1988, this was the first time I had ever stepped foot in Florida. We had just moved to Tennessee and my parents came for a visit, we made a trip down to Florida for a few days, went to Disney world, Miami, The Everglades, drove up the gulf through Tampa and back to Tennessee. It was a whirl wind trip, but we seen a lot and crammed a lot in, in just those few short days. I fell in love with it. Two years later Gene and I took our kids on vacation here and the rest is history. We vacationed here a lot, Disney world, Destin, and Daytona Beach. Our friends moved down a few years later and it was always Daytona Beach with them. In 2000 I became a flight attendant and I bid Florida trips often, coming to Florida at least two to three times per month. I have spent a lot of time here since my first trip in 1988. Gene and I talked many times about retiring here, but when the kids got older, got married, had kids, we never thought we’d actually make the move. But as we got closer and closer to Gene’s retirement we started talking more about how do we want to spend our chapter three, our golden years of our lives. I’ve watched some family members age in my opinion not well and we did not want that for ourselves. We want to enjoy life, be more active, be able to be outdoors more, to travel and to do more volunteer work, and the lifestyle we seen for ourselves was here in Florida.
The decision to leave our children and grandchildren did not come easy. If anyone knows us our time with our grandchildren has been our number one priority and we spend a great amount of time with them and try to give them some great life experiences, but we know as they grow up they will also go off and live their lives and we are not going to be their priority, so making the decision to leave but remain active in their lives was simply to make sure we go and visit often, and we will make sure they get to come for visits here as well. I hope our move here will bring them even greater life experiences and our time with them will be even more precious and valuable. And in truth, we hope someday they will want to move by us. We can wish can’t we?
So after a long hard couple of days of unpacking, assembling, moving furniture, lining cabinets shelves, and falling into bed at night exhausted, we can honestly say we have at this point no regrets. And one thing on top of another reaffirms our decision.
We’ve had several neighbors welcome us to the neighborhood, one even brought us cookies, does that still happen??? Obviously it does, we also had been looking for a landscaper and as we were leaving our neighborhood last evening to go grab dinner we stopped to ask a guy who was mowing one of the neighbors lawn if he had openings for a new client, he gave us a great price quote, invited us to his church and when I told him we just moved here two days ago and our lawn was looking scruffy he came down and mowed it for us on the spot. It feels so right being back in the south. Although in some parts of Florida native Floridians do not consider themselves southerners. But from what we are experiencing it is still very much overflowing with southern hospitality, not meant to insult anyone, but certain things we’ve experienced here you will not find in the Pacific Northwest. And until you’ve lived in both, which we have, you would not understand.
Tomorrow is more unpacking, and we are meeting up with our friends again for dinner, the friends that are also moving here in the next couple of months, so, I can’t wait to hear how their house build is coming.
We are eventually planning on putting a pool in our back yard, but until we do our patio space will be small. And we won’t have a screened porch yet, so anyone who knows me knows I do not do bugs, so after we are unpacked and settled, our next goal is to start looking for a pool contractor. We spoke with a couple a few months ago and they are all very back logged and the ones we did talk to told us it could easily be over a year to get our pool. So on our end shopping for who we will choose will be a process, but one we’d like to start on in the next couple of months. The longer we wait, the longer it will be before we have completed our home. I guess there will always be things to do, but I’m ready to start having a little fun. But I guess fun will have to wait until I can find some dishes, pots and pans, and our clothes, until then it will be all work and no play, OK, well maybe just a little play….
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