I know I put up an image like this yesterday, but I went out onto the deck and decided to take another that was zoomed in a little more. We are VERY much looking forward to moving up there. We just got notice from the kids about when they will arrive for Thanksgiving and we are very excited to both see them and show them the improvements to our new places!
You can see the house we are remodeling up on the hill from our apartments in San Pedro, but just barely. Tío Lauro took this picture this afternoon. We have such a great view from where the picture was taken, we are excited to get move up there to an even better view. Tío Lynn is, little-by-little transitioning from the work here on the apartments to work on the the house on the hill. Lorena and I have not been up there for a few weeks, but hope to run up there to see the progress.
Still marveling at what a great place we have to throw a party. We are rapidly getting to the point where the place will be finished other than for regular maintenance and then we will move out and put the whole thing up for sale. We are hoping to have at least a minimal setup for having dinners in an area with a view by the time the kids get here for Christmas, but we are not sure we will make it.
Tío Lauro came over to the apartment last night so Conchita, Lorena, Lynn, and I could celebrate his birthday with him. We (again) cooked up a boatload of chuletón, ate way too much, sang La Mañanitas, and ate birthday cake. The apartment is perfect for entertaining small crowds inside and much larger groups out on the azotea. We are very grateful to be here now with people of such good will. We hope to do this as often as we can. Lauro is programmed to come spend the day with us next Saturday. I am hoping to take him up the hill to the remodel so we can see what progress has been made.
We are kind of amazed about this. My sense is that this is not a common turn of events.
Lorena and I decided to walk from you apartment up to the house on the hill and found that it is quite a steep walk. I have decided I am going to do that every day for a couple weeks, then gradually work myself up to further walks. If I can get through the pain of not having walked on any serious inclines for years, it will be a great way to get into shape and, hopefully, stay there. The views up there are amazing and only getting better with the work Lynn is doing to make the house more open with more views from more floors. The picture below is of the new picture window in the first floor living room/office.
This is the view from the apartment’s azotea looking toward the Huasteca this morning. If you turn about 60 degrees and look up the hill on the other side of the valley, you can see the house Lynn is remodeling where we hope to be living within the next 4-5 months. The four window balcony is very distinct.
This is the view out the front window (over the kitchen sink) on the side of the house opposite the beautiful valley behind the house. It is amazingly quiet compared to many similar neighborhoods we have been visited throughout Mexico, but in the evening there are lots of people around with kids playing football (soccer) and other games on the street and sidewalks. The smell of Mexican food cooking and the sound of Latin music of a million varieties are ubiquitous. We are truly enjoying it, but realize that the street that runs by our house up the hill is significantly less active. I am enjoying the non-quiet for now.
The running like crazy has now slowed down to the running like mildly neurotic. We are very happy to be ensconced in our apartment where we can see this (and a much broader view) ourselves rather than through pictures sent to us. I took this picture Sunday morning in 75 degree weather with a light, cool breeze blowing. We are still getting set up and, after seeing everything, have changed our plans about what we want to do with the Mexico properties. We absolutely are going to love living here.
All our worldly goods are not safely in short term storage while we wait for our hose to be built in Granbury, Texas. The house is empty, so Lorena and I are spending the night in sleeping bags on the floor for one more night after which we will drop off a few things at our builder’s office (Coker & Company) before our favorite airport shuttle driver picks us up to catch a plane to Monterrey. If every thing works as plan and God is willing, Lorena’s brother Lynn will pick us up tomorrow night and install us in our apartment where we hope to stay for the next four to five months until our house on the hill, five blocks above the apartments is currently being renovated. Stay tuned for pictures!!!
The packers came to get everything in the house ready to move. There are three guys and the hope to be out of the house in 3-4 hours. Lorena has been a real champion in preparing and organizing everything so it will be a fairly easy job for the packers to make everything move ready. We got a bunch of snacks, water, and protein drinks for the works and plan to do it again tomorrow. I think we might run down and get some KFC to bring back to the house for tonight because we really do not have any way to prepare food in the house. I cannot believe we are only two and a half days from flying to Mexico. We can hardly wait.
