Here is the link to this listing on the Homeaway website for pricing, more photos, and additional details. Once we are in the house, we’ll post additional photos.
We don’t miss the snow, the cold, the erratic weather in summers, the power outages from storms, the mosquitoes, or the traffic. We don’t miss house maintenance; snow blowing, house cleaning, window washing, or leaky basements.
Tom doesn’t miss pulling out all of the heavy lawn furniture from the garage in the spring or putting it back in the fall or hauling the dock into the lake in the spring and taking it out in the fall or, constantly making repairs (he was diligent and an expert at all of this).
We don’t miss cable TV problems, huge heating and electric bills (we pay no utilities in vacation homes), enormous property taxes, or paying over $500 a month for a car, house and umbrella insurance. We don’t miss car payments, maintenance, and gasoline expenses. Nope. None of that.
Panoramic view from the living room.
Here’s the link to this listing on the Homeaway website for pricing, more photos, and additional details on this house that we booked over a year ago. Once we are situated in the houses, we’ll post additional photos
Surprisingly, I don’t miss the endless cooking for entertaining guests; the hours of shopping, the hours standing in the kitchen, a menu in hand while cooking often printed on pretty paper to be placed at each guest’s elaborate place setting, for a multi-course gourmet meal, at the time lovingly prepared, now so far from my reality that it’s all but a distant memory. Nope. None of that either.
We miss the people. Period. The people. Our family. Our friends. We chose missing them to be free of angst or sorrow, instead, a simple fact, a warm memory of their faces, their laughs, their smiles.
In December 2014, a mere one year, one month, and 28 days from today we’ll see our grown kids, their spouses, and our grandchildren once again. Comparing it to the period we’ve been gone from Minnesota (it will be 1 year, in 9 days from today), it will be here in no time at all.
But, when we think of all we’ve done in the past year, the countries we’ve visited, the places we’ve lived, the sites we’ve seen, the 8 cruises we’ve taken, and the people we’ve met, it seems much longer.
With the size of our group, 13 of them, we decided that we needed to rent 2 houses, not one. Coincidentally, (similar to our safari good luck) we found 2 houses next door to one another, one we’d booked over a year ago and the other on the day we left for safari on October 5, 2013, paying the deposit, wrapping up the details. The luck of finding this scenario of 2 separately owned houses, directly next door to one another, is uncanny.
Over a year ago, we shared the photos of the first house we’ve booked. As time moved on and more and more of our family members were able to arrange time off work during Christmas 2014, we came to the conclusion that one house wouldn’t be big enough.
A month ago, after they all discovered they could in fact come to Hawaii, the search began. Go figure. We stumbled on the house next door, available during that same two week period. Tom and I and a few of the adults will be in one house, the remainder in the other house. It will all work.
Covering the expense of airfare, one car, and groceries on one house had been an expense we’d entered into our budget long ago. Now, the budget has been revised for the 2nd house, the 2nd car, and the added groceries. The kids will cover their own baggage fees, activities, excursions, sightseeing, and dining out costs. It will work out well for all of us.
Today, for comparison purposes, we’re including photos of both houses, including an aerial view of both.
As it turns out, our cruise from Vancouver to Hawaii arrives in Honolulu on October 5, 2014, less than a year from now, where we plan to stay for no less than one week in order to visit the local sites including Pearl Harbor.
On December 1, 2014, we’ll be moving into the 1st of the 2 houses. We have yet to book the week in Honolulu or the remaining 50 days between finishing up the week in Honolulu and moving into the Big Island house on our own.
With each of our own WiFi devices up and running with no less than 25 gigs of remaining data until we need to purchase more, we have the necessary data to begin searching for that time period. “Searching” uses tons of data due to the tremendous number of photos popping up on the various vacation rental websites.
Also, having completed the time-intensive process of logging and posting all of our safari photos and stories we now have more available time to begin the search. We’re almost ready to begin.
Sure, we don’t have maintenance, snow blowing, yard work, or window washing. But all of that has been replaced by a litany of responsibilities for constantly logging our expenses, budgeting for the future, booking for the future, searching, searching and more searching.
The difference? We like searching for more than blowing snow and washing windows and, more than anything, we love living in other people’s houses all over the world.