Next Stop - Texas!

After we left San Antonio, we moved onto our next home, also in Texas. It was a bittersweet move as the three children and I moved into temporary living quarters on base at Laughlin AFB, and Todd had to stay behind in San Antonio to complete his training. When we arrived in San Antonio we had come here to try and find a home to buy but as there weren't any that 'took our fancy', we decided to build instead.

The whole process was made so much easier by our real estate agent/builder - Don Ellis. What a truly wonderful man he is. He had the patience to answer all of my questions throughout the building process, and even after we had moved into our new house (which was a VERY long and drawn out process because of the military) he was there at the drop of a hat with all of the answers!! It was an amazing process seeing it built from scratch. Getting to choose everything from the taps to the colours! And every step of the way Don was patient and very informative ... and helpful!

Here are some photos of our new home from the beginning to the just-about-finished. We still have to get the landscaping done and that will have to wait just a bit longer. It's wonderful to be in our new home though - the children are so much more settled. Timothy is enjoying his new school which is within walking distance away!

I still find it hard to believe that I can see a mexican city from my bedroom window ... in Montana we were 2 hours from Canada, now we're 10 minutes from Mexico!!

This is the bare section that was purchased for our house to be built on.

This is the now-not-so-bare-section. With the initial stages of the foundation having been laid. It was an exciting time - but we were still in San Antonio at this stage, so we didn't get to see much of it happening.

A friend of ours who lives just up the road took this photo for us so that we could see how the building was progressing. Since the last time we had seen it was the previous photo, it looked like it was coming along rather well!

By the time that the children and I had moved here to live, this was where the building 'was at'. It was really exciting coming in and seeing everything that was happening. Every day would bring fresh changes - and challenges!

Todd made it over every now and then to take a look at the progress. The other way he kept up was with the photos I would email him on a regular basis. Here they've put the 'black paper stuff' (note my usage of technical jargon) on the exterior and were just about to lay the concrete.

This is the same part of the interior as the photo above - except it now has walls so you can see the definition starting to show! Thank goodness I didn't feel the need to come in and clean up after the workers had been here every day!

Okay - so here the black stuff was being covered with the 'adobe' stuff. And the concrete had been laid. At least we'll be able to drive the cars into the garage now!

Same spot for the interior shot - only now we've got a bit of colour on the walls, light and electrical sockets and what I call 'kickboards' - comes from all of those years frequenting pubs and bars I suppose!

I just happened to be there when the first of the tiles were being laid ... I was really starting to get excited about moving in at this point. However, that wasn't to be so straight forward as we thought initially. Nevertheless, seeing the tiles go down was another exciting time in the building of our first brand-new home together!

And the tiles are down ... the photo is taken looking from the living room (back wall of home) into the kitchen (on left) and the living room-entrance (on right)

My kitchen being put together! On the original floor plan the kitchen was a lot smaller, so we asked if the kitchen could be expanded. Of course Don being the wonderfully helpful man that he was, did it without complaint and a smile on his face. It ended up being an extra 100 sq ft in the end ... and I only JUST have enough space for all of my kitchen crap!!

The outside - with the colours we chose. We didn't realise the main colour was going to be quite so ... white ... but it doesn't look too bad!

The finished product - from the same spot the other interior shots were taken. This was about three weeks after we moved in so there was still things to be moved and found places for, but we were so very happy to be in our new home finally! It had been six months from when we moved from Maryland to when we moved into our new home so it was lovely to see all of our furniture and belongings again!


And this is the living room - dining - kitchen in the background ... complete with kid's toys that they were delighted to have around them again!