Aruba and a house

Currently watching: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia-Season 6  and Parks and Rec-Season 2

Just finished watching: Parks and Rec-Season 1 Just finished reading: An Idiot Abroad by Karl Pilkington

Been busy since the last time I updated.  Abbie and I officially booked a flight and place to stay in Aruba.  This is our pseudo 2nd honeymoon, maybe more like honeymoon 1.5.  Most of our vacations have been meeting up with other people and featured a busy list of things to do.  This will be all about relaxing at the beach.  We wanted to see the beach down in the gulf a few years back but it was cut short due to my work situation.  So we are making up for that amongst other things. 

The flight is about 6.5 hrs total flight time with a brief layover in Atlanta each way.  Aruba I believe is in the eastern timezone.  We picked Aruba because it is quite warm for this time of year, warmer than most carribean islands.  its also a safe place to travel and not overly expensive unless you stay in a resort. the resorts there are rediculous expensive esp in the peak season which is dec-feb.  seriously, the resorts started about $300/night and most were $500-$600 night.  the very best were $800-$1k/night.  crazy.  So we decided to rent a bungalo from a local couple there.  This is a common thing to do.  A lot of people own timeshares and also many of the locals own small apts/houses and rent them out to vacationers.  This is what we did for the whole week.  It came highly recommended as an alternative to hotels from what we read online.  Seems more fun too.

Like I said, we don’t really have much for plans down there other than relax on the beach and take in some local food options.  Abbie really wants to snorkle so I may give that a try too.  Can’t wait for the trip!

The other thing i’ve been working on is getting pre-approved for a mortgage which was just completed today.  We are officially approved now and will start looking at houses ASAP.  we have several in mind as a starting point.  My main thing is I just don’t want to get screwed so I will be looking for any and all reasons not to buy whatever house we look at.  I think I posted previously about what we are looking for but essentially aside from finding something in our price range, Abbie wants some land or at least not be in a crammed neighborhood, and i want to live reasonably close to work and in a nice school district.  We’d like 3+ bedrooms and 2+ full bathrooms.  I don’t want any kind of fixer upper, I dont like that kind of work or paying for it.   I’m optimistic we will find something we like before our rental lease expires at the end of April, God willing.

OK long enough post.  I’ve got several posts in mind so hopefully this blog will be better this year.  I’ve been kinda lazy with it for a while now.

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