We needed a storage unit on the end of our journey to the Dallas area. The problem is that we need to be out of our house no later than June 20, 2016. That is when we close on the sale of our house here in Tomball.
We have secured an apartment in Denton, TX. That was not the problem. At least not anymore. I managed to find the apartment a couple of weeks ago. We can move in as early as May 27, 2016 according to the leasing agent that I spoke with on the phone last week. I called to verify that we did in fact clear our background check. Originally we were told May 29th, but that day is a Sunday and their office is closed that day. They pushed it back to Friday, May 27th. That is good news for Ben. He needs to be in and settled so that he is ready and on the ground working full-time on Monday, June 6th.
The problem was finding a storage unit and securing it. Most places would not reserve units out more than 7-14 days in advance. Most places did not have large units available. Even fewer places had large climate controlled units available. Since we will be storing a piano and a church organ along with just about everything else we own, climate control in Texas (even in North Texas) during the summer is VITAL. So we were very limited on what our options were.
I at least narrowed it down to the storage facility next to where we were building the house. It met all the requirements. It was not necessarily the cheapest option, but it met the other requirements and that is what made it the storage facility for us. Sometimes cheapest is not the best. Reduction of stress won out in this case.
Since we actually spoke with the movers and we had a date “scheduled” so to speak, it was time to call the storage facility and secure the unit for use. I went online and tried to reserve it online. It would only let me do 7 days in advance. Not really a problem. I just knew that they told me 14 days in advance if I called when I spoke to them in person. They do other reservations on case by case basis. So I called. They had a single unit left in the large climate control units. Well crap! We decided we were done with the frustration of trying to reserve it for June. We were going to go ahead and simply rent the unit for the month of May as well. It would solve our reservation problems.
Andrew needed someplace to take his stuff from the dorm anyway. I had found him someone’s garage to take his stuff to in the meantime, but this was close and we could just move his few things out and move our stuff in and put his stuff back in the front of the unit so he could get to it come August.
The catch? I had to convince the individual on the phone that I really did know what I was doing when I said that I wanted to rent the unit an entire month before I wanted to move into it. I assured him it would be used before the month was up.
There was more of a catch than that, however. Their reservation really was not for 7 or even 14 days. Even though I paid my required $21 administration fee for reserving the unit, due to demand, I only got a 48 hour hold on the unit. That would be 48 hours for me to get there and sign the lease on the unit. No, they could not send it to me to sign digitally. I assured them at 2:30PM on Friday that someone would be there to sigh the lease. They closed at 5:00PM.
So Saturday morning Lance and I got up and we went to Dallas. I thought it would be nice to spend the day with him and show him where we were moving to. See the boys had seen where we were moving BEFORE WE CHANGED OUR MINDS. This would be showing them the place we were REALLY MOVING TO. I also needed to drop off some paperwork at the builder’s office. It would work out nicely. So we drove up to sign a lease for the storage unit, drop off paperwork, and check out the area.
And this is the tale of our day…
Every drive to from the Houston area to the Dallas area should include a stop at Bucee’s. If you do not live in Texas or do not have access to a Bucee’s you probably do not understand the bathroom mecca. Imagine having a person in and out of every bathroom stall almost between every use. That is almost as clean as these bathrooms are. I have rarely seen so much as a square of toilet tissue on the floor in a stall and it does not stay there long.
It is not just about the bathrooms, though. Bucee’s is so much more than clean bathrooms but trust me I have held it over an hour just to get to Bucee’s because the bathrooms are just that clean! Their billboards offer you lots of encouragement (and humor) along the route. Bucee’s offers lots of gifts and food. There are lots of novelty items in their stores. It is well branded and they are proud of that brand.
Outside the Madisonville Bucee’s is a statue of the Beaver Mascot. The kids LOVE posing with it. Lance in particular has to hug it and take a picture with it every single time we stop. I am not sure what the fascination is, but alas, he does. This time he insisted that I take a selfie with the Beaver too. This was the result. I am not saying they don’t torment the statue, just that they love to pose with it. This one is priceless!
Oh and Lance got his requisite beef jerky. He loves their beef jerky. It is a real treat for him to get it from Bucee’s. Now I could have driven a tiny bit out of the way and taken him to the Beef Jerky Outlet in Rockwall/Rowlett as we would have been almost there upon reaching the first stop in the Dallas area, but he really does like the Bucee’s beef jerky and he swore he was STARVING! He ate breakfast. It was not even lunch time yet. I am not sure what the problem was. “I’m a growing boy, mama.”
The first stop on the agenda was on the east side of the Dallas Metroplex in Garland, TX. That is where the model home like the house we are building is located. We arrived about 11:00AM or so. It would be a quick walk through the house just so Lance could see what the house would “roughly” look like. They deck the model homes out.
