Albuquerque Trip Part 2 - househunting and gambling

OK, so I already told you about the hiking and sightseeing. Now I'll tell you about the househunting. We were supposed to be just neighborhood scouting but you know how it is, you see these houses for sale from the outside and you just have to know what they are like on the inside. On Sunday, we drove around looking for open houses. At the first open house, we met a young, eager realtor who offered to email us listings that matched what we were looking for. We told her that we wouldn't be ready to buy for almost a year, but she said that was fine, she didn't mind sending them to us anyway. We told her we were looking for at least a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house with at least a 2 car garage and a decent sized yard (something that seems to be a bit harder to find there than here) and most importantly, NO HOME OWNER'S ASSOCIATION.

We were a bit discouraged that day by what we saw since it seemed like most of the houses we saw were somewhat out of our price range. We worried that maybe the market there was too hot while the market here has been cooling and by the time we're ready to buy in a year, we wouldn't be able to afford what we thought we could. Hope that makes sense.

Anyway, she sent us some listings and we found 3 houses that seemed to be what we were looking for in the areas we were looking at. We set up an appointment with her to show us these houses. Of course, we made it clear that we weren't ready to buy and didn't want to take up too much of her time. She said it was no problem and spent an hour showing us these 3 houses. Very smart girl since we are now determined to use her as our realtor when we're ready to buy in a year. Also, my brother-in-law and his girlfriend may move out there and we'll recommend her to him as well. And if we drag my MIL and FIL out there with us kicking and screaming, they'll need a home too. Could be a 3 for 1 for her.

So we saw 3 houses and they were all just what we were looking for IN OUR PRICE RANGE!!! YAY!! Of course, I liked house #1 which was 4 bd, 3ba, 2 car garage, with a large "rec" room (would be perfect for a pool table), hot tub, sauna, and even a 400 sq ft finished basement. The kitchen was a little smaller than I would like but all the other things it had make up for it in my book. D. liked house #3 which was 4 bd, 2 ba, 3 car garage, with a large storage shed and a pool. To me the layout of the house was kinda weird and other than the yard and pool, there wasn't anything in the house itself that I liked. The yard was pretty big though and D. felt like it was in a "more desirable" neighborhood. House #2 was very nice as well, we just didn't like it as much. But it was still a perfectly fine 4bd, 2.5 ba, 3 car garage house in our price range. Anyway, we were way more encouraged after seeing these houses. Of course, we'll still be discussing(arguing about - lol) house #1 vs. house #3 for the next year or so.

We also carved out some time on our vacation (and wrangled my aunt into babysitting) to check out the casino in Albuquerque. The casino itself on the outside is very nice in a pueblo indian kind of way. Definitely not vegas. Anyway, we went in and decided to try our hand at blackjack. We sat down in the only 2 empty chairs at a $5 blackjack table, not next to each other unfortunately and of course, each of us ended up next to a smoker. YUCK!! We each started with $40. We didn't do too well. The dealer had some unbelievable luck and I lost count of how many times D. and I lost with a 19 or 20 when the dealer pulled the right card to get 21. When we were each down to $10, we decided to call it quits.
We moved over to the craps table. The table didn't seem all that hot when we got there, but I told D. to go ahead. He threw $40 on the table (plus the $20 we still had from blackjack) and got started. After he won a little bit, I asked him to put $5 on the number 9 for me. In a short time, the number 9 had been hit 3 times and I had $21 myself to start playing with(it pays $7 on a $5 bet). So I started playing too. We were doing pretty well and we have a system. Whenever we start winning, I start taking some of our chips and put them on the back row, closest to me, in the "bank". This is money that we will not touch regardless. It's what we will walk away with. We were at the craps table for about an hour having a pretty good time before the tide started to turn a bit. I told D. it was time to go. He agreed. We had put in a total of $120 between the blackjack table and the craps table and we walked out of there with $230 after tipping the dealers. Not bad for a night of fun. We walked out shaking our heads wondering why we even bother with blackjack when we never seem to get lucky there.

Anyway, the casino is just one more thing we like about Albuquerque. We wouldn't go all the time, but it's nice to go to for an evening's entertainment. I've never had a gambling problem and I don't see how I would. To me, I go in with what I can afford to spend for a night out. If I lose it, then it was the cost of entertainment. If I come out even or win, I'm thrilled. I never think I'm going to walk in there and win enough money to change my life. Some people don't understand that mindset, but it works for me.

