Shortly after Chad and I got married, we fell in love with the feel of Monroe County. The farm land, open fields and the peace we got from taking a drive in the country. Everything. We have always wanted to move to Monroe County. We have stayed in the area we are in for Kaitlynne, so she could be close to her other family. Since Kaitlynne has moved out and is able to drive and is planning to move to Ann Arbor in the fall, for the first time in our married life, we don't feel tied to the area we are in anymore. When we moved into our house two years ago, we had every intention of making this our forever home. It was supposed to be finished before we moved in, then the month after. It's been two years and although much progress has been made, there is still has a huge amount of work to be done. Our house can't be mortgaged until it is finished, at this point, we aren't hopeful it will be finished. There are major concerns over the foundation and many other things. Our plan has been to stay and hope the house gets finished. Over the last few months, God has been working in both of our hearts to prepare us for another move. In my flesh, I wasn't sure I could handle another move. I wasn't willing to uproot my kids to move to a new house or city. After a lot of soul searching, praying and seeking Godly counsel from my mother-in-law, more journaling than I though was possible in a short period of time and reading some notes I took a while back from a great Andy Stanley message, we feel like this is our time to move to Monroe. We are not sure of a location in Monroe, just somewhere there.
Yesterday we spent the day in the Village of Dundee, it's been one of our favorite areas for a very long time. It's a little further than we are hoping to move but the area is perfect. It has the most quaint downtown area, a dam, a park and just 5 minutes away, you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere with nothing around but farm land and open skies for miles and miles!
We are in the beginning stages of thinking this through but we did stumble into a conversation with our kids, at their prodding, about moving. I was very nervous to feel them out at about moving. Shockingly, they were all on board and happy about moving especially to the county. So we looked up the address of a house we liked that happened to be in Dundee and took a drive out there. The village is more quaint and perfect than I remembered. We went to the house we liked, got out and checked it out since it is vacant and then went to town to get pizza, ate it at the park and back to the downtown area for some ice cream before heading home. It was a great day and gave us a great feel for the area and what we are looking for and dreaming of in a house and town. Here are our pictures from the day trip. We didn't intend to get the kids out of the car except to go to the bathroom, so....they were decked out in play clothes from playing outside at home before we left.
This is the little Christmas shop that I love. We've never been in but I love seeing it when we drive through town.
This is the little two lane road that leads to the house we checked out
This is the front of the house, the little sun porch and metal roof are exactly what we would love to find when we find our house!
I love this view - cornfields as far as the eye can see!
You can't tell in this picture but waaayyyy back there, there is a farm. I'm not entirely sure what is there but we saw cows, so that was neat!
The kids loved this tree, one of the things on the wish list that they made was more good climbing trees!
You can't see them in this picture but the kids are way down at the end of the drive
Love this little area of trees off the back deck, as much as we want open grassy areas, we'd like some trees too!
This is the gazebo in the middle of the downtown area
This was on our walk downtown while we waited on our pizza to be ready
Chad went back to get the pizza but the kids wanted to walk to the park, so we met him there. They loved looking at the water fall over the dam.
They all liked this historical building
Pizza on the water
After we finished our pizza, the kids played on the playground then Chad played ultimate frisbee with them and some friends the kids made. They all had so much fun!
Then we headed back to the downtown area for ice cream before heading home!
