Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Casa Bella North


It has been an eventful summer at Casa Bella North (Michigan summer residence), but now, as you can see below, winter is here - earlier than desirable!


One of the summer events was taking the momentous decision to put our Michigan house up for sale. This happened when we learned that a lovely condo was available before it was formally put on the market. After some quick thinking, we decided to go for it, largely because it has a terrific, large studio for Linda and will be somewhat less costly and burdensome to maintain while we are in Mexico. It also has a large sunroom with a 270 degree view of some woodlands.



It's not as dramatic as our current home, but it's very comfortable, and has plenty of room for our children, grandchildren and guests (hint, hint). Obviously, we're not quite ready to cut all our ties with the USA.

We spent a month preparing to sell the house - some repairs, repainting, etc. - and mostly trying to declutter it. Fortunately, the owner of the condo gave us permission to store our possessions, so we were able to avoid putting things into a storage facility.

It's been on the market for three months, and no offers yet, but our fingers our crossed. In the meantime, we are the proud owners of three homes!

This past Sunday we had a fundraiser for my project to build a computing center in a small village outside of San Miguel (see previous post, as well as others). Bagels and Margaritas were served (the Margaritas were designed to lubricate the checkbooks!). Several dozen friends and family members attended, and we raised several thousand dollars, which will go a long way towards completing the project. More to follow after our arrival in San Miguel.

Last weekend was also a "big" birthday for Linda, and we celebrated with family and friends. Tracey and her daughter Kaiya flew in from California. Her husband couldn't join us because of new job responsibilities.



Lisa, Tracey, Lilah, Hannah and Kaiya made Linda breakfast in bed for her birthday!










The three first cousins had a great time together, dancing and making art projects with Nannie.










The prior weekend we visited David, Jen and Jonah in New York. David just started a new job as a Marketing Manager at Design Within Reach, a high end furniture store with branches around the US. Jonah, now nearing 2 1/2, was very happy to see his Nannie and Poppa. And we were pretty happy too!




We are busy packing up for both the move and our winter migration to San Miguel.

Stay tuned!