Here we are standing in front of the model home. This is not the elevation we picked for our house by the way.
This is Lance sitting at the island in the kitchen. We did opt for this island upgrade. It is HUGE! It is a quarter round island. It was the option with the extra cabinets in it and the most seating options. I am standing across the island from him. I was actually leaning over the island and as you can see there was still plenty of room between us. Lots of baking can happen in this kitchen! I can’t wait.
Even better? I am finally going to get my long awaited double ovens. True double ovens. Not a double oven inside a range set-up, these are true double ovens! Let the cookie fest begin!
Lance gives it a thumbs up. He had just stepped out of the pantry and checked out the microwave. He was confused that I was telling him that while he was seeing a microwave there, it was really going to be a second oven and the microwave was going to be over the stovetop. “But you can reach this and clean it easier.” After I posed the question of how many cookies we could cook with two ovens he was a bit more convinced that that second oven was a good idea.
After that, we were off to Rowlett, Texas. Why? Lance said he missed his Aunt Jennifer. She works in Rowlett. It was near lunch time. I had him text her when we were in route to Garland and find out when her lunch break was. It was 12:00PM straight up. Well come to find out the model home was exactly 4 minutes or so up the road from where she works. We were THAT CLOSE! So we met her for lunch and did not have to rush to get there.
While we were in the model home, Kyle asked if we were going to stop at MicroCenter. I could. There was nothing stopping us except time restraints, of course. I told him to text me an address. Off we went to the MicroCenter in Dallas on the North Central Expressway. Why? To find Kyle’s birthday gift. We told him we would get him a Raspberry Pi for his birthday. Unfortunately, our local MicroCenter has been out of stock ever since. The Dallas store was showing that they had 10 in stock that day. I was on my way!!! After a little searching we could not find them. I asked for help and they had these bad boys locked up in a case in the front of the store but we got one – finally! One Raspberry Pi Zero complete with accessories.
Then we were off to Little Elm, Texas…
First we had to stop by the storage place and sign the lease on the storage unit. We went through all the nonsense to get that taken care of. We would come back later with the lock for the unit.
Then we had to stop by the drop off the paperwork at the builder’s sales office. Once we had that taken care of, we wander back to our future homesite. We checked on our “pile of dirt”…that is what the boys are calling it after we went them a picture of it the day we signed the contract on the house.
The good news is that the pile of dirt is still there. The bad news is that the lot is essentially untouched. That means that NOTHING has been done or started. I knew this would be the case. It takes them a few weeks to get started once you sign the contract. Unfortunately, it means that our completion date will be a little further out if they don’t get started soon.
On another note, they have made good progress on the fence on the back of the lot. That brick fence is the back of our property line. It separates us from the main street in the subdivision. On the other side of the fence is an utility easement as well. There is a green area with trails that goes out behind there further down the street. What does that mean? It means the street won’t come any closer to the fence line. It also means that we are not responsible for maintaining the back fence! Woohoo! That is on them!
Lance has always had an attraction to sand. It is good to know that he has not outgrown it. He is 11 years old and he still had to play in the sand. Just buy him a sandbox?!.
And he has conquered yet another sand trap!
While Lance was playing in the sand, I walked to the back fence and snapped this picture. You can see that there are other houses around us – on both sides actually. There are also nice street lights. There is civilization even if you see me complain about it being out in the middle of nowhere. It is a nice community. Very nice.
Lance’s inner feelings were coming out, I think. Smile!
Our new neighborhood comes with some fun amenities. Way more than we have where we are now. It was time to go exploring…
Hike and bike trails, anyone? The trails were cement paved, gravel paved, and dirt paved. They were mostly well maintained. It was obvious in a couple of spots that water does run over the trails and did wash the trail covering away a little. However, the tree coverage made up for it.
To see Lance’s expression was worth the trip.
We drove from where we are building the house down a couple of blocks and back over to where we could find a drop down into the trails. Ben and I had previously explored a short distance of the trails in the opposite direction and I knew where those wound around the houses and dropped down. I wanted to wander through the tree covered area as the direction that Ben and I went was not as covered by the trees. It was not a far distance that we drove, but it was several blocks in all. It took us a few minutes to find the trail outlet so to speak.
The trails were as seen in the images above. Beautifully covered and cement trails until we wandered around to this…a rock wall…these would be the Corps of Engineers walls to help manage the potential of flooding from the lake. It is right on Lewisville Lake. This picture is just yards from the lake. I can’t tell you how many, I don’t know, but it is just yards.
