Settling in

We have been here for exactly 8 days now and it feels so weird! We still feel like we are on vacation, even though we know we are here for good now. It is hard to be a guest in someone's house for an undetermined amount of time, but Jason's parents are so awesome that they are making it as nice as possible. His mom even does my laundry if I forget to change out the loads! We have eaten well and I am cooking more now than I did in Lubbock. Now, to find a house...

We have found two houses that we could move in to. House A is brand-new, never been lived in, on .75 acres, in the town Jason grew up in, but surrounded by mobile homes. It is one street away from a beautiful neighborhood, but there are no other houses by this one, so that makes us nervous. The price is right, especially for how beautiful the house is, but we don't want to buy a house that is going to have mobile homes around it so that we never get our money back that we pay for the house. We love this house so much that we are talking about just building an exact replica of it (+ 1 room) in 5 years or so if we find some land in a better neighborhood. There are three lots next to the house that could either have houses or mobile homes on them, and it would be a total flip of the coin as to what will actually go there, and we are not sure we are willing to take that chance. Who knows.

House B is only 2 years old, lived in for a short period of time (we think), in the town I grew up in, in a nicer neighborhood, needs quite a bit of work in the kitchen and one of the living areas, needs a lot of landscaping, and is $30K more expensive than the other house. If this house was the same price as the other one then it wouldn't even be a question of which one we would get. We know we could get our money back from this house, especially if we change the kitchen and do some nice landscaping. Plus, it is in a better location (maybe a little too close to my parents?) and I would feel a little safer there. It would be a much more temporary house than house A, but as I mentioned we already plan to build house A no matter what in about 5-7 years. House B would be perfect for us if we could get it for $30k less than what it is listed for, but I don't know that that is realiztic... though it has been on the market FOREVER. Again, who knows. We aren't going to do anything until we get back from St. Lucia, and hopefully by then there will be a couple more houses to look at and we can start making a decision. We haven't even heard back from the bank yet as to what we can afford, even though we have a pretty good idea. And thankfully Jason's dad is our realtor, so that helps a whole lot.

On a different note, my dad won at the Memorial Day drag race this weekend! We have seen him race quite a few times in his '67 Chevy pickup, but never seen him win! It was really exciting, even though it made for a really late night. My brothers were a lot of fun to be around, and we all had a lot of fun together hanging out at watching the jet cars (a dragster with a jet engine on the back, no joke), my dad, and the "southwest superchargers" and "RODS" show cars. We had a good weekend at the races, and I am so glad that my dad did well so his confidence will be up for his next race!

Finally, we leave for St. Lucia tomorrow. We have NOTHING planned for the 5 days we are there, and will just do stuff if we want, or not if we don't. We plan to spend a lot of time on the beach and eating a lot of yummy resort food. Hopefully the weather is good, but either way it doesn't get much better than being in the Carribean. Then Jason starts work in less than two weeks, yikes!