So, it’s finally time for retirement.  I won’t lie, this is a scary time — will we have enough money, what am I going to do all day, how will my organization survive without me! 

The last few months of your work-life aren’t all that fun, especially if you decide to move right away.  You have one foot in the working world, trying to do a good job, but it’s difficult with all the competing demands. 

It starts to hit home when you schedule events and meetings that you won’t be around for. 

But somehow, you muddle through despite mandatory retirement appointments, medical appointments, and everything else that you didn’t realize you’d have to do before that long-awaited day arrives – RETIREMENT.

Well, we decided to move.  Add buying, selling, and packing out a house to all the work and retirement events you didn’t see coming. 

We looked at the house hunting task with a sense of adventure, that is, until we were on our third trip, our house was sold, and we still hadn’t found anything! 

We initially rented a lake house and visited family in conjunction with our house hunting trips, but all of this went out the window as time went by. 

On our second trip, we put an offer on a house, got pre-approved for a loan, and put our current house up for sale. 

Everything looked fine until we didn’t get the retirement house, the two backup houses sold a day apart, and our current house sold in four days! 

At this point we shifted our focus to building, packed up a U-Haul with a one-bedroom apartment worth of furniture, and headed South for our last house hunting adventure.

It has to be easier to find land and a builder, right?  Not really, this turned out to be even harder.  The 19-acre property I originally found sold right away, and the builders were backed up so there was no telling when we’d move into a finished house. 

Not to mention, my wife wasn’t as interested in living in the country as I was, cue every episode of House Hunters International. 

Luckily, the last house we looked at was the same floor plan that our earlier backup houses were, and coincidentally a version of the same floor plan that we intended to build. 

19-acres became 1/3 of an acre, but all the modern conveniences were available in the new community, thank you Google Fiber! 

Luckily the previous owners were very nice and accepted our offer right away.  What a relief!!!!!!!!!

Vacations are supposed to be relaxing.  A year or two prior my cousin Paul recommended TravelZoo. 

It’s a webpage of multiple travel agencies where you can get some really good deals.  We love it and have recommended it a bunch since then. 

One of their offerings is a weekly Top 20.  I always tell people that this will be your favorite email every week, but a bit of advice, the Top 20 sell out fast. 

About the same week that we sold our house my cousin texted a pic of a medieval Italian castle in Umbria that my wife and I had just talked about. 

We were interested, but our schedule was so chaotic that we couldn’t decide on any firm dates.  No worries, the Paolo clan (Paul’s Italian name) had already booked their trip, so it was take it or leave it if we wanted to go at the same time.  We took it, Relais il Canalicchio here we come!

Fun, but first I had to pack out our house with the moving company while my wife continued to work until just before the trip. 

We moved a lot in three decades in the Army, but hands down, this was the worst move ever.  Since we planned to build, I arranged for our stuff to go to long-term storage. 

By this time plans had changed, but I wasn’t able to change the move plan (a recurring theme in the next post or two).  We managed to move our stuff, clean the house inside and out, and store a few things in the Florida room for our drive down South. 

We extended our Italy trip to span almost a month, heading to Florence, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast after the week with friends and family. 

Somewhere along the way our goddaughter Valeria decided to join us and bring her friend Faith.  The more the merrier! 

The plan was to return at the end of the month, finish packing the cars, close on the house the next afternoon, and head for Virginia.  Right now, it didn’t matter, we were headed for Italy!

We left a day ahead of everyone, but after a bumpy start and canceled flights, we arrived a few hours after everyone? 

I don’t recommend flying from DC to Newark, Newark to Charlotte, Charlotte to Miami, Miami to Spain (I don’t remember which airport), and Spain to Rome.  Whew, I’m worn out again just thinking about that part of the trip!!!!!! 

Don’t worry, everything was great after we landed and the airline gave us travel vouchers for two future trips.  We had a fabulous time, exploring, eating, drinking, going to chef school, car racing, figuring out parking machines, trespassing, and so on. 

I could write and write about that trip, but the pictures on MyRetirementDoc Pinterest will tell you the rest of the story. 

We had a vineyard trip interrupted by a termite inspection, did some mortgage paperwork on a rainy day in Florence, and tried in vain to reschedule delivery of our furniture (a word of advice, the Army’s online system isn’t for retirees and doesn’t work all that well anyway), but that’s about it for move distractions. 

If you haven’t been to Italy, I highly recommend it — breathtaking scenery, delicious food, and a relaxed lifestyle.  We enjoyed the small towns in Umbria and Tuscany the most, and I can’t say enough about how great the pizza was!

OK, time to snap back to reality.  The flights were on schedule on the way back, our friend Barb grabbed us at the airport, we packed the cars, and hit the neighbor’s guest bed exhausted that night.

Closing went well the next day with the nice family that bought our house, and by late afternoon my wife, our 17-year-old cat, and I were headed south. 

After a brief visit with my Dad, we made it to Alabama.  Closing went well again, and within the week we were in a 4,000 sqft house with one couch, one chair, a bed, and some kitchen necessities. 

It would be two more months before the kind folks at Redstone Arsenal could convince Fort Belvoir to send us our furniture, frustrating!  Unfortunately, there was a lot of damage, but let’s move on to the good part, settling in.

We thought the house was move-in ready, but as with anything you want to put your stamp on it.  We had the entire house painted, windows replaced by Window Depot USA, and laid 1,600 sqft of wood floors, a DIY project that went on, and on, and on. 

I did enjoy sending my working friends pics of my new office, aka the pool, sleeping as long as I wanted, and generally trying to relax while doing projects.  I’m better at relaxing than my wife. 

This is the case with a lot of people, some take to an empty schedule, while others feel like there’s a void where work used to be. 

I like having things to do, but I also like doing what I want, when I want.  I tell people it takes six months to two years to settle in, find hobbies, and really start enjoying retirement. 

We took time to explore the area, relax at the pool, play tennis, walk, hike, hunt, go to the beach, and attend college football games, so it wasn’t all work.