We stayed in a motel that had a pool. The kids got to release some stress in the pool!
Our new home!
Our view from the front yard when we moved in!
Our view in the Fall. Love the colors! 
We recently made a big change in our lives. We up and moved across the country. For so many years I have felt like I was born in the wrong, then lived in the wrong place. I was born in Texas and spent most of my life there. And it never felt right to me. I never connected with anyone on my mom’s side of the family, except my great grandmother who passed when I was young. My dad’s side I’ve not really met. Mostly cause they are, mostly, in California. I have found a lot of them on Facebook, but still aren’t very close with them. Anyways, after meeting my husband we moved out of Texas together. We didn’t go very far. Just up to Oklahoma. But it was still out of Texas, and that was the point! We stayed in Lawton about 10 years. It was ok. We learned a lot there, we had a lot of good and bad things happen there. In 10 years you can imagine. But we have felt the urge to move on for the last few years, just didn’t know where to. We thought we might actually be stuck there for the rest of our lives.
Well that started changing in May of this year. Hubby had reached his limit of BS from the job he had for almost 8 years. He couldn’t just change jobs because he was mechanic at a smaller, privately owned Nissan dealership and if he tried looking for another job at any other dealership the owner would have black balled him. The owner was well known from Oklahoma city to Wichita Falls. So, we didn’t have a lot of choices. We were talking to some friends and saying we had talked for years about moving but didn’t know where. We wanted somewhere that had 4 seasons, not 2. (Or close to it) Somewhere with a smaller town. We always thought we’d end up going more north, but were worried about too much snow, which I’m not real fond of. Our friends happened to be military and happened to be from North Carolina. They said North Carolina sounded like the place we might be looking for. And there are plenty of small towns around. Well obviously we couldn’t just go check it out, so we did the next best thing. We Googled it! LOL! We talked and talked and talked about it! Discussed all possibilities, all good sides and bad. And decided we’d see what the Gods had in store for us. We sent a few resumes to some dealerships in North Carolina for hubbys employment. Well, within a week he had 2 job offers! 2!!! He talked to both on the phone and pretty much had the jobs! We started noticing other things changing as well. Things we enjoyed doing on Oklahoma had suddenly become not so enjoyable anymore. Our favorite restaurants sudden got really crappy food, our favorite places to thrify shop turned bad with a crappy buy. Along with other things that were specific to us. It was like were being told it was time to go. To move on. We decide to start selling our little accumulated property then move onto the big furniture and slowly work on this over a month. Well, that didn’t go as planned. Things were selling faster than planned. We talked to our kids about moving and our youngest (12yr old at the time) started packing what he wanted to take and clearing the rest out of his room. We hadn’t even set a move date yet. Other little things started changing and happening as well. It was like the Gods were screaming at us, its time! So, we just went with the flow. We moved up the time table and had everything sold, utilities handled, basically our whole lives ready to go in about a week and half. We only took a Uhaul trailed we could pull with our truck. We sold or gave away everything else we had. And it was A LOT! WE made enough money just selling our stuff to move us across the country!
The day we left was different though. We had a hell of a time getting started. It took longer than planned to get the trailer packed, then once we finally left our youngest ended up dropping his favorite stuffed dog out the truck in the driveway we left. We didn’t notice it until we were on the highway and past the tollbooth. Luckily we were able to call our neighbor and she brought it to us. We went down through Texas and across to avoid too many hills pulling the trailer. The first day took forever to get through Texas. It was like it was holding onto us and not letting us go. We were fighting to get out of it! We didn’t making it Louisiana and the motel until late the first night. The second day we breezed through all the other states and into North Carolina.
But, once we got here we still had to find a place to live. That wasn’t easy. Hubby went to both places that offered him a job and had to take a drug test. The jobs were in different towns. (About an hour or apart too) So, we had to wait for the results before moving in anywhere. Passing the drug test was easy, we just didn’t know what the pay was gonna be. The employers wouldn’t tell us until the drug test was back. So we just looked at house after house after house while we waited. We weren’t really finding what we needed either. It took a week for the drug test too. Meanwhile we slept in crappy motels at night, drove around all day looking for rentals and eating what we could pick up in drive thrus. We couldn’t go inside and sit down anywhere because we brought our cat, Amber, with us on this adventure!
After two weeks staying motels, we finally found a place to live. It was HUGE! 4 bedrooms, open floor plan, in the country and about 2.5 miles outside of a small town. Rent was a bit high, but the place and location were worth it. And hubby’s job offered him more than he was making in Oklahoma. So we took it! We were so worn out and stressed from the motels by then we needed a place!
We’ve been here 4 months now, and its finally starting to level out some. It was a real rough start though. Hubby took 3 weeks off work in June for the move, then gets this great new job only to find out he’s make $16 an hour flat rate at a dealership that has no business! Flat rate means he gets paid per job, not by the hour in general. So if he gets one vehicle in and it takes 1 hour to work on the car he gets paid for the hour, despite the fact that he is at work 8 hours!!! So, he was barely clearing 25 hours a pay check! (Bimonthly) Needless to say we were very stressed out the first couple months. During the 4 months he has been with this dealership he has applied at many other places for other employment, with only one interview. He has also managed to change job positions twice now. First he was a mechanic, then he was a express lube tech (which paid hourly!) and now he is floating between express lube and detail. He enjoys detailing vehicles and is quite skilled at it. And it looks like he can make even more money at this position.
Also during the 4 months we have been here we have very slowly accumulated some furniture, we still need a bit more, like beds for our teenage boys. Most stuff we have accumulated has been free, thrift store purchases or hubby exchanged work for some of it as well.
We have also come together as a family more, changed our life style dramatically (and not just cause of the move), but also become different people in a lot of ways.
Looking back I can say that we fought and stressed and earned this move and change for our family. This is something we needed to do for all of us. I don’t want to live through it again, but I can what I have learned from this experience and use it to better my life and the lives of my family!
I don’t know if this is what the Gods had in mind when they started us on this path, or if the struggle was to make us appreciate it more, but I am thankful for my family and coming through this together. I don’t think our struggles are over here, but I’m hoping they are not as difficult. We are stronger family unit now and continue to be!
Blessed Be!
The Domestic Pagans Cottage 