Dakota, dontcha know

As I have recently mentioned in a few blogs, we have reached the end of our lease on January 1st, 2013 and were seeking a new place to live. Due being disabled and awaiting a decision from Social Security, financially we have been in dire straits (now you hear Money for Nothin playing in your head) for several months. I recently reached out to my father and step-mother asking them, yet again, for assistance. Fearing that their answer would be "no," what they proposed completely blew me away.
My father stated that he would send us some money, but to call Brinda (step-mom) because she wanted to discuss some "options" with me over the phone. Other than homelessness, I didn't really know that there were other options. Very worried, I called her up and she began going over a scenario with me that my wife has actually joked about several times in the past. The main option was that my parents had decided to construct a trust fund for myself and my sister. Brinda and my father had started buying and renting out real estate in South Dakota over the past several years where she and my sister live and perhaps I could "consider" moving my family out there to live in one of their houses until we found one we liked at which point they would invest money into the equity of the home until it was "paid off" and it would become ours. My wife has joked several times that we should just ask Brinda to buy us a house, at which point we always have a good chuckle knowing that neither of us would ever have balls big enough to make such a huge request. Here it is now, and they are offering us this exact opportunity. The first property that she offered us sounds like the perfect property for us to make a new life in.
I have lived in many places and have wanted to visit many more, but work and low income have always hindered those plans. We have been living hand to mouth for a number of years, and never saw a way for us to get our heads completely above water. Now, my family has found a way for us to not only get our heads above water, but to finally get out of the water and onto dry land. We will finally have a level of stability in our lives that I never imagined would be possible. It's funny, I say stability and yet I am completely unstable with my extremities. How ironic.
I can't begin to express how I feel about this offer. It took less than a second for me to express my total agreement to this proposed plan, but I am still unable to find the words to express how happy and "blown away" I am at this offer for a new and better life. I have always felt like the "black sheep" in my family and as though I have been a total burden on them all. Yet, here they are offering the one chance to make everything better for me, my wife, and our amazing children. A chance to essentially start over in a new place, with limitless opportunities to better ourselves and the lives of our children. As I have stated before, they have no requirements to help us, I am a grown man who has made choices in life that have led me to where I am today. They have no ulterior motives which makes helping us a priority to them. They are going way above and beyond anything they ever need to do to make our lives 100 times better than it ever would be without their help. I feel like Orphan Annie and they are my Daddy Warbucks. Perhaps that was not the best analogy since it paints me as a little red headed orphan and them as a aging bald man with a strange Punjabi butler, but it was all I could think of to describe it.
So, for the next 5 months we will be remaining here in Virginia at a temporary rental house until school is out for the kids, then we will be hitching up the wagons and heading west to design our new future. Hopefully, once out there I will actually be able to enjoy retirement for once without the absolute need to rush to work in order for us all to survive and I will be able to focus a lot more attention to my writing thus allowing my goal this year of publishing my first book to actually happen. I will finally be able to spend more time with my little minions as they grow up and enjoy the time spent with them without worrying about them feeling abandoned when I have to leave to go back to work. Perhaps I will be able to finally get a tan. Who knows. All I know is that for once in a very long time, good fortune is shining upon me and everything is coming up roses. I just have to watch out for the thorns. I never thought this would actually be my life, but I am glad that it is something like it...