Author: Phil

In the house since November 2021 and it’s feeling like home.  We’ve made the decision to change a few other things and we are waiting for the contractor to add the sunroom.  All the windows and material for the sunroom have arrived so the plan is to add the room in January and February.  Fingers crossed for a fast completion.  We just need good weather.

Carey has been unpacking and sorting all that Allied Movers dumped on us from the Florida home.  Down-sizing is never fast nor fun, but it’s getting done.

We packed up and traveled to Virginia Beach, VA for Christmas, visiting Karen for several days, one of Carey’s college roommates.  It was a great time and we really enjoyed visiting Karen and Virginia Beach.  During the stay, Carey and I drove by the first home I every bought, back in 1974.  It is located in Norfolk, VA and as you can see below, still looking pretty good.  I’ll just bet it cost a bit more now than the $30,000 I paid for it in ’74.

After Christmas and returning home we traveled to Annapolis to visit the grandkids for our family Christmas celebration.  It has been fairly quiet for January.  We are waiting for the weather to allow the contractor to put the sunroom on the house. It appears we may be in for a wait as we’ve had several snow events.  Even now, the 2nd of February, I’m looking at some melting snow and listening to the weatherman forecast snow coming the day after tomorrow.

 

This was a busy time.  We’re on the boat and anxious to get into our new home (new for us).  The contractors are working to complete the remodeling that includes new paint inside and out, new floors, central air conditioning, and as mentioned before a new trey ceiling in the living room and removal of a chimney, plus updating the kitchen with new cabinets.  That work was completed before the 13th of November and the furniture arrived — yes, you guessed it, more furniture than space.  We moved some of it to the storage locker we rented and placed the other as possible.  We have contracted for a new sunroom to be added but that will be done in December after the windows we ordered for the room arrive.   And the good news is that we are in the house now (17 Nov) and it is great!

Carey is busy unpacking a bunch of boxes and arranging the furniture.  It’s a lot for her but she is doing a super job.  We are also enjoying the town — we made the right decision to come back — and the short distance to get to the grandkids.  It feels like we’ve never left.  We’re home.

We are also busy connecting with our new doctors and dentists and setting up all the new associations we need to live comfortably here.  It’s good.

We spent Thanksgiving with our daughter Lauren and her family.  Loving it.

We still have our 37 foot Maxum and it is now winterized and ready for the cold weather it has never seen before.  We’ll decide what to do with it in the the Spring.  The boat is just 3 blocks away at The Boat House Marina owned and run by our friend Bill Bowman.  I should have taken more pictures and recorded all the things we’ve done during these two months, but it was just too much fun doing them that we’ll have to use our memory for this time.

We’re now in December and getting close to settling in, and we’re hoping for a great 2022!  Here are a few pictures.

I’m behind keeping track of our activities; need to do better.  After renting and moving into the cottage on Monroe Bay in Colonial Beach to watch our newly purchased home be remodeled we discovered the activity level much higher than when in Florida.

The old home owners moved out on 10 Sep and we started our remodeling effort that included: removing an old unused chimney, installing a tray ceiling in the living room, replacing all kitchen cabinets, installing central air, replacing several major windows, replacing the entire house flooring, painting the entire inside of the home, and adding a sunroom onto the living room, as well as cleaning up the outside and adding a fence for Maddie in the back yard.  The work is planned to complete the end of October except for the sunroom that will complete sometime during November when the windows we ordered finally arrive.

As we watched and monitored the home repair work we reversed an earlier decision about selling the boat.  We decided to keep the 37′ Maxum for a while and see how it works for us with our new game plan.  An old friend, Bill Bowman and I traveled to Beafort, NC 19 September and picked up the boat.  That evening we made it to Oriental, NC, the next two days we made 100 miles per day stopping first at Alligator River Marina, then Norfolk, VA.  We had some 4 foot seas out of Oriental for a few hours and then great weather the rest of the trip into Norfolk.  The Chesapeake was making a fuss so we left the boat at Blue Water Marina in Hampton VA and traveled to CB by car.  Carey, Maddie, and I drove down to Hampton early October 2 and  brought the boat up the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River for the last 120 miles to Colonial Beach.  Both trips were great.

