My Life Monday is back...

This weeks topic is "Where I live and how I got there."

I live "somewhere" in Florida. I moved here when I was 18. It was September of 1990, just a few months after Tim and I got married. My parents had vacationed here 4 times, I think. My dad got sick in 1989 and by January of 1990, they had decided they would retire in Florida. Ummm... did you see the part about me being 18? Yes, I was pretty mature for my age and yes, I was married and had a child. No, I was NOT ready to live away from my parents in any way. Nope! We decided to move along with them and my older brother. My parents bought the house I currently own. It had a converted in-law apartment complete with living room, kitchen, bath and bedroom. We paid them a whopping $100 a month to live here while we went to college. Timmy had a bedroom on what we called their side of the house. It is all really one house, so it was not like he was far away! We went to school, paid off debt and eventually moved about a mile away to our very own 2 bedroom, 1 bath house. It took a lot of searching for that house. We would tell realtors that we NEEDED to be within a few minutes from my parents house. My dad was disabled and alone when my mom went to work. My mom doesn't drive. We are a FAMILY that takes care of each other. Spending a lot of time in traffic back and forth would not work for us. Realtors could never grasp that concept and always tried to show us houses further out. I gave up and became my own realtor. I would drive up and down the few places we would want to live until we found the house we bought. I loved that house. It was perfect for our small family of 3, but then we had Savannah. We had estimates done on adding on, but were told that it would be bad to add on to a "small house neighborhood". My dad passed away right before Savannah was born. My sisters assumed I would buy my mom's house. I didn't think we could afford it. It took us a full year to decide to buy my mom's house. Looking back... I am not sure why! In the end it all worked out. We bought her house, she bought a smaller place 8/10's of a mile away. That is what brought us to Florida. Now our adventure continues with our next move. Unless something really changes in the next 3 months, we will be moving to South Carolina. Life sure is interesting!