The Resort: A History

Ever wonder how I came up with the name for my blog? Well, wonder no more.  

We bought this house where we live now over twelve years ago.  We, with the help of our kids, had decided the house we had then was no longer suited to us.  It was a split entry, with numerous steps to be climbed each day. Dan has bad knees, my parents were getting older and had bad knees, and the steps didn't seem to be such a good idea anymore.  Other problems were:  no shop for Dan (he used the garage and moved out the vehicles when he wanted to work) and not enough room for returning children, spouses, and grandchildren.  We began to look at houses.  

Now, you need to know that we started married life in an 8'x35' trailer.  Dan had purchased it when he got out of the Navy and started grad school.  When we got engaged, he asked if I could see us both living in such a small space and I assured him it would be no problem. We lived there for a year and a half and it worked perfectly until we were expecting Matt.  We rented for a while, and then moved to another town and bought our first real house.  It was tiny, under 900 square feet on the main floor, but it had a basement, a carport, and room to park our pickup off the street.  It was warm and cozy and housed us and our (by then) two tiny children. 

Several years later we sold that house and bought a slightly larger house, still small, around 1000 square feet on the main, with a full basement.  It did have three bedrooms on the main floor, which was what we were after since we had a son and a daughter.  Fancy it was not; it had one bathroom all the time we lived there, although just before (as in weeks!) we moved we put one in the basement.

Thirteen years into our marriage we moved back to our college town and bought the split entry house (which had four bedrooms and three, count 'em, three toilets!) where we lived through our kids late grade school, junior and senior high, and college years.  Then they got married, and a house that was fine for four had trouble housing all the people who were now showing up for visits and holidays.  And then there were those other problems.  

Growing up, neither Dan nor I lived in large houses; no basements, one bathroom, but that was pretty standard for the day.  So here we were, at a middle-aged stage of life, our home paid for, both of us with good jobs, looking for a "last" home (before The Home, as in Old Folks).  It was amazing what we were qualified to buy! We did have our "wants", however, which narrowed things down a bit:  shop for Dan, a sewing room for me, and bedrooms and bathrooms for guests.  We found a real estate agent who heard our desires, and one Friday, in the mail, I found a flyer for a house that had distinct possibilities.  When Dan got home from work, we searched it out on our way to our usual Friday night dinner date.  We went straight back home and called the agent for a showing the next day and then we went to dinner.

The showing confirmed what we already suspected; this was our house!!  Not a huge house, just a perfect house; it was as if it had been built for us and it just took us a while to find it.  Shop?  A good-sized one under the garage.  Five bedrooms, making it easy for me to have a sewing room.  Three bathrooms, including a master bath that had a shower, a first for us as our other house just had a half off the master.  A pantry!!  A gas fireplace in the living room for me and a wood insert in the basement fireplace for Dan.  It was brick; Dan would never have to paint the outside of a house again! And it all sat on one acre of land just outside of town.    It even had a glassed-in sun room and a hot tub.  A veritable resort!!      

And now you know.   My blog is named after our house.