Well, this post is a little late in coming. I can't believe I haven't updated this blog since the summer, but if you had any idea what last semester was like for me, you would understand. I finally have a more reasonable teaching load, which is refreshing and helpful since we have a lot of work to do on our NEW house!
For those who haven't heard, we successfully managed to buy a house in Lakewood Ranch, FL. It's East of Bradenton, FL, , a reasonable commute for both Matt and me, and in a good school district. We had been looking and saving for a long time and we put an offer on a short sale last fall. Matt did a lot of leg work over the semester to make things work, and after 3 different closing dates, 3 different prices, a few surprises, and a move 2 days before Christmas - we finally got into our house. The closing date happened about 3 weeks later, and we're still feeling a sense of relief that it actually worked out. Our house still needs some TLC, including a full repainting and many minor repairs, but it has all the main features we were looking for.
Now that we have our own house, we are expecting to be open for visitors in short order. . . as long as you don't mind getting woken up at 5AM by Luci ;-).