2500 Miles, 3 States & 3 Islands
What a whirlwind month November 2024 was for us! After October brought an offer on our Tampa house and the end of my 10+ years of working with the same company. I knew November would be busy, I was not prepared for what it had in store. While Laura spent the month studying 40+ hours a week the boys and I had to get us ready to move.
Our journey started in Tampa, I spent the first two weeks of the month realizing just how much stuff we had in our house. Laura tried to warn me but I didn’t listen! I was convinced that if we took a week off from school, the big boys and I could have the house packed up in 4 days…boy was I wrong. After a week and a half, countless trips to the storage unit and the dump we finally set off from Tampa, Florida to Georgia with a trailer full of stuff that we deemed necessary for living the next 6 months.
After my expert packing/moving skills were tested it was all downhill from there and it was vacation time or at least thats what I expected. For the first time in our entire 15 year marriage, Laura and I managed to plan a vacation more than a few weeks in advance and now it was time for the trip we had planned more than seven months in advance. After busting our butts to get the house packed up we were finally ready for our long awaited cruise. We specifically picked this cruise so that we would be gone just before Thanksgiving and more importantly it would stop in Puerto Rico. This was a big moment for me. I have been waiting to take the boys to where I was born until they were old enough to remember the trip. We had an amazing time on our cruise and I was able to take them on a tour of old San Juan that included not only the important sites but also the food from home!
After a week cruising through the Caribbean we made a quick stop in Tampa to close on our house before continuing our journey to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. Now that we are officially homeless and successfully unemployed, we were wrapping up our extremely busy November with a low key Thanksgiving celebration with my cousin and aunt in Tennessee. On the way through Georgia we had some car troubles that added to the excitement of the trip but nonetheless we made it in to our destination safely and ready for cold weather relaxation. We managed to fit in a pit stop in our second favorite aquarium, the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.
One month into my new role of Mr. Mom and I have no idea what I’m doing because its been a mess and nothing has been normal. We shall see what December holds and how I do with a bit of a schedule. You will have to stay tuned to see if I am up for the challenge or if I ruin the Petitone School for boys!
