Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Less than Two Weeks...

In less than two weeks we will be doing what I thought I would never be doing ever again.... building our home, again.
Two Months ago, we had picked a home. Nice one, but after some questions rose up with the builder, location and over all value, we decided to back out of that home and look around some more.
Builders in the area are hurting right now with the tax credit out there, all the buyers are quickly going for the existing homes in order to close before the credit goes away. SO, needless to say we are getting a heck of a deal on a beautiful lot.

It is like a dream come true. On Frontier Drive, Deer and other wildlife in abundance will be in our back yard. The lot is almost as big as out last home, just under a half acre, and a hundred acres of trees and wilderness owned by one man that lives a bit behind us.
We love to go to the lot and just stand there. Nothing is there right now, but soon they will be kicking us off the land to make way for our home.

Our kids will get their own bedrooms, which is what they wanted. There seems to be a TON of kids in the neighborhood, hopefully we can make some new friends quickly. We will live just a short ride/ walk from a grocery store, Wendy's and Dairy Queen. Brock is excited to find a job and start earning some money. Zeb and Reece will love having a neighborhood to ride bikes and skate board in.

Until then, we sit and wait... in our apartment, until August.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Kentucky VS Wisconsin : Rachel's top 10

10. Weather. Ahhhh. I can't say enough how beautiful the weather has been. I have worn my winter coat here once, since March 6th. It is only 10-20 degrees warmer but it has really made the difference. We had 2 days of rain. It was a nice solid down pour then nothing but sunshine. We talked to a local that said "If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute". Lol. I guess it changes a lot to them. We were trying to avoid using our central air but I broke it out last night. But only for one night.

9. Please? In Wisconsin, when we don't here what someone says we say "Sorry?" or 'What?', but here... they say 'Please?'. I laughed the first time I heard that it just sounded so cute, but now I have gotten used to it. Other words that have taken a bit to get used to are 'warsher' (for washer), ya'll (for you all), and just understanding their adorable twang in some of them. Not all of them have it but, I just absolutely love the accent.

8. Apartment life. Living in an apartment makes me miss having our own home. We are counting down. I miss having a microwave. We sold our built in Microwave with the house and since we are looking at building I don't want to buy one right now. Last week, a neighbor in the next building had a party that really didn't get good until 1am, then it lasted til 4am. Needless to say we both were tired the next day and were afraid to say anything to them, but next time...

7. Schools. All the schools are very secure. All doors are locked except the one to the office. The kids are liking the schools so far. Zeb definitely has much more homework. Brock came home beaming, seriously from ear to ear, when he found out there is lots of girls that ride the bus in the apartment complexes. Reece is REALLY getting a workout in gym class for the first time ever. Reece even asked if we could go to the public library for spring break! Something is wrong with this picture... I know.

6. YMCA. Oh, so many differences. In Wisconsin, we did TONS of laundry, sweat towels and shower towels. Here, you are lucky to have sweat towels. They keep disappearing, so they just don't get more unless someone donates them. More classes are included in the membership, but the cost is $9 more per month here and the joiner fee is double but people don't complain much about it. But the classes that are not included are much more money. Non-members pay $150 for swim lessons that last 7 weeks TWICE a week. Gulp. I have not had anyone shocked by that price yet.

5. Accidents. We live near a Mall comparable to Fox River Mall. We see lots of cops around and hear sirens but we live so close to the main transportation highways that usually the cops are responding to yet another accident. For a while we had a lighted sign above the highway that told us how many deaths were on Kentucky highways. It also reminded us to 'Drive Smart Kentucky'. Oh, and apparently blinkers seem to be optional. Not a lot of people seem to use them.

4. Theme parks. Not only ONE but TWO, no THREE huge theme parks are within an hour and a half of our home! Kings Island, Coney Island and Six Flags in Louisville are all just a short drive away. Coney Island is the smallest, it is bigger than Bay Beach by about 5x, it is the closest. It is by my work. King's Island is about 40 minutes away and 1.5 hours away is Louisville, with Churchill downs horse racing, and a Six Flags theme park. Not to mention the Kentucky Speedway about 20 minutes away! Zeb and Duner are thrilled.

3. Roads. They do not have 'city roads', or many of them. They have lots of curvy narrow roads with lots of hills. Don't get me wrong, it is FUN to drive and beautiful to look at too! But forget bike riding on 'em. I will have to drive to Indiana or Ohio for those I think. But they are both 10 miles from here. It's strange how fast they let you drive on those narrow roads, but I can see why they shut down when it snows. We also heard if they issue a 'code-3' on the roads (meaning bad weather, stay off) and you have an accident, your insurance WILL NOT PAY. Yikes.

2. Shopping. They have some areas with big name brand stores like Kohls, Wal-mart, Target, Toys'r'us, Best Buy,Mejier (like wal-mart), Sears, Macy's, Dillards and of course, my favorite, Starbucks! We live really close to all of 'em. And ton's more. If we need anything it is just minutes away. I really like Mejier. They have a system that makes label reading easier. It scores alot of food on a scale of 1 to 100. The higher the number the better. It was very simple to follow and opened my eyes on some of the choices I made. Pop tarts, for example, are about a 4 or 6. I used to get those for a quick breakfast or snack for the kids. BAD!! I wish more stores used the Nuval system.

1. Taxes. Our home we are looking at building is in a county that has CHEAP taxes. 9.98 per thousand (value of the home). We paid $17 per thousand in Wisconsin. Party of the reason is ANYONE that works in the COUNTY will pay a tax for that county. School districts are divided by counties. At first it was a bummer to have that extra tax, but at least our kids are in the district.