9/6/2002

Dear friends and relatives,

We have finally made it happen!  We have moved to Prescott, AZ.

For a number of months we have been working hard to get our Escondido house in shape.  After a lot of initial sorting and discarding, we moved into our motorhome in our driveway, had the movers empty all our furniture and a number of packed boxes and take them to storage.  A few weeks later after continuing to pack boxes, I had them come again and empty the garage of our boxes.

We then did the repairs needed, had the entire inside of the house painted, the wood exterior parts painted, new vinyl flooring in the kitchen, baths, and rear entry, and new carpet everywhere else.  I replaced all the outlets, switches, and TV, and phone jacks with new white ones.  The switches are the rocker style.  Of course there were many odd tasks to be done.  The house is really nice now!

We put it on the market and after one un-successful offer, sold it to a nice young couple.  The escrow ran very smoothly until just before closing when it looked like the entire transaction was going to blow up.  The buyers' were selling their condo in San Diego, and the financing almost fell through at the last minute on that sale.  Fortunately it was salvaged and all went through one week after the schedule.  

Toward the end of escrow (as we believed it at the time) we had the movers come for the third time to pick up my machine tools and all the things from my shop, "stone room", and garage.  This was what was left after getting rid of at least 25 pickup truck loads of things to various places such as the church rummage sale, the local scrap yard, the Salvation Army, the local trash transfer station, and the final truck load will be to Prescott shortly.  I also sold several items on eBay.

We had decided to head to Prescott shortly after the close of escrow.  The movers had come several days before the scheduled close of escrow.  When escrow was delayed, we decided to go anyway.  We ended staying until the financing on the buyers' house was resolved.

We lived in our favorite campground in Prescott for a little over a week, but were not able to get a monthly site there.  The waiting list is too long.  We are set to move in to a very nice park in town.  It is called Pine Lawn Ranch and has many nice sites with all the long term amenities like phone and cable TV hookups.  It will be very handy to most of the places we need to constantly go in town.

Right now, we are in Atascadero visiting our son David and his family.  From here we head to Escondido to see our daughter Debbie and to pick up our pick up truck loaded with shop metals and everything else the movers did not or could not take.  We will hook it up to the back of the motorhome and tow it back to Prescott with us.  That will complete the first stage of our move.

We will continue living in the motorhome until our house is done.  We have a lot in a manufactured home subdivision.  We will be ordering the house as soon as we return to Prescott, along with a garage, a motorhome garage, and a machine shop.  This will make a very nice complex that should handle most of our needs.

Our current mailing address is:

We will truly miss seeing you as often as we would like, but will probably see some of you at least as often, and maybe more often than before.

Please come by when you are in the Prescott area.  We plan to have a 50 foot level driveway with full RV hookups for guests.  Hopefully we will have guest accommodations in the house also.

I will send you another message when we have a final phone number, and our house address when there is a house to address.

Love to you all,

Dick and Betty 
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