Memory Monday

Today's memory is not that long ago...only a few years, actually.

Scott had just finished WOBC at Virginia Beach. The movers had come, packed our belongings, picked up our storage stuff, and were headed out to Augusta. Hannah was being kept by Ida Holt, a friend of ours. Her husband Dell (LTC, Retired USA) was the Commandant of the School of Music, and had been Scott's commander at Ft. McPherson when we had been stationed there. It was nice to have a familiar face to rely on, and Ida was really good with Hannah, too. At this point, Hannah was just shy of 2 years old!

After the movers left, we cleaned the place, had our inspection, the apartment was declared good to go, and we headed to the Holt's house to get Hannah. Ida had also invited us to stay for dinner and she prepared a wonderful White Chili. As luck would have it, the weather on January 7 turned out to be HORRID...cold, rainy....just disgusting. Of course, one wouldn't expect warm beach weather, but we'd hoped for something nice. At least our belongings had been loaded before the weather turned! So Ida's wonderful chili was a balm to our souls. We thanked the Holts for ALL they had done for us and headed to stay in a hotel for our last night in Va Beach. Of course, by then, it was SNOWING to beat the band! Hannah had a hard time falling asleep in the hotel. If I recall correctly, we had a 2 room suite, so she was sleeping in the front room in her pack 'n play.

The following morning, we headed to Augusta, GA. It was a LONG drive. We were in separate cars, of course. It was just a long day, stopping with a toddler who needed diaper changes all the time. We arrived at Ft. Gordon much later than we had expected. We were tired...exhausted, really. We had booked a room at the inn on post, so we headed there. Of course, when we finally found the place, there was a sign telling us to check in somewhere else. We were SO frustrated, and tired...and we knew we'd only been given one room, so we decided to take our chances off post. We headed down one road and tried 3 hotels...the first 2 either didn't have a room or wanted a ridiculously high price. We went to the Microtel hotel, resigned to the fact that we'd have to deal with a pack n play in the same room, with little Miss Toss 'n Turn who didn't sleep well with others. But Scott bartered a deal with them. He guaranteed them a full week...and he bartered TWO rooms down to less than $60 a night total...and adjoining, too!

Then came the worst part...finding a home. We didn't want post housing...and for us, the wait list, we were told, was 2-4 months. I wasn't prepared to live temporarily again....I HATE living out of boxes. So we started looking for rental homes. We'd looked at SO many. We quickly found out what the worst parts of Augusta were, and we were determined to stay away from those areas, so we set our sights on Columbia County. Still...we were close to the end of our hotel term, and hadn't found anything yet. The day before we were ready to leave the hotel (after our 7 day "contract", lol) we were driving in a neighborhood, looking at a house. We called on the house, only to discover that it had just been rented. BUT...our agent said she had another house, not even on the market yet, really...was being completely vacated that weekend...did we want to see it?

So we went...to Dunes Drive. And we realized that this little house was the one for us. While it didn't have ALL the amenities we wanted (fenced yard, garage), it had what we NEEDED (3 bedrooms, good sized kitchen...extra space), and we said we'd take it. We signed paperwork and went back to the hotel. We'd found our home.

We contacted the transportation office to see if our belongings had been delivered yet. As luck would have it, they had NOT arrived yet, so we were able to arrange delivery on the 15th of January. Hannah's 2nd birthday.

We DID have the world's SLOWEST movers...a set of twins who were unwilling to hire day laborers to help unload and unpack. It took them 8 hours to unload the truck. It only took 4 for them to LOAD it on the other end, and they had THREE flights of stairs to deal with!!! (but they had 2 more workers).

As our things were being unloaded, Hannah was getting restless. It was a fairly nice day, so I took her for a slow walk around the neighborhood. We were on the opposite street in our loop, when I saw a woman leaving her house with a little girl who looked to be about Hannah's age. The woman was pregnant, too. I waved hello, and she waved back, and I stopped to talk to her a bit. Her name was Christy I...and I didn't know that this woman would end up being one of my dearest friends, leading me to a fantastic church and core of Christian women. Christy and her daughter Annalise (who was, in fact, 4 months younger than Hannah!) would become very important in our lives. She invited me to attend a playgroup being held at her house a few weeks later. I said I would come, and she gave me a card from her church, and put her name on it.

The rest of this memory is for another day...

Suffice it to say that my 2 years in Augusta Georgia were going to be the best because of this chance meeting...definitely a God thing!