Last weekend, Jenna (my wife) and I officially moved into our new home downtown. It felt great to finally be in there. In the spring we put our house on the market and were a little uncertain of it selling. As I've written in the past, this was my opportunity to take my own advice and do the things necessary to sell the property. We did just that and had an accepted offer within 6 weeks. In the meantime, we had not yet picked out a new house and decided to sublet an apartment for the summer. That meant moving twice, yet also gave us time to find what we wanted without feeling rushed.

Last Saturday was the big moving day. We were lucky enough to have awesome friends and family come to help us. If you're considering buying or selling a home, then try to gather up your best friends and family for some good ol' fashioned fun! To say the least, we were very grateful for the help of Marc, Lanette, Peanut, Mike, Kathy, Wendy, and Eric. The day would have been so much more difficult without the generosity of these amazing souls. We started out painting and then continued moving everything into the house.

Some of the key helpers (besides these wonderful people) were our storage POD, trailer, and notebook. When moving we considered putting most of our stuff into a storage unit and decided upon using PODS (portable on demand storage). The POD was a little more expensive than other local storage units, but it was much more convenient than loading and unloading multiple times. Another saving grace was having a trailer to transport things back and forth from our apartment. We did have a few offers from friends to use a pickup truck, but using the trailer was more manageable with my car. The final critical helper was a notebook that we could use to make our checklists of things we needed (to do, to buy, to look for, etc). Using David Allen's philosophy helped us to truly get things done.

The end result of the weekend - we have a fresh coat of paint in the living room, bathroom, and master bedroom. The house is mostly put together and we even enjoyed making our first meal together. Also, this morning I enjoyed running along John Nolen Drive looking out at Lake Monona. Do you know of anyone else that might want to live on the Isthmus in Madison? Or maybe you want to browse for properties next to the Monona Terrace.

Here's to big changes, good friends, amazing family, and a new home!