Moving update: PACKED!

I sit in the floor of our nearly empty farmstead. Nearly- since we're leaving a lot of stuff in the house here. The packing took 2 days, and our stuff is on a truck headed to Houston. The kids are going nuts with the openness - currently they're bouncing a racquet ball off the walls in the dining room. Yes, it's 11:00pm. The Danes are forced to share the giant bean bag chair- they are very concerned that the bed has left, but at least they still have food.

Tomorrow we load the stuff we're to carry in a small Uhaul trailer to pull behind the Jeep.  We'll be driving the Jeep and the Crown Vic straight through starting Sunday. Hopefully, the dogs and kids will be so worn out by then that they just sleep 18 hours straight.

Tomorrow night is our farewell dinner. Last time to get together with the NC family and friends for a while. Hopefully, we'll get lots of visitors in our new home.

Need to schedule some cleaning and winterizing here, as well as Habitat to come out and pick up the extra junk we have. The animals have mostly been re-homed. Mom and Dad will be taking care of the barn cats, 2 chickens and Delilah the Goat. Dinkey is at the neighbors with Angel and will soon be joined by Sea Bass the Duck and his friend Quackers. The milk goats went to a friend that wants to start milking. Conan will go to the in-laws. The rabbit goes to a friend also. Whew!

I dread the drive. Once that's done though, I can enjoy the adventure! Our stuff will arrive next week, the kids start school on January 6th. I need a gym, a salon and a grocery store. Chuck is in the Houston office starting January 2nd. Oh, and there's a New Years party at one of his co-workers houses.

Bring it on.

Closing in 14 1/2 Hours!

Today, Chuck and I  flew out to sign papers on the new house. Yikes! The girls stayed home to take care of the dogs and finish out their semester in NC. It was partly cloudy and mid 70's in Houston today. It did rain a bit this afternoon, but much nicer weather than the last time we were here.

Houston Skyline in the distance right before we touched down.

LOVE the Texas space cow! Need to find a statue of this for the house.

We grabbed a bite to eat and headed to the new abode. We met with a guy about 3M window film- super neat stuff to protect against hurricanes, and break ins, plus blocking UV rays and keeping energy costs lower. He will also be changing out our locks.

 Our realtor came and we did the final inspection. Crap! We have fire ants. Added a lawn treatment to the to-do list. Really- lots of fire ants. Crap.

Then the security system guy came out and we got all that squared away. Woo-hoo. 

I poked all around the house trying to figure out where to put things. I walked all along the fence making sure it was sound so the dogs would stay in. I even checked on our citrus trees- yay! They look to need a good insecticide spraying as the leaves look a little sickly and munched, but the lemons and oranges will be ready to pick very soon! YAY! 

Lemon!

I spent quite a bit of time lounging on the sectional patio furniture. That's going to be an awesome place to hang out and drink margaritas- especially once the pool is installed.

After all that and getting checked into the hotel, we headed to Highland Village to eat at Escalante's. YUM! It Tex-Mex and very good. Service was great also.

  I had the Escalante's #4 margarita. It was dee-lish.

ESCALANTE’S NO 4

Herradura double barrel reposado tequila — hand selected from the Herradura distillery — blended with premium Cointreau liqueur

We had the fresh, made at the table guacamole- awesome! Chuck had the Del Mar and I had empanadas. Then for dessert we had their special tequila sauce bread pudding. Heaven! Definitely somewhere we'll go back to once we're Texans.

We're in the hotel now- the Ikea store across the street is taunting me. Closing at noon tomorrow. Then picking up supplies for the house. Hopefully, I'll get more pictures of the house tomorrow. Tomorrow night we celebrate at Taste if Texas!