Over this same period we also started enjoying Colonial Beach again.  We renewed our acquaintance with the Riverboat and “Rocking Roger” a one man band that has played in town more many years.  We attended the annual Beach Music Concert at the Town Stage.  We joined in again with the Westmoreland Yacht Club at their yearly Pig Roast, and really enjoyed seeing some old friends at the event, many we now see daily in town.  And the old restaurants are as great as ever.

We also got back into crab eating at the Demoncratic Crab Fest and Fund Raiser at the end of September.

While enjoying these activities we did manage to get one of our cars sold, buy a golf cart, as this is a golf cart driving town, and hook back up with our family doctor.

We’ve just now moved onto the boat as it is here and it makes a nice waterside cottage for us to use until we can move into our newly remodeled home 30 October 2021 (we sure hope that’s the date!).  The one disappointment over this period was that we had to cancel a planned trip to Carey’s high school reunion.  I was informed I was in contact with a person with COVID so it was prudent for me to get the test and quarantine and that time coincided with the reunion.  All ended well.  No Covid here.

Here are a few pictures … forgot to take them at most of the events.

This was a busy period for us.  Using the rental car we visited Colonial Beach, VA and Annapolis, MD where Lauren, Cynthia, and the grandkids live.  Colonial Beach has become more active.  We fell in love again with the activity and friends we have there and decided we were going to buy a place so we could enjoy this quaint town at least part of each year.  One of the draws to the town is its closeness to the grandkids and we spent almost a week in Annapolis watching two of the countries next best baseball players develop their skills.

As we ended May we drove to Beaufort, NC and placed Apolonia on the market with Blue Water Yacht Sales.  Let’s hope she sells soon.  We removed all our personal gear from the boat, loaded it in a rental truck and headed back to Florida.  As we traveled we talked and finally decided to sell our home in Port Saint Lucie and buy a full time place in Colonial Beach.  Next came a whirl wind of activity as we placed the home in Florida on the market, sold it in 3 days, and then Carey forged ahead packing all our gear.  A couple of trips back up to Colonial Beach finally produced a home we liked and bought.  Let the time simply fly by and we closed on the sale of the Florida home 10 August and the purchase of the Colonial Beach home 13 August.  We finally packed a 6X12 foot UHaul with things we’d need until our home is ready for us.  Allied movers took the rest of the goods to storage.

The household goods had to go into storage as the sellers of the Colonial Beach home needed to rent back until 10 Sep for their next place to be ready.  We needed the time to get to Colonial Beach and hire a few contractors to make some upgrades to the home before we moved in.

We found a cottage to rent near our “new” home and we are using it as a home base as we visit some friends and attend attend Carey’s high school reunion.  It’s now the 25th of August and we hope to have all the upgrades complete by the beginning of October.

We’re already sure we made the right decision to move back to Virginia.  We’re loving it.

Decisions made and we’re moving out to execute.  The boat will be sold from Beaufort, NC.  We just have to pick a broker.  It was fun being on the water coming up here, but coming on the new Apolonia, well — she’s not the boat for us.  Too small inside and unsafe to work the bow for line handling.  No problem, decision made.  The weather also gave us a concern, with the Neuse River being an ugly passage for the last 3 days and possibly 2 more, so to make the visits we’ve planned for May we decided to drive to Colonial Beach and Annapolis in a rental car.  Got us a solid black Dodge Charger — I feel like a teenager!

This morning I called Enterprise to verify the rental car had a full fuel tank.  Well, not so fast.  We had to take the car with its 1/4 tank, not enough to make Colonial Beach and the service stations were out of gas in Beaufort.  A call to the Dock Master at our marina confirmed they had fuel, but they could only fill boats and jerry cans.  Off to your friendly ACE hardware and I had a 5 gallon jerry can.  Five trips from the marina pumps to the car and we’re full with a 490 mile range that will easily take us to Colonial Beach, 325 miles away.

This is getting to be fun.

Since we are stopping the boat trip and shifting to a car we’ll stop the daily blog update.  We only update this blog occasionally outside of boating, usually monthly.  Hope those that followed us enjoyed the musings.  Hope to see you all soon. And, sadly, Peggy and Diane, the bar chairs are staying stacked on the boat.  They made it to Beaufort, but we can’t tote them in a car.  We’ll get them to Peggy’s Pier on the next trip.  Determined to make our contribution.  Will call when we get there and settled.  Anxious to see you guys.  And, the Blunts, too.