So that was our Albuquerque trip. We went out to dinner a few times while we were there, but to be honest, it was nothing special so I won't bore you with the details. It was definitely different from Florida, but we really liked it. The mountains there are so beautiful and it's neat to watch how they change as the day goes on and the sun hits them from different angles. I'm not sure I'd ever get tired of watching it.

Last night we met D. out at the beach where he runs on Wednesday nights with a group of runners he knows. We had dinner at a little restaurant on the broadwalk overlooking the ocean. It was nice and breezy for a change and I suppose I will miss the ocean, but I think the mountains will be a nice trade off.

We're back!!!

We got back late on Saturday night thanks to Delta (worst airline ever) and their 4 hour delay. It was a very long day for all of us, so I couldn't blame the kids for a couple of minor meltdowns on planes sitting on the freaking tarmack for 40+ minutes TWICE.
Anyway, we loved Albuquerque. Everyone there kept telling us it was unusually warm and humid while we were there, but we were quite comfortable. There was only one day that the heat got to me a bit and that was because it was 97 with about 35% humidity and the b&b we stayed in did not have regular air conditioning. It had a "swamp cooler" which forces air over water and then into the house. It cools pretty well when the humidity is really low but when it's really hot and kinda humid, not so much. So we've learned that when we look for a house out there, we will look for what they call "refrigerated air" conditioning or mentally add $6,000 to the price to convert to it.
We did some typical touristy things. We drove up to Santa Fe and visited the oldest church and the oldest house in the country. We also saw a really cool spiral staircase in an old church. Legend has it that it was build by a mystery carpenter for the sisters(nuns) of the church at no charge and engineers today are still unsure how it was built since it has no visible support. Apparently it was on the Unsolved Mysteries tv show at some point. Anyway, it was a real pretty church and a cool staircase.
We also drove up to Bandelier National Monument near Los Alamos and saw the cave dwellings on the side of the cliffs there. Pueblo indians lived there like 700 years ago. N. really enjoyed climbing the ladders to get into the caves.
Most of the rest of the time we spent in Albuquerque where, of course, we had to take the tramway up to the Sandia peak. Once up there, my aunt and I decided to leave the kids and hubbies at the visitor's center and take a "small hike". We ended up hiking all the way up to the Kiwanis Cabin on one of the peaks up there (basically a 2 mile hike each way). We tried to call the guys to let them know but cell service was basically non-existent up there. By the time we returned to the visitor's center about an hour and forty-five minutes later, the guys were so worried about us that they had already sent the park rangers out looking for us. D. in particular could not imagine me hiking that far. He said he fully expected one of to be limping when/if we returned. In a way, he's right, I wouldn't normally even consider hiking that far, but it was just so beautiful up there and the weather was perfect so we just kept going. It was really fun and I look forward to going up there again, maybe even with D. and the kids.
All in all, it was a great week and pretty much cemented our plans to move out there next year. There's more to tell about our trip but I'll save it for another post/another day.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go................

OK, so my bags aren't finished packing and I am far from ready to go but I couldn't resist throwing a corny song in here. Anyway, we're leaving for Albuquerque tomorrow at noon. This is an important trip for us because it's where we are considering moving to next summer. We've never been there but we like what we've heard and read about it. Is it wierd to consider moving somewhere you've never been to??

We'll be checking it out and maybe looking at a few houses. But mostly we'll be neighborhood shopping - you know, figuring out what area we'd like to live in since you know the 3 most important things when looking at real estate are location, location, location. We'd like to find an area with good schools (although I am not opposed to private school either). Most importantly, we want to avoid gated communities and zero lot lines. We'd like to not hear our neighbors flush their toilets, thank you very much.

I hope I do alright with the altitude since Albuquerque is at about 5,000 feet and I'm a sea-level kind of gal, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I did fine when we were in Lake Tahoe in December and the condo we stayed in was at the top of a mountain at 7,500 feet so I should be alright. It will be blissful to get way from the humidity here, which generally runs about 70% on a good day, and the mosquitoes. N. in particular gets eaten alive by mosquitoes this time of year and she's allergic to them so the bites swell up tremendously. Here's a picture of her eye last year when she got a bite right next to it. It looks like someone slugged her.


So we won't miss mosquitoes at all if we move to Albuquerque.

Well, I'll be back on the 22nd. We're taking the laptop so I might be able to post while we're gone, we'll see. Meanwhile, if anyone has any suggestions of what to do or see in Albuquerque, I'd love to hear them. Thanks.

