Packing up again

We're at it again! Packing up, that is. Travis and I seem to have a nomadic side to our personalities that we just can't stay put for too long! (Well, having the Navy tell us to move every few years adds to this lifestyle too!) Over the last 20 years, we've moved into 14 different homes, in 7 different states, and in 2 different countries. That's a lot of packing up time. Next week we'll be adding one more move to the tally to make #15 within 20 years.

Travis has been anxious to discover a bigger, newer and better house since he was promoted to Lieutenant. After Isaac joined our family and then our one year lease expired, we decided to explore our options. For numerous reasons, we've "outgrown" this casa. (I won't bore you with our complaints and whining.) After touring about 10 different homes in this same neighborhood, we were almost convinced that we had a pretty nice size house after all and we really couldn't do much better within our housing budget. BUT ALAS, three weeks ago we found THIS place and after touring it Camryn asked, "Now what are we going to do today?" With big grins, Travis and I both responded with, "We're going to start packing up!"

Needless to say, we are quite excited about our new home and getting the keys next weekend to start moving in. It's just down the road, about a mile closer to the beach, which should make a nice walking destination. It is much newer than this home so we're hoping that means better electrical wiring, better insulation and no cold drafts around the windows. We'll still have five bedrooms, but now now each of the kids will have their own room. We'll also have a couple extra closets for storage (almost unheard of in Spanish houses), a big garage for all our garage type stuff (currently overflowing in our enclosed patio, and bedroom/storage room) and an extra room w/o a closet for a home office and crafty pursuits, a huge loft above the living room with "homeschool room" written all over it, a huge yard with tons of fruit bearing trees and our own private swimming pool to boot! It has everything plus a few extra features that we were hoping to find so we are thrilled. We'll be in that house for almost two years before we move back to the U.S. so I think it will be worth the trouble of packing up and settling in. Pictures will be coming after we are in and set up with Internet and all that jazz.