OK, for those of you who have been following along at home, it's obviously been awhile since our last post.  But we can assure you that much has happened since then. 

First, a brief recap.  Phase 1 of the 2300 Miles To Go story was our trip to Tennessee in early June.  Y'all (dig the Southern twang?) know about that trip if you've been paying any kind of attention to this blog.  Read it all again if you need a refresher course...

Phase 2 commenced at the beginning of July when we started working on getting our house in Concord ready to sell.  When we first met with our realtor in early June, he told us, "You have alot of work to do to be ready by early August, but it can be done."  Boy, was he ever right!   For starters, the front yard was in dire straights and not in a "money for nothing" sort of way.  The backyard wasn't so bad, but still needed a few things done here and there.  Inside - well, to start with, packing and paring down became a way of life for us in July as we had to figure out what to throw in boxes and what to throw in the dumpster.  Cleaning, painting, spackling wall cracks were some other "fun" things we did to get the house ready.  Nothing really out of the ordinary or extremely difficult except that we were attempting to do all of this in a span of 4 weeks! 

But by the grace of God - and only by His grace - we were able to do it!  As much time we spent doing all of the work, we spent just as much time praying through it the entire time.  We've seen God's faithfulness in all of this, providing what we needed when we needed it, most often in the form of assistance from others.  First, it was Uncle Steve helping to haul out two truckloads of bark from the backyard, then helping to put in a truckload of new bark.  Next came Wendy, who helped us paint the living room, hallway, and spare bedroom...doing the tough work of "cutting in".  Cassie did a superb job sanding down rough spots on our kitchen wall.   Mookie helped to paint the fence on the sideyard, which had been needing that for about 5 years!  Bob did an excellent job spackling some very noticeable cracks in the family room - now with some new paint, one can hardly tell that there were cracks there at all!  Eva kept the house smelling fresh and clean and even managed to touch-up many of the doors and jambs.  Mike M re-wired some of the electrical outlets in the garage.  And, of course, the master house stager - Mimi - who gave us sound advice through this all and in staging our home has really managed to bring out the best in our humble abode.  We know that we couldn't have made it this far without so much help.

Did I mention the front-yard landscaping?  We actually had to hire a landscaper to tackle this problem because, to be quite honest, it had gotten out of control - it was literally atrocious! Had we tried to take that project on ourselves...well, let's just say I wouldn't be sitting here typing this right now.  We're really happy with the landscaping work that was done:  new grass, potted plants around the cedar tree, and a great sprinkler system that features a drip system for the new plants and planter boxes.  It was quite a transformation.

The "For Sale" sign went up on August 6th, only three days later than what we had been shooting for.  This has been quite a journey so far...fun, exciting, at times frustrating, but through all of it, we've felt a peace that can't be described.  Truly amazing.

And now on to Phase 3:  selling!  Stay tuned!