2019-year in review part 1

2019-what a year!  I would have never thought that I would lose both of my parents in the same year.  January 25th I got a call that no daughter (or anyone for that matter) wants to get.  The Jefferson County Coroner called to inform me that they had found my dad passed away and me listed as his emergency contact.  He had not shown up for work the night before which was not like him, and he was not answering his phone.  His co-worker went to check on him and could hear his phone ringing through the door with no movement.  He was living in an extended stay hotel type place, so you would have been able to hear him if he was just ignoring the call.  They got the police to do a welfare check and found him dead in his bed.  It seemed that he had a heart attack.

I don't think I have ever felt a pain like that before.  My mom was trying to call me while I was on the phone so Josh called her and let her know, I could barely talk.  He took the boys to his parents so they didn't have to see me like that.  It wasn't pretty.  Mom came over right away to be with me.  My brother happened to call her not long after Josh talked to her.  She assumed he was calling her about dad.  She could tell by his tone that he wasn't. She asked him had he talked to me yet and he said yes.  We had talked on my way home from work that day, just about 30 minutes before I got the phone call.  She asked him if he was ok, and he was like what are you talking about!  She broke the news to him.  I had to call my aunts and uncles and let them know.

The next day David and I went to clean out his room and had to plan his funeral.  Mom was a big help there too.  She was there for us every step of the way.  She hated that we were hurting.  The funeral was nice, he had a huge turnout from people at work.  It was nice to see how so many people he worked with cared for him.

I think I went numb for a bit after that, my aunts and uncles were such a big support for me, and still are!

In March, Josh was looking online at a house that was for sale across the street from us, just being nosy.  It also showed him houses for sale in the area.  We had pretty much decided we were going to stay in our house forever and maybe expand the kitchen at some point.  We both had house requirements on a new home that we thought we would never find in our area in our budget.  Josh's requirement was a 3 car garage, I wanted an upstairs, wrap around porch, and it had to have a basement.  Low and behold, there was a house with all the requirements listed just 5 miles from us!  I told him we would never be able to get our house ready to sell in time and the price was right at our max budget so we forgot about it.  Then we went on spring break and I decided to look at it again.  The seller had dropped the price!  I contacted our realtor friend and she set us up to look at it when we got back in town.  We fell in love!  It had all of our requirements, plus more.  I fell in love with the house, Josh fell in love with the total of 5 car garage space!  So, we put our house on the market that week and got an offer the first day it was listed!   We moved May 17th!   Our new house has room for entertaining, Mom was so happy that holidays would be at my house now.  She loved having the family together, but didn't like the preparation part that comes with it, me, I love it all!  Unfortunately, the first family gathering we would have at our new house wouldn't include her.