We Did It. We Bought a House

You can read about it and our first week here: Our Newest Blog

Tomorrow's the Big Day!

Tomorrow we sign the papers and do the official closing on the house we are buying.  It has been a really odd journey back into the home without wheels world so far, so I hope that it is a bit more quiet once we move into the house.  We haven't even shared it with that many people personally and we laughed about that fact the other day when I wrote something on Facebook and our friend Dee saw it and asked about it.

The conversation between Nathan and I afterwards went like this.

Me: I accidentally outed us on Facebook.  (then went on to explain)
Nathan:   (sigh)  I can't believe you did that.  I can't believe everyone knows. 
Me: I know.  But we are moving Monday.  So I'm pretty sure everyone would have figured out something was up then anyway.
Nathan: I guess. (sigh) It's just....I don't know...It's just so embarrassing!  
Me: I know.  We gotta face up to it sometime though.
Me:  I suppose so. (huge sigh)

I am guessing our full time friends will get this completely.  And the rest of you can consider this further confirmation of just how odd we truly are.

Living the life in limbo land!

Visit to Lake Placid

Last night we drove over to Lake Placid to meet Rich and Donna for dinner.  I have missed Donna so much since they moved into their house.  I got used to seeing her so much this summer and enjoying her company, that it seems hard to believe it has been months since we have really spent time together.

After arriving at their house and seeing a few of the new changes/additions to it, we drove over to a Mexican restaurant near their house.  Here are Donna's pictures of the place:

We loved catching up with them!  Donna and I mostly talked about house stuff, which is still very strange to me.  I guess very soon it will seem very normal again, but we are still transitioning.  I am glad she is at the point she can answer a bunch of questions for me and did.  Thank you, Donna!

The food was fabulous!  I wish we had a place this good near where we were moving to!

The time we had together was wonderful and it flew by.  We are making plans to hopefully get together when Lake Placid has their next Farmer's Market.  Hopefully it warms up by then!

Happy New Year

    We rang in the New Year in a very quiet manner this year because we have both been fighting some bug.  So we stayed home and watched movies, and listened to the fireworks and cheering outside our window.

We also took the time to discuss what we though the New Year might bring for us and what our goals for this coming year were.  We had planned to "hit the road" again this spring.  Something we've waited two very, very long years for.  It seems that might not happen in exactly the same way we thought it might though.

  Because during those two long years of primarily being in one spot, something happened that has changed our lives in a pretty big way.  I fell in love.  It was not something anyone could have expected, and yet it isn't hard to believe that it did.  After all, the guy I fell for is handsome, rugged and really smart and fun.  Who could resist that combination?

 The truth is, I fell not only for him, but for a bunch more spectacular creatures at the sanctuary I enjoy spending time at.  The more I spent time there, the more all of them became a part of me and this love has changed me.  I was in denial over how much so until we went away to The Villages this past summer.  I discovered that while I loved our time there, I missed the horses so much so that I seemed to only be able to go a few weeks away from them without seriously missing them.

 This led to some talks about what to do about that, and long story short: we are now considering buying a house so I can foster some of the horses.  The long talks between Nathan and I were not so much whether to do that or not.  It was kind of a no-brainer to do it given my love for it.  The part we needed to figure out was how to blend that with being full timers.  Because we are full timers, no matter what else happens in our lives.  Just like we are parents, no matter what happens else happens in our lives.  We haven't just been traveling as in it was one thing on a long list of things we have done, but we are gypsies at heart as in that's who we are.

  I have found in sharing this past week, that there are those that get that and those that don't.  So I share and if they get it, we talk about it because they understand the fears and sadness that go along with the huge sacrifice of surrendering some parts of the full timing lifestyle that we have enjoyed for years now.  If I share and they don't, I quickly just move onto parts that they hopefully can relate to.  I understand that unless you have lived it, there isn't any real way to "get it".

 So why write all of this out here then, if I know that many who read it really won't "get all of it"?  Because it is a part of our show us the world journey, even if the way we are doing it might be altered due to new things in our life.

 So as strange as it will seem to most, this is not us settling down or a entering a new chapter in our lives.  It is us adding to the life we have and enjoy and figuring out how to add more to it without taking away from the parts that are most important to us.  And it has been no small task to figure out how exactly that will work in real ways.

 We have thought long and hard about how to blend all of the parts that are "us" together in a way that is truly do-able.  We hope to find a place that is a mix of as little of a house obligation as possible and as much horse friendly land as possible, along with the ever important kind to our budget so we can still move about and see the world that way some too.  We'll see how we do with that rather tall order.

  I'm fortunate that unlike most horse people, I have a place for the horses when we do want to physically move about.  I'm grateful that being in one spot much of the time will give me time with my children who will all be within driving distance except the one in Michigan that we are working on to get back down to Florida.  And I'm really thankful that everyone we have shared this with, is happy for us that we are moving towards something that brings us joy.  It's a great thing to celebrate on this New Year's Day!  




  

Day 3 of Liberty Cruise~Cozumel

We were up bright and early again for our first port day.  This is a port that we were docked right at the port, so you just get off the boat and walk to your destination.

We visited Cozumel on our last cruise and enjoyed touring the island with a guide.  This time we thought we would go explore on our own.  We walked to the place where you can get a taxi ride to anywhere on the island and headed over to Chankanaab National Park.  The ride over was maybe ten to fifteen minutes or so, and it was a pleasant drive.  We were one of the first people to arrive at Chankanaab so we felt like we had the place to ourselves.

It was somewhat cold and windy so we were not sure it was quite beach weather.  Luckily there was lots of other things to pick from along with the beach.  We headed to the ruins first.

After the ruins, we walked over to see the beach area.  It was still pretty cloudy and windy, but we figured we could sit and read books and still enjoy the view.  We stopped for a few minutes to see the trainers working with the dolphins.  We settled onto the beach and ordered chips and salsa to munch on.

After hanging out here for some time and being asked multiple times if we wanted a massage, we finally said yes and I'm so glad we did.  It was a wonderful massage and it was a great price.  We decided to wander around the park after the massage and see what else there was.  There was a lagoon, alligators, a Tequila tour, gift shop and everywhere we went, it was beautiful.

We heard a Sea Lion show in progress, so we joined that even though we missed much of it.  Afterwards, they let you come up and get a picture taken with the sea lion kissing you.

We headed back over to the dolphin swim area after the show and sat for about an hour watching people swim with the dolphins and the trainers do tricks with them.  It seemed well organized and it also looked like it was done with smaller groups of people which is probably nice.  We just enjoyed watching the dolphins, especially the ones that weren't "working".

I could have sat there all day long, just watching them swim and jump but we were getting hungry and the weather still was not fabulous so we decided to head back.  It was late afternoon by then, so we knew we had just enough time to board the ship and get ready to be first in line for dinner.  We took another taxi back to the ship and spent a few minutes looking around at the market near the dock.

It looked like a lot of other people decided it was time to head back when we did.  As you can see, it is still very overcast and windy but the temperatures were very nice so we still enjoyed our day here.

Back on the ship we rested for a few minutes and then started getting ready for dinner.  We still had a full night of activities ahead of us so the day was nowhere near done yet.  I only grabbed a few pictures while we were at dinner and they were dancing and singing for us.

We had a great day and were exhausted when we fell into bed.  This was only the first port day, with three more to come.  Tomorrow is Belize!