After Christmas and a few weeks at home, Craig and I left Berlin on January 16 for 4 weeks of travel in the States. This would be a full time which would begin with a flight to Dallas and a drive to Longview. I needed to go to Longview to meet with the lawyer and settle Mother's estate. Of course this involved a meeing with the lawyer, the accountant, the banks, and the financial advisor. Margaret and Chuck had been working to clean out the house and Craig and I needed to pack things we wanted to keep. This house holds so many memories for us. It is not the house we grew up in, but has been "Grandma's House" where we always brought our children to see Grandma. Dad built this house after they moved to Longview in 1975 and he built only a few other things after that time! He did build a lake house near Pittsburg on Bob Sandlin Lake, however that was sold quite a few years ago as it was too much for Mother to manage as Alzheimer's disease took away Dad's abilities. Mother worked faithfully to keep up the house in Longview until she moved to assisted living in November 2010. Margaret, Chuck and I kept the house pretty much intact for the past year, but gradually were rearranging and making decisions on the family belongings.
This was now my final trip to pack up items. Fortunately, Craig was so helpful and managed the vast majority of packing. Those summer jobs of working for movers during college have paid off well in our lifetime. He never complained about the number of things I wanted to keep. Craig gathered all the packing materiels while Margaret and I settled all the business affairs. It was exhausting, but we got it all completed in 3 days.
On Friday the 19th, Craig and I left Longview with a fully loaded 17 foot U-Haul to drive to Colorado where we are storing the items until we move there to retire in 2013. We drove on Friday to Amarillo and on Saturday drove on to Colorado. We were blessed with wonderful weather. We had only a 1 1/2 hour delay with a bad tire in Dalhart, TX. We were so fortunate the gas station personnel spotted the tire problem as we pulled into their station. They gave us free coffee as we waited for the U-Haul designated service to arrive and replace the tire. The rest of the trip was uneventful. Here are photos of the house I took as we were packing and the drive to Colorado. We saw freeways, Texas Red Dirt, Tumbleweeds, and Rattlesnake warning signs. All so familiar to anyone who has driven through the Texas Panhandle. We crossed a corner of New Mexico and realized how close we were to Philmont Scout Ranch when Timothy had his High Adventure Camping in 1998. Now we are heading to Colorado to attend his wedding.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment