The new buyer is from New York, and they have a closing early in the last week of September. Our closing for the sale of our house is set for Friday, September 27th, the day after Jim's birthday. However, the closing on the farmhouse is not possible to accomplish until Monday, October 30! Oh no, we are homeless for the weekend! Luckily the current owner of the farmhouse did not live there. There was a full time "caretaker" who had someplace to go, so the seller let us move all our stuff in on Thursday the 26th. It was a long, exhausting birthday, for sure. We moved ourselves with the help of numerous friends and family. The seller of the farmhouse was there up until Thursday cleaning out HIS stuff too. It was crazy. We pulled nearly an all-nighter cleaning up the house for the morning walk-through. By 2AM we had everything clean, but there was still a pile of garbage in the driveway. Gaahhhh! We were exhausted, and gave up. Luckily our buyer was very understanding, and we had already allowed them to store some stuff in the garage before the closing. We were sure it would not be an "issue".

On Friday morning, the walk through was uneventful, and the closing quick and painless. We removed the rest of the garbage after the closing, and then went to our new home to organize what we could. Technically, we were squatters, since we did not own it yet! We laughed ourselves silly with the way things had gone with this process. We had very little sleep, had worked very hard, and we still had to buy the house!

On Monday we had our closing, which was real uneventful, since the seller had completed all the paperwork out of state, and did not attend the closing. Now at last we owned our farmhouse! The elation was indescribable. We knew we had much work to do in the months and years to come. However, we knew this would be our "retirement" home. We are never moving again!