5 reasons why yesterday really sucked

1- J. was running a slight fever and was REALLY cranky all day.

2- N. waited too long to try to run to the bathroom to pee and ended up peeing all over the floor.

3 - J. can now get out of his swing all by himself. I discovered this when I put him in there to keep him out of the way so I could clean up the floor. Didn't work.

4- N. had an accident during naptime on the daybed in the playroom. (Mental note to self - get mattress cover for the daybed in the playroom).

5 - J., who has been climbing everything lately, climbed up on one of the chairs in the dining room while I was trying to cook dinner. I saw him and was telling him to get down as I was walking towards him to get him down. He started "dancing" on the chair and his foot slipped off the edge just inches before I would have grabbed him. He fell sideways/backwards off the chair onto the TILE floor. Fortunately, he had his head kinda tucked down when he landed so he hit his butt/back more than anything. So he's fine but it scared a few years off both our lives.

So, how was your day??

Where have I been???

Wow, I can't believe it's been over 2 months since I last posted. So, let's see, what have I been up to? Maybe I'll just update you on the whole family.

General family stuff:

- We finally got our roof done, just in time for this year's hurricane season. (It was damaged last year by Hurricane Wilma and it's taken this long to get it fixed). The roofers were horrible but we didn't exactly have alot of choices. We called every roofer in town and only 4 came out for estimates. SO we signed the contract with these in January and were told it would be done in April or possibly late March. To make a long story short, it finally got finished in late-June. And the roofers stole all the mangoes off of our tree and left a few eaten pits behind on the grass under the tree. Nice, huh?

- We've decided to move out of Florida because we just can't take the heat and humidity anymore, or the hurricanes, or the tourists, or the mosquitoes, or the over-development in our city and especially the crapload of money we waste on taxes and insurance every year. (Between property taxes and the 3 insurances we have to carry- homeowners, windstorm and flood - we spend close to $13,000 a year). So we're considering Albuquerque, NM since I have family there. We are going out in a couple of weeks to check it out for a week. I'll let you know how that goes.

- We have been doing some spruicing up around the house since we plan to have it on the market sometime next Spring. We've replaced some lighting in the kitchen, we're replacing the ceiling fan there also. We're putting some new lighting in the living room. We need to get someone in to clear out the backyard, flatten it out and re-sod it. We had a huge ficus tree in the backyard that went down in the hurricane and was removed but we were left with a huge gapping hole and huge ruts from the tires of the frontloader that removed the stump. It's a mess back there that we need to make presentable before we can even consider selling.

The kids stuff:

A- just turned 17 and is spending most of the summer at a camp in North Carolina. He left June 3rd and won't return until July 28th. He's taking part in a kind of "counselor in training" program at the camp that he's gone to as a camper for the past few years. It's a volunteer thing (which is good because Florida high schools require a minimum of 40 hours of volunteer work to graduate) so he isn't getting paid for it, but then again, we're not paying for him to be there either, just his flights back and forth. He's doing work projects around the camp - helping with one meal a day, cleaning 2 bathrooms a day, they've built some things, they help with general clean up and they "adopt" a cabin every 2 weeks to work with - and I think it's been very good for him. He's working hard but having fun too. But I miss him :-( For so many years, it was just me and him. It's hard to let go, but I know this is good for both of us, since he'll be going off to college in a year.

N- is still going to preschool 2 mornings a week to give me a break. She's a typical 3 year old with a typical 3 year old little attitude. She wants what she wants and can give you 20 reasons why you should give it to her. If you don't, she'll ask "why?" until you're ready to scream and then call you a "baby". Ouch, that hurts. NOT!!! Anyway, she's a good kid, just somewhat opinionated and stubborn, wonder where she gets THAT???!!

J- stays home with me all day. We're not doing mommy and me classes for the summer because the schedule didn't work out. He's getting very talkative and of course, wants to do everything his big sister does. We jokingly call him "me too" because that's what he says everytime he hears his sister ask to do something. LOL. It's very cute to watch them together and even though it hasn't been easy, I'm glad we had them this close together. (They are 19 months apart). He just had tubes put in his ears 2 weeks ago after battling ear infections and fluid for the past year. He did great and we're hoping he won't have any more infections. The 11 he had since last June are enough to last him a lifetime.

So that's my update. I'll be posting more frequently now so I hope you all haven't given up on me.