It's a Brand New Adventure!

Okay!  Since I never did a good job of updating this as a Homeschool Blog, I'm converting it to a catch-all journal for the whole family.  Welcome to our new life!

As you know by now, the Ford Family has relocated to North Central Illinois after living the last 20 years in North Central Florida.  Here's where I will share pictures and updates for family and friends to follow as they like.  I hate Facebook.  I tried it, I really did, and I won't delete my FB account, but I HATE IT.  If you wanna know what's going on with us, look here instead, and feel free to comment!  Comments are grand.  Ask me anything.

The background:

In April, Rick accepted a job with DEVNET, Inc. in Sycamore, and it has been fantastic for him.  Good pay, fun co-workers, t-shirts and jeans, and they like him, they really like him!

Finding housing was a less positive experience.  We had originally planned to purchase a house in Cortland, but after 2 months of angst and frustration, it all fell through at the last minute.  We were very fortunate to find a rental property in our price range that would accept pets as Plan B -- the only catch is that it's in Creston.

Where the heck is Creston, you ask?  Find Rochelle at the intersection of I-39 and I-88, then look about 6 miles east.  See that little smudge?  That's Creston!  Population 550.  Well, 554 now.

It's not bad.  Very quiet, which I like (a neighbor said there's a large concentration of Rochelle cops living here), and it's a short 5 miles to the Super WalMart in Rochelle, so food and shelter are all taken care of.  DeKalb is 11 miles to the east, and it's an easy drive along Lincoln Highway, quite scenic with cornfields and windmills and red barns with towering grain silos.  We are in the American Gothic Heartland, and it's pretty neat, being able to see for miles in all directions.

We're renting a... well, it's easiest to say "duplex," but it's really a quadplex.  3 bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, living room, dinette, and kitchen downstairs, then you can go downstairs again to the basement.  The basement is roomy (if unfortunately damp in areas), and that's going to really help with storage for the year that we're here.  The plan is to sell our house in FL before we start looking for another one to purchase up here.  Here's what the dinette and family room looked like the day we moved in:

I'm making progress on the unpacking, but I'm not ready to show the "after" pictures yet.  Give me another week.  However, I will show you the pride of my basement:

Yeah, baby, that's a brand-new Samsung front-loading washer and matching dryer in Ocean Blue.  Behold their shiny energy efficiency.  In the nearly 17 years we've been married, I have never purchased laundry machines before, and I feel fancy as all heck.  When the cycles complete, they chime classical music instead of a loud, angry bzzzzzzzt!  It makes dragging the laundry up and down 2 flights of stairs totally worth it!  ;)