Christmas Day 2011

It is Christmas today and we just got back to our RV at Rustic Creek RV Park in the very late afternoon.  We left Phoenix two days ago but got caught in a big snowstorm in the White Mountains of south central New Mexico. We were forced to spend the night hanging out in a truck stop until we finally called around and found a room at an America's Best Motel. It was a dump but it was the very only room available in town due to the storm. The state had closed I-10 at this town, so everyone had to find a place to stay here. We left in the morning after the road opened and only got to Big Spring, Texas by night, so we stayed in a Holiday Inn there for Christmas Eve and had dinner at the truck stop diner across the freeway.

Contract on New Home

We drove over to the Meritage community in Buckeye on Saturday but we had to drive along a poor area of town along I-10 and Liz became skeptical of moving to Buckeye. We spent some time there looking at the models but Liz liked the ones in Casa Grande much more. The salesman there told us about another Meritage community in Maricopa which is about halfway in between Buckeye and Casa Grande. It is called Province and after free lunch at the clubhouse at the golf course at Buckeye we headed over there to look at their models. They have the same models as the community in Casa Grande but they also have a huge community center with just about every amenity possible , so we started to look at lots and get a price on the house we wanted. We finally ended up signing a contract on a home there late this afternoon. We have to go to the design center tomorrow before we leave to go back to Fort Worth to pick out our options, cabinets, flooring and the like.

House Hunting Trip

We arrived in Phoenix late this afternoon. We are staying in a Day's Inn in Mesa. We saw a billboard for a Meritage Active Adult Community in a city called Casa Grande which is about halfway between Tucson and Phoenix. We had plenty of time, so we stopped to look at the models there. The sales lady there was very nice and it turned out that today Meritage announced that the solar package was no longer going to required but instead was going to be an option. This lowered the base price of the homes about$20K which put the smaller ones in our price range. Liz really liked a couple of the models so we took some information and continued on to our hotel.

We are going to visit the Meritage development in Buckeye tomorrow and also begin to look for a storage place for our household goods. The real plan is to rent an apartment here to see what areas are best to live in before we buy another home.

Moving Day

Mayflower Van Lines picked up our furniture and household goods today. We selected them because they were the best mix of price and service. But, our realtor told us a couple of days ago that the buyer's bank had not approved the loan as of yet and the house closing would be probably pushed back to the end of the year. All of our things were already packed up in boxes so we little choice but to follow our plans and move into our RV at Rustic Creek RV Park which is a few miles away. We will have to stay there until the house closes and in any rate we want to spent the rest of this year in Texas for tax reasons.

We are going to leave on our house hunting trip to Phoenix in two days anyway, so it is not a big deal unless the deal falls through!