Lance saw this as an opportunity. He scaled that rock wall. Free climbed. He said he was thankful for what he learned on our last rock climbing trip with Andrew. Maybe the money we spent at that gym was well spent after all?!.
Up he went. All the way. It was over my head. He seems pretty proud of himself. Happy!
Then he turned around and declared, “I found the house! Well I found where they were working on the fence down the street.” Sure enough, he had. He had scaled the wall at the end of the street that runs perpendicular to our street.
This is the view at the base of that wall at the end of that street. Beautiful. You can barely see the lake back off in the trees. I was a little disappointed as you could not get back to the lake edge easily from here.
Lance, however, appeared to be in a happy place.
Off we went to explore along the trails some more. Beautiful. Still a little disappointed as there did not appear to be many breaks down to the lake side. We did however, see some small wildlife.
We even found a bench with this lovely view of the lake. The picture does not do it justice. I promise I was not letting Lance walk out into knee deep over growth needlessly. There was a sign out there that we could not read. He wanted to go see what it said. He only went out far enough to see what the sign said. It was an Army Corps of Engineers boundary line of some sort.
There were some interesting bugs. Lance thought this was a spider at first. It scared the crap out of him. He jumped off the bench faster and higher than nobody’s business. Squealing. I assured him it was not a spider. It only has 6 legs. I have no idea what it is. He did not want anything to do with it. It was crawling on him.
From time to time we would find some places where we could see more and more of the lake behind the trees.
The trails would split and we would have a choice to make. This one went up behind the pool and clubhouse. There was a bench to sit on here as well. We chose the path straight ahead…
It was a choice well made. This is what we found. Lance yelled “I want to be down by the lake” and off he ran. There was no stopping him at that point. I did not feel the need to. The worst that could happen is that he would fall in, right?
He immediately started looking for rocks. He wanted to skip the rocks on the water.
It was not a very big opening in the trees down to the lake, but it is was big enough to make Lance happy. It was big enough to be be enjoyable for a the few minutes we were there.
The opening was large enough for Lance to wander and explore some more…
Lance’s face says it all. Lance is going to love it here!
The lake has a good current on it at the shoreline. It was not stagnant water. There were not a lot of mosquitoes. Lance and I noticed that even as warm as it was that day we did not have mosquitoes biting or buzzing at us. That was pleasant. The water did not appear to be too dirty and there did not appear to be a ton of trash around the area. That was nice.
We found some surprises. In the picture above there is a butterfly or moth. It is camouflaged. See if you can find it.
After about 30 minutes of exploring only a small fraction of the trails, it was time to get back to business and get other things done that we needed to do. Lance was not ready to leave but we had to do things so we could get home.
We had to wander down to the Walmart down the street from the neighborhood and purchase a lock for the storage unit and go put it on the unit.
The nearest Walmart to where we are building is 3.5 miles up the highway from the neighborhood. It is actually in Cross Roads, TX I believe. That appears to be the closest grocery store or store of any substance. I will have to hunt for where the actual grocery stores are, but I believe the closest ones might be in Denton, TX.
Lance was more than happy to pose in the unit and then securely lock the door.
This storage facility is awesome in that it is highly secured if you are in an inside unit. The “garage” door at the end of the facility? There are 2 of them. One at each end. They have a 14′ clearance. There is an arm that goes up in front of it. It goes up after the door goes up. You have to put in your code to get in and get out. There are cameras all over the place. The interior units are behind automatic sliding doors with cameras on them. They know who is coming and going.
Now we had to go deliver the key to the storage unit to Andrew. So off to Denton, Texas we went.
First we made a small side trip and drove by the church building…It is in Oak Point, TX. Yes, LOTS of little suburbs where we are.
Then we saw Andrew for a few minutes. We gave him the key to the storage unit and the information he needed to get into the storage facility. It is hard to believe that in a week’s time he will be moving out of Rawlins Hall. This dorm has served him well over the past school year. The University of North Texas has been good to him this school year! It has been an excellent choice.
After dropping the key off with Andrew, we were off to find something for Lance. I had found that there was in fact a skateboard park in Denton. Sure enough with a little work we did find it! It was even open. I am sure we might be spending a little time here in our future.
Wait until he finds out what the Park and Rec options are for classes this summer!!! I hope we can still get him registered for something.
Of course by the time we had done all this, it was after 7:00PM. We were hot, tired, and hungry. We found the Chick-fil-a in Denton near where our apartment will be (which we also drove by) and had some dinner. It is amazing how tired you are once you sit down and eat. I decided to call it a night and wandered over to my friend, Leanne Henderson’s house to sleep it off. We would drive home in the morning. That is a long drive when you are tired. It is an even longer drive when you are tired at night.
All in all it was a successful day. We got everything done that we needed to do.
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