60th Birthday Coming Up

Tomorrow is my 60th birthday so tonight my Dad and Veronica took me to Home Depot where they surprised me with a birthday gift of a Weber Spirit 210 Grill with a cover and a on handle light. Our last grill was a huge 5 burner with another side burner...35,000 btu and large enough to grill for an Army plus with it being such a gas hog it had to go. I had looked at these fairly new Weber Spirit models and really liked the smallest of them all. Only 2 burners which is just the right size for 3 of us. What is really cool about this model is that they have a removable circular part in the middle of the grill grates. They make several different types of cooking surfaces that fit in this circular area. With really nice gifts like this and I think that I will make sure that every birthday I will be turning 60. Thank you Dad and Veronica...the fantastic gift is greatly appreciated.

Move Almost Completed

Although 90% of our belongings, or what was left of our belongings after downsizing, we still have some stuff left at our place on the Outer Banks. Yesterday we brought up 2 car loads of stuff and late last night we had got one car emptied and its contents put away where they belong. Today we will tackle the other car. We will be going back to our place on the OBX on Wed evening after dinner. Since Veronica's start date at her new store in the Virginia Beach area isn't until approximately the end of July we will have plenty of time to bring the remainder of our stuff up in weekly trips to our new home.
There are just a few piles of things in each room with the majority of items coming from our master bathroom. We have an inflatable bed set up in our old place along with our TV. It sure does look different with almost everything out of the old place.
I will also need to start cleaning up the place so that we can get our deposit back. I will probably move everything into one room so that I can work on the other rooms during the cleanup process.
On another note...Veronica and I will be celebrating our 18th Anniversary on the 28th of this month.
She is the love of my life and I could not have wished for a better person to share this journey through life with. A little early I know but Happy Anniversary honey!!!

Update On Our Move

On Monday, 6/15 our movers arrived and packed up their truck with most of our belongings. By the time their truck was unloaded it was about 6 -6:30PM and had been a very long day. During the last 2 days since our move we have been super busy unpacking and getting everything where it belongs or at least where we could fit it in. Even though we had downsized approximately 50-60% we still had to be creative in eking out every bit of space that we can in order to get our belongings to fit. After 2 solid days of working at it we are about 80% done. We have not permanently moved to Virginia Beach quite yet as Veronica still has until the end of July to still be working in her Outer Banks of NC store. We will still be driving back and forth from our old place to our new location until her start date in her new store. Our lease is not up on our old place until the end of August, so we will need to go back and do the normal cleanup so that we get our deposit back. We still have some belongings at our old place in which we will be bringing them up a little at a time on each trip we return to Virginia Beach. To day was the first day that we really feel that we have made solid progress in making this our new home. It will take about 2 more days to finally finish putting everything up where we want it. I will be so glad when this part of our new chapter is completed. My back and body has really taken a beating over the last 4-6 weeks and I really could use a break to let my body recuperate. Unfortunately that will have to wait just a little longer.

Sunset photos from Tuesday 6/9/15

Saw what looked like a pretty nice sunset developing from our 3rd floor balcony windows. So I grabbed my camera and ran out to the car in my stocking feet. I knew that I would have to be quick to catch this beauty. I was on time and it did not disappoint.

Sunset Photos From Saturday 6/6/15

Yesterday evening I looked out our top floor balcony window as the sun was descending low in the sky. There were clouds being lit up from behind by the slowly fading sun. I decided that the boxing of our belongings for the upcoming move could wait for a bit. I wanted to get back to something that I enjoy doing but have had very little chance at doing it. So I grabbed my camera and headed out to the "point" very near to where we live. It felt good to be taking photos again and below are some captures from yesterdays sunset over Blount Bay and Colington Harbour/Island.

Upcoming Move Update

We have picked a local mover to take our belongings to Virginia Beach. We have been busy boxing our things up and once a week we have been taking our packed vehicles up to my Dads place. There we unpack and start the process of putting things away. Last week Veronica and I took the whole day pulling everything out of the kitchen drawers and cabinets. We weeded through quite a bit so that we could incorporate some of our things with some of Dads items. We kept the best of both of our belongings for the use by all of us. What we weeded out was put in the garage and added to the previously built pile. This afternoon the Salvation Army showed up and happily took away the donated pile of items with my Dads blessings. Then came the real work..scraping and cleaning the double stick tape off of the fronts of most of the kitchen cabinet shelves, which was a very time consuming job that was only slightly made easier using a lot of Goo Gone. We started early in the morning and did not finish until late in the day
Our movers will be here on Monday the 15th. We have already taken most of Veronica's Ikea brand studio furniture. The movers will take her 2 last pieces that we could not handle along with the remaining few pieces that we have. Serious downsizing causes one to purge many belongings that they would not usually sell and or get rid of. Although all of our furniture will be up at my Dads place Veronica and I will still be residing in our Outer Banks residence for another couple of months. Our lease does not expire until August 31st. Between the move and the end of our lease we will still have a bunch of packing and making additional trips to my Dads place. While we have been staying at Dads place Veronica and I have been sleeping on a real nice air mattress. Since our bedding from our condo on the Outer Banks will be taken up to Dads place during the upcoming move, We will then bring the air mattress back to our condo for the duration of our stay there. We are slowly getting things done and the place is starting to look somewhat empty. I will be so glad when this whole moving adventure is completed. All I have to do is look at a box and my back starts barking at me....which has been a daily routine basically from the time I wake up until I finally get to sleep.