Settling In - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Part 3

We have been in Port Charlotte for a week now and guess what?  We are now officially Florida residents!  Today we were able to get our driver's licenses and transfer titles and tags over for the truck and trailers and request our voting registration cards.  We even went to the bank and got a safety deposit box.  The only thing left to do to make me feel more "local" is to get our library cards, which I plan on doing tomorrow.  Yeah!

Being that this will be the last "settling in" post I do, I figured it was time to share some of my thoughts about the house and the area.

I'm loving the inside of the house.  I love the layout, the furniture, and mostly I love that I have a dishwasher and a washer and dryer that I don't have to use quarters to use.  I've also been able to bake using full size pans.  Yippy!  My only complaint about the house is the landscaping.  There is actually too much of it.  The area I was hoping to plant a garden is covered by a trellis with flowering plants on it (and lots of bees), so now I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to have a garden.

Front of the house

Living / dining room

Kitchen

We've been able to use the pool a couple of times already and it's a wonderful thing.  I have always loved to swim so this is a dream come true for me.  It doesn't hurt that it's a great way to have fun with the kids (as well as wear them out). 

And the view from the back of the house is almost as good as you can get (better would be directly over a beach rather than across a canal at the back of other houses).  Here is a picture of a sunset I saw the other night.

We've also done some exploring around the area.  We've found that just about every store and restaurant I could possibly want are within a 10 minute drive.  There are a few exceptions, but I'm pretty sure I will be able to survive.  Now all I need is a babysitter, so we can go out to dinner and a movie (did I mention there is a movie theater in town as well?)

Why exactly did we wait so long to move South?