April 2017 - Building Our Dream

Home Alone!

April 26, 2017April 26, 2017 Vivian Acott Leave a comment

searchcon breckenridge snow It’s been awhile since I’ve been “home alone”. Here we are in Colorado with the opportunity to hang out at Beaver Run Resort in Breckenridge for 3 days. It’s so awesome; mountains, snow, blue spruce trees and other pines fill the mountains, but only where there isn’t buildings and roads. It’s always beautiful to see and experience.

But! wait! home alone? Yep, I came to Colorado to see family and friends, and tagged along to Breckenridge for some R&R and Colorado love.

Garret came to Colorado visit with family, friends and for a conference speaking engagement with SearchCon, along with the invaluable SEO perks at the event… this is R&R life for him. His 3rd time speaking at SearchCon, it’s like a reunion for the guys and gals that enjoy SEO and sharing what they know plus learning new tools and technology. I’ll be attending some select speaker events at the event =)

I did bring some landscape & gardening books to educate myself on big scale landscape endeavors, along with other project work for getting legal in Texas. I’ll totally be into the gardening books during this excursion. Talk about getting legal in Texas, the state has so many procedures in place, the kind where you have to-pay-to-play =(

Beaver Run Breckenridge room This is day 1, so I don’t have lots of experience to share, but here are some photo’s of our suite and the mountain side and snow. I’m so excited to hang out in the suite this afternoon, our hotel suite is so much bigger than our camper, with a full size bath, 2 bed sleeping room, small kitchen with nice living area with a fireplace and awesome view. Whoohoo!! We also stopped for fruit, cheese, bread/crackers/chips and wine… yummy! search con yummy snack

Anyhow I do feel blessed to be here. Thank you Garret!

Another Milestone!

April 19, 2017April 19, 2017 gacott 1 Comment

Finally, we got a “vehicle” registered in Texas. One bought in Texas and one bough in Colorado. The trailer was bought in Colorado because we knew we’d need one (and man ever have we needed it), and the Jeep was bought here for the beach!

Jeep and Trailer

One of the many wonderful things about South Texas is the driving on the beach, AWESOME! The problem is that the salt can really take a toll on a vehicle. Well the Jeep should fix that. Salt, have your way!

Interesting thing about the trailer is that we had to pay what I am calling the “Welcome To Texas” tax. Thanks Texas!

Fun Happenings in RGV

April 9, 2017April 9, 2017 Vivian Acott Leave a comment

Garret having fun with new friends Every weekend there seems to be fun happenings in the RGV. Being fun-loving people we want to experience all we can here. Friday night was Viva Streets Harlingen. People were getting around downtown on foot, skateboards and bikes. It was a lot of fun as you can see here.

Saturday we went to Harlingen’s 10th Annual Classic Car Show. There were hundreds of cars to see. Apparently the Harlingen Policia have been entering their Corvette in Car Show’s for a while. They even won Best In Show at one event.

Vivian making friends

In the afternoon Garret and I went to a really cool meet-and-greet Political event in Los Fresnos. It was a little awkward for us both for several reasons. 1. we were way underdressed, and 2. we still don’t speak much Spanish (gotta work on that more!). We got to meet and get to know a little about our government leaders (and future leaders!). And the wonderful part was community getting together, the music and good food.

Gar and Viv with Mariachi band

There was a Mariachi Band that played some beautiful authentic Mariachi music. It was important for us to get a photo with them, but it was unfortunate that I stepped in dog poo while getting into place for the photo! of all things! I guess I was trying to hide my foot in the photo.

Progress

April 8, 2017April 8, 2017 gacott Leave a comment

So I thought I’d just pop in real quick and show you what the front of the house looks like now compared to when we started.

This here is what it looked like when we bought it. You could hardly even tell that there was a full house.

Harlingen House

We have done a ton of work in the front and back of the house, mostly clearing away everything that was so incredibly over grown. In the process we pretty much tore up the front and back yards but just got some seeds in today and will working on getting something in there real fast.

full house

We had the first peek at the remodel plans yesterday, made some changes and should get those on Monday. This thing is REALLY getting ready to change. 🙂

Pretty Amazing

April 6, 2017April 6, 2017 gacott 2 Comments

It’s really amazing how we have gotten this place that we are, not just physically but figuratively. The process really started when we decided to go to Harlingen for the month of November (2016) and see what we thought of the area. And the plan even got better when our great Friends Steve and Katie threw cation to the wind and decided to take their own trip and meet us down there as well. Pretty darn cool.

By the time Steve and Katie made it down there, pretty much mid-month I believe, we were knee deep in negations for our property.

Harlingen House

That’s the house there – actually on the right, 100% covered by trees and plants. The part on the left is the extension.

Although we hadn’t planned on it, we went back home, put our house up for sale, got an offer four days later and closed five business days later, for the asking price. Then we moved to Texas lock-stock and barrel.

On one had it seems so long ago, on the other, it hasn’t even been 2 months! Just nuts. So much work being done and so much more to do.

We have met some awesome people down here and I think in a lot of ways it’s really allowed us to make some personal changes as well. I do have to say, we really miss our friends and we hope we are able to stay connected, that’s all part of changing your life, isn’t it?

I was reading a Facebook post from one of our dear friends this morning, about her needing to make some changes. My message to all of you (and to ourselves) is DO IT!! It’s your life, you get just one. Create the life that you want for yourself! Make it amazing and EVERYTHING you want it to be. Only YOU have the power to do that for yourself.

And by the way, there hasn’t been a single minute where I have wished we had not done this. It’s been hard, a lot of work, we miss friends, comfort, real plumbing etc, :-), but man is this living life!!

And to all of our friends – come visit!

Kids Can Help Cure Cancer

April 3, 2017April 8, 2017 Vivian Acott 2 Comments

On Saturday, April 1, Garret and I had an awesome opportunity to host a worthy fund raising event on our land while also giving many baby palm trees the chance to have a home. Our contractors (Barraza Brothers – Under Construction) 11 year old daughter Mia finds fun and interesting ways to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Cancer Hospital. One day her mom Yvonne and I were talking about the palms and the idea came up to see if Mia wanted to use the baby palms for raising funds (more about the palms later). As it turned out the idea grew into a nice size event. You know, everything is big here in South Texas!

children-can-help-cure-cancer Many young people came to help Mia dig and pot the baby palms, and many of the Barraza’s adult friends came to support the event. It was really cool that TV Station 34 (Mexican News) came to interview Mia and film the event.
Being well connected politically, some of the Barraza’s good friends came to partake in the event: D.A. Luis Saenz, Rene Gomez, Mario Saenz, and Firefighter (and possible future Congressman) Rigo Bocanegra. We’ve gotten to know Mario and Rigo a bit, they have been very helpful with some of the work going on here on the property.

As it turns out Mexican Palm trees do produce flowers and seeds. Our property has hundreds of baby palm trees growing. The property caretaker has been mowing the palms with the grass, and now some areas have palm grass growing LOL. Even though many baby palms have been designated for Mia’s fund raising event, there are still hundreds, if not thousands, still there!

me with Yvonne Barraza and DA Luis Saenz — Yvonne Barraza, myself & D.A. Luis Saenz!

We are very blessed to have had this opportunity to help Mia with such a worthy cause, and look forward to having more events here on our property!

See more event great event photo’s here.

Edit: Just thought I’d add my two cents (this is Garret). It was a GREAT event, so happy to be part of it! Here are a couple more photos, one of our “parking lot” and one down by the lake.

Saint Jude event parking

Down by the lake