The New and Improved Five Year Plan

A month ago I posted an entry about our Five Year Plan which ended up more like a Six Month Outline. Over the past couple of weeks some events have occurred that have solidified some of the unknowns and have allowed us to make some more concrete plans.

The big news: I’m happy to announce that Benjamin was accepted at Johnson and Wales University into their Hospitality program just as he was hoping for. We received the letter in the mail mid last week. This tidbit alone was enough to start the ball rolling for the updated plan since we know we’ll be in Denver for at least 4 years.

Benjamin’s last day at Compass Bank will be April 30th. We’ll be moving to Denver May 18-24th. We’ll fly back for the Garcia family vacation the first part of July. I’ll fly back to Denver post-vacation but Benjamin will stay in Texas helping his cousin Annie with her wedding plans until the wedding day at the end of July. I’ll fly back for the wedding and we’ll both fly back to Denver together. Benjamin has orientation at the end of August and starts classes on September 4th.

Between now and mid-May things get a little crazy. We’ll probably be living in an apartment or condo while in Denver — something with likely much less space than we have now. We’ve decided that instead of renting a storage building in Austin to store stuff or renting a moving truck to move the stuff to Denver only to store it – we’re selling just about everything in the house prior to the move. What we’re thinking of is a garage sale in February to get rid of a lot of smaller items that we don’t need or use. In April we’re having a going-away party at the house during which we’re letting folks know that most everything you see in the house is for sale – scope things out and keep items you like in mind. A couple of weeks later we’re going to have a mini-estate sale for our friends and acquaintances letting them come in and make an offer on whatever they like (virtually all decor, some furniture, beds, lamps, kitchen items, lawn mowers, lawn furniture, patio furniture, you name it) and take it home with them. Early May we’ll likely be having another garage/craigslist sale for everything that no one else wanted – including the Mustang. That should leave us with only a dozen or so good-sized boxes that we can pile in the Fusion or ship to Denver via UPS ground.

That leaves the house. Nothing much has changed since the last update a month ago. The current plan is still for Eve to move out of the house around August and two friends are discussing if they want to rent it (once again – you know who you are :). This is an area that needs some attention but right now we’re waiting on the two friends to see what they want to do before we explore other options.

Right now we’re in hurry-up-and-wait mode. We need to fill out Benjamin’s FASFA but we need to file his 2006 Tax Return first. We can’t file his 2006 Tax Return until the various financial institutions send us the EOY statements. <sigh>

Updates to follow as things change…