The sadder goodbye would be the one we would have to say to my parents. They had become really a second set of parents to my girls. I am so very thankful that my girls had the time that they had with my parents. We could never have known that our time with them would come to an end in such a short period of time. We thought that even though we were going to make a geographical move, they would be there for us for a long time to come...how wrong we were in that assumption.

We finally moved to Abilene in January. Rob had worked his butt off getting our house ready for the family to move in. We bought a real "fixer-upper," and he really fixed it up. He did such a great job of getting it ready for us while we were trying to wind up our time at home. I don't think that I have really thanked him for that. I know that he was starting a new job, but he also set up our housekeeping in his very limited spare time, and I don't know if he knows how much we appreciated it.

When we finally got ready to move, I happened to come down with some kind of virus. We managed to get the U-Haul loaded and to get everything to Abilene, but I was so sick that I just wanted to expire when we got there. I just wanted to die. I don't remember how we did it, but we managed to move in. The house was ready, and we were ready for a new start.