We flew from Guatemala City to Houston and Chicago on June 6. The next two months were spent between Pat's sister's house in Milwaukee and her brother-in-law's mother's house in Butte des Morts, Wisconsin, near Oshkosh. Much of the time was occupied with routine medical care, and Pat had carpal tunnel release surgery (getting old is not for sissies!). In mid-August, we flew to Seattle, to spend two weeks with another of Pat's sisters. We toured the Space Needle, the Ballard Locks, and downtown Seattle one day, including the fish market. Other days were spent taking ferry rides to various islands in Puget Sound, and visiting Mount St Helens and the S. W. Washington Fair. The highlight of the trip (at least for Pat) were visits from her sister in Milwaukee, her sister from Orange County, CA, and her niece from Hollywood, CA. Bill and her brother-in-law, Irv were bombarded by constant women talking! We all went to Vashon Island one day for a barbecue with Pat's nephew and his family, who live there. During our last few days there, we went to the cabin near Hoodsport and hiked some in Olympic National Park.
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Irv &Nancy (Lunch at Port Townsend) |
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| Pat with her sisters in Seattle |
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| World Famous Fish Market |
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| The Locks |
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| Mt. St. Hellens |
Bill had been researching real estate during the summer and found some interesting properties in N.W. Florida. So, late in august, we headed south in the car, stopping in northern Indiana to visit Nancy and Steve, who have visited us twice on our boat in the western Caribbean. We rented a condo at Tidelands in Palm Coast, Florida to see how we would like living in that area. We fell in love with it and decided to try for one of the condos that was in foreclosure. While we were there, Pat's stepson and his family from Atlanta came down to spend a week with us. We had fun doing "grandparenting" things, like lots of pool time, visiting the beach and spending a day at SeaWorld. Bill spent a lot of time researching foreclosures and going to auctions at the courthouse. We stayed through October to try for the condo we liked, but that fell through, so we headed back up to Wisconsin, with our sites on another foreclosure coming up in December.
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| Curtis with the kids |
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| Rebecca with the kids |
November was spent in Butte des Morts, where we decided to put a new engine in our trusty old Lexus. (You know us boaters--always thinking of "re-powering.") We enjoyed Thanksgiving with the Wisconsin family and even did a little shopping for the condo (which we did not own) at the worlds greatest hardware store (located in Butte De Morte, Wi). As winter was beginning to set in, we packed up everything that we had been storing in Pat's sister's basement for the past ten years and hauled it to Atlanta in a little trailer behind the car.
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| Pat with friend at the Hardware Store |
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| Early winter view from the house at Butte De Mortte |
We visited the kids again, added things stored in their basement to our trailer, and headed back to Palm Coast. We attended the auction at the courthouse on Dec. 7 and won the bid on our "dream" condo. After waiting the requisite ten days (actually twelve due to the weekend,) we were granted the deed to our condo.
We had not been able to get into the condo before the auction, but it was the exact lay-out of the one we had rented, and we could peek through cracks in the blinds, so knew it was in decent condition. It had been vacant for almost two years, so when we finally got in, there was some slight mold and dust, but otherwise, it was in good shape. We spent the next week scrubbing everything from top to bottom. Having no furniture, we brought an inflatable bed and bought a patio table and chairs at the Salvation Army, so kind of "camped out" at first in the condo. We were able to get some more furniture on Craig's list, so are partway through with furnishing the condo. We spent Christmas and New Year's getting acquainted with some of our new neighbors and the surrounding area.
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| Front of our new condo |
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| ICW side of our condo |
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| Kitchen & Dining Room as seen from the Living Room |
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| View of ICW from our living room |
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| Furniture form Craigslist |
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| Pat's Christmas Present |
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| Another Christmas Present for Pat |
On January 15, we put the car and codo in storage mode and flew from Orlando to Houston and then back to Guatemala and the boat.
