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?

Settling In - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Part 1

The last few days have been rather hectic in our house.  Not because we have had a lot of places to go, but because we've had a lot of things to do.  Don't get me wrong, we have gone out (storage lot where the camper is parked - twice, restaurant, grocery store, hardware store, and a homeschooling function).

But most of the work that we've been doing has been around the house.  We've been unpacking our stuff, making phone calls (LOTS of them), and sorting through the stuff that was already in the house.

The down side to renting a furnished house is that you find things that you would NEVER in a million years have in your house. For example, who needs 8 hammers?  What about an electric hand mixer that is missing one of it's beaters?  How about paint that no longer matches any of the colors currently in or on the house or is crusty and unusable?  And don't get me started on the child-unfriendly decorations.  I guess we shouldn't be surprised since before us, this house was rented seasonally to snow birds (meaning with no kids).

I haven't really had time to think about homeschooling except to think that I really need to get a library card.  But before I can get a library card, I need a driver's license.  Because I want to get my driver's license and my tags done at the same time, I need to get proof of insurance on our truck.  (Can you begin to see all the phone calls that I've been talking about?)

The most interesting thing about this whole process is that at one point I was thinking we might not be able to get insurance for our truck.  You see, it is one of, if not THE biggest non-commercial truck built and as such is in a category unto itself when it comes to insurance through my company.  The good news is that I have been able to confirm they can insure it (and it's not much more than when we were in VA).  The bad news was that I had to wait for them to mail me the proof of insurance because their system would not let them email it because our truck is too big.  It finally showed up today.  Not that I've gotten the contract to sign (again, they can't email it without the system being overridden because of the truck's size).

I also found out the insurance company that was insuring our camper "is not taking applications for waterside communities."  After numerous calls over multiple days, I think that I have found a company to insure it.

Being that hubby is self-employed we are also responsible for our own health insurance.  Our old policy will not cover us in Florida so I've been working on that too.  I found out today that they have lost 2 weeks time because their system said they needed additional information, but we were never contacted to get the information.  I guess it's a good thing our old insurer will give us 2 months to find a new policy down here.

Oh, and tomorrow the kids and I are driving an hour each way to attend two homeschool co-op classes.  Looks like it's going to be another long and busy day tomorrow.  Looking forward to the weekend (you know when I can't make phone calls because everything is closed).