Lynn sent me some images of the area around our house in San Pedro this weekend. There has been some much ran there, that the park that is about a block away from our house and they mountain in front of our house where there are no other houses look like they could be in Oregon. It is all very green and overcast. We cannot wait to get down there and experience it in real life.
The first floor window on the valley side of the house up on the hill is taking shape. The whole first floor was dark before the window was punched in–it completely changed the atmosphere of that floor. We were supposed to live there when we move to Mexico in August, but it won’t be complete for a couple more months so we are going to live in one of the apartments in our building halfway down the hill until this house is more complete. Probably it does not make sense to move in up there until one or two more large projects are completed that will create a lot of noise and dust. We hope that happens by November this year so we can celebrate Thanksgiving there, but we think there is about a 50/50 chance of that happening.
The plan is to live one floor up from where this window is located when the house is fully complete. It has an even more amazing view with a balcony. Above the floor with the balcony Lynn plans to build a roofed entertainment area with a kitchen, bathrooms, and other facilities.
We made the hard decision to move into one of the units in the apartment building rather than the first floor of the house up on the hill. We would just get in the way up on the hill and the apartments are completed and ready for move in. We need a place to live in Mexico until this time next year and there is some chance the house on the hill will be ready for occupation before we live, but we thing there is an over 50% chance we will not get to move into that house until a year from this fall. Even then, it might not be complete. We can hardly believe it but, God willing, we will be living in Mexico by this time in six weeks.
We got a text from our real estate agent that said the people who want to buy our house have made an offer that is acceptable to all parties. We were supposed to get to get a document to sign last night, but it has not arrived close to a day later. I kind of understand because our agent is on vacation in Costa Rica. At the same time, Lorena and I have a finite amount of time to get everything done: 1) travel for work, 2) handle finances for address changes in the US and Mexico, 3) move out of the house into storage, and 4) make the final design changes for the new house before we leave. We are really hoping this thing is complete before the weekend, but our agent is completely out of contact.
Yesterday we received notice that a couple liked both our house (Lorena is the queen of staging houses for sale) and the price and plan to make us an offer today after figuring out some financing options. It that happens, then the clock starts ticking on a move to the house in the picture in Mexico. Lorena’s brother, Tío Lynn says he will have the first floor of the house turned into an apartment with an operational kitchen, bathroom, and office with broadband internet by the time we get there. We were told we will have 4-6 weeks from the time we accept the offer. In that time, we have to pack up and move everything into storage, fill the car up with the essentials I will need to do my job, set up our new address at the property where the house will be built, God willing, and figure out how to manage finances from our place in Mexico.
Lynn rented the first apartment today in our San Pedro renovation building. The tenants are scheduled to move in on June 23. We hope to have the whole thing filled up by mid-July, but who knows. Hopefully, it will not be too long after that before we can sell it and move on to the next project.
Lynn sent this picture of the upper azotea of the first house we bought in Mexico. The mountains are the same ones we can see from the front of the house we bought further up the hill, but the view of these mountains (Cerro de Las Mitras) is really better from the lower house because you can see more of them and at a little bit of a distance. Both views looking at the valley and the mountains on the other side of the house are pretty spectacular. Honestly, I am somewhat surprised at how nice this all turned out. The only work left on Casa #1 is clean up and a few minor details. Hopefully, it will sell soon and we can start again.
We found out today that the grandfather of Omar, one of our most dear friends in Mexico fought in the Mexican revolution as a Carrancista. If you do not know what that is, it is okay. You can read a little about it here. He enlisted in the forces of Pancho Villa (not a nice man) when he was very young–maybe just a boy. That war was brutal. My thesis adviser for my Masters degree at University of Texas at El Paso told me that one out of every five people in Mexico lost their life during the war. I am not sure that is true and there is not a consensus on how many actually did, but there is a consensus on the fact that a LOT of people died. The sad part is that is that the influenza epidemic of 1918 took even more people. We are looking forward to the next time we can get together with Omar to ask him about all this.
Lynn sent us a ton of great pictures of the final touches being applied to the basement apartment. He has been showing the apartments to potential buyers for a couple of weeks, but this is Semana Santa, so there is hardly anyone in Mexico who could be a potential buyer who is not on vacation. The good news, though, is his whole team has moved up the hill to double the effort on our house there.
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