January 13--Feb. 19, 2011

Buying a new house when you are out of the country was a new experience for us, but fortunately our real estate agent Craig Smith with Buetler and Associates in Coeur d'Alene did a great job.  We started out looking at lakefront houses but didn't find any we liked in our price range.  We finally found this house in Hayden, which is six miles north of Coeur d'Alene up Hwy 95 over near Hayden, Lake.  It was a bank repo that was built in 2005.  The top two floors were finished and were finished in really excellent quality.  The walkout basement has three rooms that are about 80% finished just needing interior doors, wood door/window trim, flooring and window treatment.  We will need to install a wet bar and a bathroom fixtures and do some wallboard work in a few other areas.  We will have room for visitors, especially those with carpentry, decorating and painting skills.  So anybody who will work for room and board come on up.  The house has a fantastic waterfall/pond in the back yard as well as being on a small  creek.  We later found out that the local whitetail deer herd, uses this greenbelt as their daily migration route.  I might have to take up bow hunting, to fill our freezer.  One other thing that really struck our fancy on the house was the kitchen.  Hard to get used to using that term but this is no galley.  Betsy and Hank have tons of room in the kitchen and will not be stepping all over each other while they do their cooking.  We hope to start up a new Valentines tradition in our new neighborhood. 

This may have been the busiest five weeks we have spent lately in many years.  It was a whirlwind trip we flew from Roatan into Seattle and stayed with our daughter for a few days, until the day before the house was to close.  We drove both cars, packed full of our stuff that had accumulated at Jen's house, over to Coeur d’Alene.  Jen was happy to get her place back.  We were really grateful that she put up with her wandering parents these last 4 1/2 years.  We were concerned about getting over the Snoqualmie pass as one of our cars is not 4WD and this was after all in the dead of winter.  Luck was with us and it only rained.  We got a motel room for a few days as we wanted to go through the house one more time making sure that nothing had changed over the winter.  The next day we signed the papers and then the house was ours. What did we get ourselves into?? We moved out of our motel and went to camp out in the house until we needed to drive to Auburn to get everything ready for the moving company.   

We then drove down to Auburn with an overnight stop at our friends Craig and Ruth in Roseburg, OR and were on the road early the next day.  Our friends in Auburn, James and Catherine offered to let us stay at our house for the three nights we would be in town.   We had had our household goods in storage unit for almost 5 years. This picture does not do it justice, this unit was 35' deep.  There was a smaller one across the isle with our garage/barn stuff in it.  We really didn't get a chance to "downsize" our stuff when we moved out of our Auburn house.  Oh well the Auburn Goodwill's loss will be the Hayden Goodwill's gain!!  We tried to organize the stuff and prepared for the moving company that was coming on Tuesday.  We got a U-Haul truck to take many things to the Goodwill or the dump.  The Movers arrived and they were fantastic in loading their truck.  We thought it would take just a few hours but it took the majority of the day.  We knew that we would be meeting the truck back up in Idaho in three days.  That left us a few days to make sure the storage units were clean, check out with our bank, and drive back to Idaho.  Wow, were we flying!! We were a bit stressed as driving in the mountain northwest this time of the year can be iffy due to winter conditions but alas all went smoothly. 

The moving van arrived on Friday afternoon and unloaded all the garage and barn items.  They returned the next day with two other local helpers to put all the furniture and boxes in the correct rooms.  They were lucky they were able to back up to the front door and put the ramp from the truck right on the front step.  Much less dirt to track into the house.  We thought this would be an all day affair but we were finished by lunchtime.  We had prepared some frozen pizzas so they stayed around for a little lunch before heading out.  The driver wanted to get back to Auburn while there was no snow on the ground.   We ate left over pizza for dinner that night and after opening several boxes in the kitchen finally fell asleep on our blow up mattress.  We had purchased a new mattress in town and we had no problem sleeping on the blow up until the following Tuesday when a new mattress would be delivered. 

My sister flew in to Spokane the following day to help me unpack.  We were not sure where we were going to be able to find places for all the boxes in the kitchen, but Betsy and Marge worked it out.  It was great to see her and we were excited to show her the house.  As soon as we had done the tour she started helping open things in the kitchen.  We loaded the dishwasher but found that even though it had worked once, it would not go through a cycle again.  We made a list to call the repairman for we needed someone to look at the refrigerator too.  After dinner, we went to bed early, and upon waking in the morning I found that my sister had a bad sore throat.  Off to the Urgent Care Center we went where the doctor diagnosed “strep throat.”  Luckily we had not put the doctor visit off and tried to cure her with over the counter meds.  So my sister helped some but mainly rested for the week that she was there. 

After Marge flew home on the following Sunday we were scheduled to leave on Wednesday, whoever came up with that planning was crazy!  It was not enough time to get everything done, so we called the airlines and extended our trip one week.  Note: Buy United/Continental stock as I'm sure their bottom line will improve for the amount they gouged us.   Hank had purchases a snow blower to make sure that the drive way was clear when the movers came.  Of course it was not needed for the van but we know that we will get plenty of use out of it this next winter. In the meantime we contacted a security company and had a security system installed in the house, had a mattress delivered and returned, and met all our neighbors.  Finally it was time to winterize the house again and get back to Seattle where we would fly out to Roatan.  The time back to the states had been very hectic but we felt that we had accomplished a great deal.  Now we had a house that was put together enough that it felt like home, we didn’t have two storage units anymore and we made plans for our boat adventures and our house time too.   We know that we are living on a white tail deer path so it will be a challenge to grow any roses or tomatoes.  All those little problems will be part of our land adventure when we return in June or July. 

We took a very late flight from Seattle to Texas, had a several hour layover before again boarding a Continental Flight to Roatan.  After clearing customs, immigration and getting our luggage it was about 2:30 PM as we were riding the Fantasy Island bus back to the marina.  It had been a long two days of travel with little sleep so the first thing Betsy did was take a nap.  In fact we slept most of Sunday, catching up on lost sleep and recharging our batteries.