Dick and Susie's Big Adventure

Tuesday, January 27

Having acquired a buyer and signed a contract to sell our Santa Barbara home, Susie and Dick set out on Tuesday, January 27, by car for Texas to find a new home to move to.

The drive took 3 days. We made it to Chandler, Arizona (just East of Phoenix) the first night and El Paso, Texas the second before arriving at Katie and John's home in Temple, Texas on Thursday the 29th.

We then made contact with our agent Sherri Revier of ERA Colonial Real Estate in Georgetown, TX. She came recommended to us by the USAA MoversAdvantage program and we learned she has lived in the area most of her life and was thoroughly knowledgeable about the real estate in the area.

We had previously narrowed down to Georgetown as our chosen new hometown after considerable research on areas around Austin within a short drive to John and Katie's. It is conveniently located 25 miles or so north of Austin and 45 miles south of Temple where John works at the VA hospital clinic. We were later pleased to learn that Georgetown is at or near the top of many lists as a great place to live and a highly recommended place to retire to.

Sherri made arrangements for us to view the one remaining house on our list after starting with well over 100 possible homes in the area. This filtering and elimination process, which occured over the weeks prior to our trip, had been a challenge; there were so many fine houses available that unless we had very restrictive requirements we could spend days or weeks just looking at the possibilities.

Our first priority was to find a home in a desirable stable neighborhood. Here we based our selection on the school test records for the Georgetown Independent School District. The Ford Elementary/Benold Middle School district showed the superior scores of what appeared to be an area of excellent education with high standards and it became our choice. Even though we are well beyond the school parenting phase in our life we knew we could find common interests in areas where parents are involved in their childrens' education.

Next we wanted a one-story home because we have gotten to the point where climbing stairs was becoming more challenging, especially with hands full, so we eliminated consideration of multi-level homes.

Third, we set our price and home size boundaries to see what remained that matched our requirements.

Six homes made it into our finals. Katie, in an earlier trip, viewed all six from the outside and gave us first hand impressions (as well as photos). By email and internet our agent Sherri gave us further insight into possible adjacent commercial zoning, on-going and planned road construction, builders development plans, and seller's price flexibility. When Katie returned with Sherri to look into each of the six she gave us her recommended priorities and subsequently we were able to eliminate 5 of the 6 for various reasons by the time we traveled to Georgetown.


What we found when we visited our remaining final selection delighted us. Built in 2002, this immaculate home has had an owner who clearly showed pride of ownership.

It is a 2750 square foot Craftsman style custom built home that sits among a small grove of oak trees.

It has 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, a formal dining room, and a high-ceiling living room with fireplace.







The view toward the road from the front porch shows so many trees you wonder if you are still in Texas.

This area of Texas, known as the Texas Hill Country, is famous for its lakes, hills and woodlands. It has towns predominately settled by early Dutch and German immigrants as well as ranchers and farmers.

Deer are so plentiful they are a problem and there are garden nurseries that specialize in landscape shrubs that the deer won't eat.

Susie fell in love with the kitchen, with its cook-top island, built-in appliances and red oak Shaker style custom cabinets with under cabinet lighting.














The view toward the back of the house shows its large covered patio. The house sits among so many oak trees that just about every room is shaded. The house sits on one acre of land so there remains plenty of open space for creating play areas or planting kitchen gardens.

So without much hesitation we made an offer to buy the house. The offer has been accepted and the closing date is set for March 19, just two days after we close on the sale of our Santa Barbara home.

It seems impossible that the process of making our move from Santa Barbara to Georgetown has gone so smoothly. We feel almost as if it were meant to happen just this way and at just this time, given all the things that had to fall into their proper place to make it so.