Breakfast & Shopping at Ikea

Tuesday morning we drove up to Ikea in Orlando and arrived there at 9:30 before the store opens. We went up to the restaurant and had breakfast. Ikea offers their small breakfast plate (scrambled eggs, bacon & potatoes) for free Monday thru Friday. We ordered a couple of other items from the breakfast menu in addition to the small breakfast plate so our total for breakfast was $2.43.

We walked through Ikea looking at living room tables, chairs, beds and office chairs. We made a list of the items that we liked in case we decide to buy those items at a later date.

Before going back to the RV we stopped at a RaceTrac and paid $3.199 a gallon for gas in the Vue.

Before we move into the house after the closing, we want to have our 50amp electric box installed and have the house and carpets professionally cleaned. So we decided to extend our reservation at Sunshine Travel RV Resort for a second week at the $120 a week rate. We may not need the extra week, but it will give us additional time in case we can't have the work scheduled right away.

Not much going on

We haven't done much the last few days that would be news worthy. I did a few loads of laundry at the campground's laundry. They have 4 washers and 3 dryers. The washers cost $1.75 a load and the dryers cost $.50 for 30 minutes  (1 dryer) and $.75 for 45 minutes (2 dryers).

Last Sunday we joined my brother and family for lunch at Perkins. Their friends Mary and Bill (& now our friends) were there also. We always have a good time visiting and Sunday lunch at Perkins is now a habit.

Mike went online today and made a reservation at Sunshine Travel RV Resort for a week starting Feb. 26. They are running a special price and it will cost us $120 for the week. We are having the house closing on Feb. 27 and that will give us a week to have a few things done before we move in.

Mike also ordered a house filter system from Vitasalus, Inc. for our new house to supplement the water softener system that is already there. Since the filter system is fairly large, we are having it sent to my brother's house to store for the time being.

Moved to Aloha RV Park

We didn't have much to do this morning to break camp since we weren't connected to any hookups. We drove the 4 miles from the church property to Aloha RV Park. The owner Ray wasn't in the office and one of the residents drove his golf cart to where Ray was working to tell him were at the office.

We paid $395 for the month which included a $15 deposit for the security gate remote. Ray gave us a calendar of events for the campground and told us that they were having a spaghetti dinner tonight at the Rec Hall at 5:00.

Then we followed Ray down to our campsite and he directed Mike as he

Moving to Aloha RV Park tomorrow

The last couple of days have been interesting and hectic to say the least. First we called the Osceola County land use enforcement inspector yesterday morning (Monday was a holiday) and explained to him that we had my brother's permission to park on the property. We told the inspector that people had been dumping trash on the property and someone had even dumped a kitchen stove there and that my brother wanted us there for security purposes.

The inspector said we would need to file for a permit with the Zoning Board and he would give us a week to start the process and we could stay on the property while we waited for approval.

Long story short - we drove down to the county offices yesterday morning to pick up the paperwork from the Zoning Department  to start the process for us to get a permit to park at the church property. It was going to cost

Trip Back to Kissimmee

We got up at our regular time this morning and after breakfast we began to break camp. While Mike was pulling out of our campsite, I drove ahead in the car to dump our garbage in the dumpsters and to drop off the card for the electronic gate at the office drop box.

Mike parked the RV in front of the office and we hitched up the car and left Sunshine Travel RV Resort at 10:30. We drove north on I-95 to Exit 180 west of Melbourne and then west on US 192 to Kissimmee.

We stopped at a RaceTrac on Orange Blossom Trail in Kissimmee at noon to get gas in the motorhome ($3.259 a gal). Then we drove over to my brother's property where we stay when we're in Kissimmee.

We parked the RV in front of the church building on my brother's property and fixed lunch before we did anything else. After lunch we leveled the RV, put out our slides and Mike set up our portable satellite dish. Then Mike got out the church's riding lawnmower and mowed the grass next to the church building where we will park the RV. Tomorrow we'll move the RV and park it next to the church and hookup to the electric, water and sewer.

We drove over to my brother's house about 3:00 and visited with Cyril & Elaine for a few hours. We stopped at a Publix on the way home and bought chicken fingers and potatoes to have for dinner.

We got back home a little after 6:00 and found a notice attached to the RV's door handle. The notice was from a land use code enforcement inspector for Osceola County requesting that we call his office about our parking here. He must think we just pulled in here and are "squatting" on the property without permission.  Tomorrow is a holiday and I'm sure the county offices are closed, so we'll call on Tuesday.

The Last couple of days

 Today I thought I would start off with a photo of the house we are buying.

From Vero Beach

This morning we went to JP Matty's in Sebastian for breakfast before getting ready to leave Sunshine Travel RV Resort to go back to Kissimmee tomorrow.

It occurred to me this afternoon that we hadn't taken any photos of the RV here at the campground - so Mike took a few photos this afternoon.

From Vero Beach

And to recap the last few days - on Thursday afternoon we drove down

Homeowners Insurance Sticker Shock

Mike called USAA to check on home insurance yesterday. Since the 2004 hurricane season USAA (& a large number of other insurance companies) no longer writes new insurance policies on homes in Florida, but we could buy homeowner's insurance through a couple of risk management companies that provide insurance for USAA's customers in Florida.

