Selling the house was fairly easy it took about 3 weeks. Someone drove by and ask if they could see it. I wasn't too impressed with our realtor at the time, so I said, "yes." I took them through the house pointing out it's faults, but they ended up making an offer two hours later. I really enjoyed our home it had 6 bedrooms, three up and three down. We had an extra room for an office and a craft room, besides the kids all having their own space. It had 3 full baths and a great deck off the back. The yard was a lot bigger than the one we have here, and I loved to garden.
The day the for sale sign went up.
I think we painted the outside of this house 3 times. Once because we had to redo the awful yellow paint we chose. We settled on white trim for the sale. I had my own little zen garden thing going on in the corner of the house, tried to bonsai the bush. I look back at those hideous bushes in front of the windows and can't believe I didn't cut them down. The new owners did.
We received this picture a few months ago of what our house is going through now. I always wanted to put a roof on the flat garage.
Where did we ended up? About a mile and a half off the frontage road on 249 in Tomball, Texas. Right up the road from what was then the Compaq campus, now HP. There was a thick forest of trees and a big sign that read Lakewood Grove. Now there is a nice entrance...but restaurants and businesses have replace the green forest that was around the subdivision. When we first moved in, we would see deer, possums, raccoons, and all sorts of weird creatures as we drove to our home.
I was amazed when I looked at this picture, because a lot of the trees got blown over during Hurricane Ike. Our new street sign read Newlands Court.
Here is our house just before the brick went up.
We moved in on June 3, 2000. Notice how small the oak tree is. The bushes around the house were only knee high. All the homes in Houston come with fully landscaped front yards, we talked them into putting grass in the back also. We had an at least 80 foot pine tree in the back yard. We cut it down right before hurricane Rita. We were glad we did, we think hurricane Ike would have brought it down on us, or our neighbor's house. Although this house only has 4 bedrooms, it had a formal living room and family room down stairs, and a game room up stairs. The game room has become a perfect play area for the grand kids.
Here we are 10 years later. You can't even see the front of our house anymore! Most of the landscape is still the original. I can't believe how fast the last ten years have gone.
The best part of the story is... that all our children eventually moved here. We enjoyed a year or so together, until our oldest son Jamie moved to Virginia. He works for Exxon and could return anytime, we are hopeful. We have also learned to like many things about living in Texas.
10 of my favorite things about living in Texas
1. Tex Mex... best ever
2. shorts can be worn almost all year long
3. thunder storms
4. home prices are very affordable
5. salaries are competitive
6. neighborhoods are beautiful-I love home owner's associations
7. produce... can find anything all most year round
8. missionary opportunities...we have a temple 5 minutes away
9. flowers year round
10. best of all... family
10 things I am trying to deal with
1. hurricanes
2. heat-humidity
3. snakes
4. fire ants... they leave nasty bites
5. freeway driving
6. traffic on Saturdays
7. church running on fumes in the summer because everyone heads back to Utah to escape the heat.
8. allergies... all year long
9. not being able to clone myself to help everyone
10. being away from good friends and family when things happen
Things I've learned.
- How to say y'all
- What TAKS means (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills)
- Patients
- To love cilantro
- To understand different dialects
- to wear black
- bigger is better
- always plan to leave early to get where you need to be
- don't leave wet clothes anywhere too long
- if you buy ice cream in the summer... drive home fast
- never get a traffic ticket...seriously, 8 hours of defensive driving
- plan on jury duty once a year
- to find short cuts when you go places
- and to appreciate lawn crews
