We all arrived, together, in Charlotte the third week in September on a Sunday and our house officially closed on that Tuesday!

Our next 8 weeks in a strange new city was a unique adventure all its own.