Hill Obstructs View

On Tuesday I drove from Florida to Greenville South Carolina.  Following Google's directions I went cross country through Florida at one point.  I saw the most hilarious sign... It said something like:  Caution:  Hill obstructs View.   So what?  Florida has so few hills that they have to warn people about it?  Coming from driving in the Colorado Rockies every week for the last 6 months, I had a good laugh at the sign.  

And it is a very sad commentary on the landscape in Florida.

House Hunting

House hunting has become much more of a chore than we ever expected it to be around here. When we first looked at houses there were a lot at a really good price. Fortunately we got hooked up with a really good realtor, who let us know that most of those were in an area that we really didn't want to live in. However the first time we went looking at houses with him, when we were here for the interview, we found one that we liked pretty well. It was a bit smaller than we had hoped for but had an awesome yard. We couldn't make an offer at the time because we still had to wait for the official offer from Brian's job to get financing.
When we finally got moved down here that house was gone, but we had 5 more to look at. Two of those were GREAT and within a day we had pre-approval for a loan and were ready to make an offer. We decided which house would be our first choice and our realtor called about it. We had looked at houses on Saturday. THAT house had already had an accepted offer on it on Friday.
So we decided to go for choice number 2. As our realtor looked into that house he found out that it was a bidding process. This was Monday. We went ahead and filled out the paper work to put in our "bid" on Monday. The bidding wouldn't close until Wed. night. Tuesday we had to go into the Realtor's office to sign or initial literally over 20 more pages of contract junk. He said he'd never seen such a thing. And then we waited. Thursday afternoon we found out the bank selling the house hadn't accepted any of the bids and we would need to rebid, higher. Which we did. At that point the almost impossibility of getting that house seemed to gain a glimmer of hope. Maybe we could get it after all. Well, tonight, Friday, we found out that we were not the winning bid. Guess that wasn't the house God had planned for us.
So it's back to waiting. Waiting to see what else comes on the market, waiting to see how long we "get" to live in our borrowed camper. Waiting to see what plans God has for this period of waiting.
I should have known none of this would be easy. Apparently we haven't learned our "waiting" lesson yet...

Living in an RV Park

Is an interesting experience to say the least. Most everyone is very friendly, and actually the majority of the residence are packing up and heading home. The "snowbirds" are picking tomatoes, cleaning closets, and loading their cars...these are the conversations I overhear.
The first morning that I took Jinx for a walk I discovered where all the guys hang out fist thing in the morning...the Horseshoe pit. But even that has been quiet the last few days.
Yesterday while we were at the pool (the best part of living here) we say a screened gazebo type house driving down the road on a bucket loader. Apparently our next door neighbor is now the proud owner of it...where ever it came from. His name is Less and seems to have quite a crowd around his table everyday. Usually a bunch of women in the morning and a bunch of old guys with beers in the afternoon. But even crowd seems to have dwindled in the last few days.
Our most interesting and friendly neighbors are in back of us. Foster and Edna. Foster brings me yesterday's paper every morning, and on occassion both of them have brought the kids little treats.
All in all it's not a bad place to live, under the palm trees. But being a stay at home AND homeschooling mom in a 26 ft (30 when it's cool enough to have the pop out tent bed part down) trailer with no promising end in sight with 2 kids and a dog, is definitely NOT my ideal living conditions. Today we are going to "clean" up the camper. Why do I have a feeling it's going to take longer than cleaning our house in MI???

Life of a Gypsie

I'm not entirely sure where I live anymore... It's been a crazy year, well more like a crazy 9 months...can't even say it's been a whole year. Last summer Brian and I started to put in process a dream we've had to live in Colorado. That was in June/July. 9 months later we have are living in Florida. In Brief:

• Brian got a job at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and started in the beginning of Sept.
• I finished my job in Michigan the beginning of October, along with packing the house, homeschooling the kids, and getting ready for a marathon.
• Kids and I moved to Colorado, with a brief side trip to Chicago to run the Marathon in the middle of October.
• In November we decided to have a 3rd child and got pregnant.
  
• At the end of November Brian found out the Rocky was up for sale and the reality was it would probably close.
• At the end of February the Rocky closed and Brian had not found a job, even though he'd looked since December
• Only job that had been offered was at the Naples Daily News in Florida
• In March we figured God must want us in Naples and began that process.
• That process to WAY longer than we had hoped. But Brian finally started work in Florida on April 13.

And that is where we are...I think. Except that I didn't mention we are now looking for a house in the Naples area and while we are doing that we are living in our friends 26 - 30 ft. camping trailer at an RV park...but those experiences will take up their own posts :)