Permanent Residence

Bittersweet is the only thing that comes to mind as we were packing up our home.  Preston had lived in that house for just over 11 years of his life.  I moved in 2 1/2 years ago, but feel like I have been living there the past 8 years.  It was sad and exciting at the same time.  Sometimes it is hard to let go of some things in our life, but we just have to remind ourselves about the lifestyle change we are making.
Our official residence is now a floating Jalapeno.  Even though we are still in Utah for the next couple months officially the only home we own now is our boat!  That is correct we have sold and moved out of our land lubber house and are anxious to get back to Jalapeno to open the drains and soak up all the water being dumped on her right now by tropical storm Andrea.  The official hurricane season started June 1st, which was also the day we moved out of our house.  This puts us in an unusual position as this season is supposed to be unusually high for tropical storms.  As of now our plan is to wrap up our lives in Utah for the next few months then move down to the boat and get some work done before putting her back in the water.  We still need to manufacture some kind of locking system on our engines when they are in the water to keep them from popping up when we put the boat in reverse, clean, install a few new "toys", clean, stock up on U.S.A items, clean, ohhh and clean the boat!  Before we leave Utah for the last time we have planned one last trip to Lake Powell with our friends and plan on squeezing in as much time with family as possible.
WOW!  Even though I thought we had cleansed our life of "stuff"  I was blown away by how much of this "stuff" was still in our house.  I was prepared that packing up Preston's shop was going to be huge and a lot of work, but it took me 3 days just to pack  and clean the house.  This is after we have had 2 HUGE yard sales and sold or given away over half of our belongings.  After the past week it will be hard for me to ever want to move ever again.  I have a new policy in my life because I love to shop and that is if I ever buy anything new I must first get rid of 2 items.