Where were you last night when 2017 turned into 2018? Is that where you’d wanted to be?

A fun party hosted by Marje & Bob Sparrow.

This is our first new years on Cape Cod, a place I never imagined I’d be. Moving at our age wasn’t really something I would have considered even a few years ago. We have lived in Austin, TX for 25 years and knew someday we’d sell our house (I called it our 401K house – no investment ever paid so well). But I didn’t think we’d move so far away. However, a visit to Cape Cod a few years ago changed all that. On our second day, Bob said to me ‘let’s buy a place here’. We returned to Austin and began the process of preparing our home of 25 years to sell. One year later, we moved into a 1 bedroom condo only a block from our house. Shortly thereafter we flew to New England and bought the first place we visited with a realtor. Our plan at that time was to spend about 6 months in each place.

The next spring we took off on a road trip to the Cape and our new summer home. A week after we arrived, I flew back to Texas to see about my mother who’d been in bad health. I stayed the rest of the summer, caring for her till she died on the last day of July. We remained in Texas to work on selling her house, settling the estate etc, but spent a few months here in the fall.

I feel like we gave it a re-start in 2017. After a 2 week road trip north, we have enjoyed our spring-summer-fall-winter in New England. We are so comfortable here it’s hard to imagine we haven’t lived here for years.  I can’t think of a better place to bring in the new year.