Anyway Mike was given a quote of $8700 for 1 year's home insurance premium and a second quote with lower coverage and higher deductible for $6700 a year!!! Talk about sticker shock!!

We called Jeanne (our realtor) to tell her about the insurance quote and she was shocked. She said she would call some of the local insurance agencies and work on getting quotes for us.

We got a text message a few days ago from Verizon informing us that we had used 50%

House Inspections & New Sleep Number Bed

Saturday we drove up to the Sleep Number Store in Viera to see the bed that they had on sale this weekend for half price. We ordered a king size bed and base (1/2 price) and are having it delivered to Christine & Matt's house in Vero Beach and stored in their garage - how nice of them to do that for us.

Sunday I called my brother Cyril and told him that we had found a house in Sebastian and were in the process of buying it. I know that he and Elaine were looking forward to us living near them, but we will be living a lot closer to them than when we lived in Dothan.

This afternoon we drove over to the house to be there for the septic tank and house inspections. Our realtor had given us the name of some home inspectors and we chose

Offer on House Accepted

After viewing more homes on Wednesday, we had a short list of homes we were interested in. We spent Wednesday evening comparing the homes on our list and finally settled on the one we saw in Sebastian on a double lot and the updated kitchen.

We met with our realtor yesterday morning and put in an offer on the Sebastian house and the owners accepted our offer today.

Our realtor gave us the names of some home inspectors and we one of them today and have a home inspection set up for Monday. Since the house also has a septic tank, we called a septic company and they will be at the house Monday to pump out the tank and inspect it. Jeanne (our realtor) also gave us a list of local insurance companies and even called a few to get insurance quotes for the house.

We drove down to Vero Beach this afternoon to have dinner at Christine and Matt's.

From Vero Beach

Carol made lasagna for all of us. Nancy (another high school classmate of Mike's) and her husband Bill joined us for dinner. Nancy and Bill moved to Vero Beach last summer, so that makes 4 of Mike's high school classmates that live here.

Everyone was excited to hear that we had made an offer on a house and that it had been accepted. They even gave us the names of some furniture consignment shops in the area and we're going to check them out next week.

Another Day of House Hunting

We met with our realtor, Jeanne, today and looked at 4 more houses. We had found 2 houses on Zillow.com and included them in our list for today even though they are

One of the houses we found on Zillow.com was a couple of blocks from the Vero mall, Sam's Club and WalMart Supercenter. The lot was large enough to park the RV and the house was in good shape, but the kitchen would need to be updated.

The second house we found on Zillow.com was in Sebastian and is on a double lot - definitely enough room for the RV. We had seen photos of the house on Zillow and the kitchen had been updated. We met the current owners and then walked through the house and around the property. The house doesn't need to be updated and doesn't need any work before moving in.

Before we went back to the RV, we stopped a JP Matty's for coffee and dessert. Mike had one of Matty's muffins and I ordered the cheesecake.

We stopped at Indian River RV in Sebastian to buy a LED light bulb for our porch light, but they had to order it and it will be in in a couple of days.

From all of the houses we looked at yesterday and today, we've narrowed our list down to 4 houses that we like. We're going to spend tonight going over the pros and cons of each house and decide if we want to make an offer on one of them.

Our First Day of House Hunting

We spent yesterday going through the house listings that our realtor had sent us and put together a list of houses we would like to look at. 

We called our realtor yesterday and Nancy told us that she was sick with the flu and that Jeanne would be helping us. We met with Jeanne this morning and put together a list of houses to view. Jeanne called to set up viewing times for the homes that are occupied and then she took us house hunting.

We viewed houses in Vero Beach and Sebastian - some we took a quick look at and marked off of the list. One house was turn-key and beautifully decorated and some needed various degrees of work. We looked at 10 homes today and a couple of them are on our list for consideration.

We're meeting with Jeanne again tomorrow to look at a few more houses that we couldn't get to today.

Our internet service through Verizon is still really slow, so we've subscribed to Tengo Internet at the campground for 2 weeks for a cost of $24.95.

Kissimmee to Vero Beach

We left Kissimmee today at 12:30 after having lunch and drove east on Hwy 192 to I-95 just west of Melbourne. We stopped at the rest area south of Melbourne to walk Tinker. We exited I-95 at Exit 156 and drove east on Hwy 512 the short distance to Sunshine Travel RV Resort and arrived there at 2:30. We drove 83 miles today.

We stopped by the office (which is closed on weekends) and picked up our information packet that was in a box by the office door. The packet contained information on the campground, a campground map and the gate code for the entrance gate.

We are in site #65 with full hookups (50 amp) and we have a nice size patio. We will be here for 2 weeks while house hunting in the Vero Beach - Sebastian area. We are paying $120 a week for our stay here through a special price for Encore Parks.

We have a weak cell phone signal here and the signal for our internet through Verizon is really weak and the connection is slow. The campground offers wi-fi service through Tengo Internet and depending on how slow our Verizon service is, we may have to subscribe to Tengo for the time that we are here.