Melodiek~ My parents live in not too far south of Bellingham in town called Mt Vernon. Don't miss the tulip festival there, it's breathtaking! Their weather is a bit more tempered than in B'ham, where there can be some nasty ice storms. Having had the pleasure of watching a soccer game up there one year when the sideways rain turned to ice.... well, let's just say you aren't thinking what to plant right about then! There are some wonderful apple orchards in the town of Lynden, not far from Bellingham. Wet and cloudy, yes it will be. But it really makes you appreciate the drop-dead gorgeous views over the sound when the sun comes out!!!

Well another Coloradoan escaping the north. Welcome to my world I moved down here from Englewood Colorado about 13 some odd years ago and yes there is weather and critters and bugs OH MY !!! LOL but dont let that keep you from comeing down its great. After the first Summer you get thru you will be Aclimitised to the heat yes it can get hot but believe me ya wont melt the roads might but you wont there is nothing like walking down a county asphalt road and feeling your feet sink in with each step and im not kidding :-) My Girlfriend OKIEDEB talked about the Buffalo gnats and I learned about them the hard way when she took me out fishing out at a local Pond I swoll up like I had the Mumps remember one thing ***BUGSPRAY*** if you go out fishing at the lakes in the northern part of the state and well.... any time you go out in the countryside anywhere in this state but to tell the truth it can be just as bad in Colorado depending on where you are at up there so the bottom line is that its a really great place to be and it aint just bugs LOL I have never met more nice people that will help you whenever they can and they will treat you like they have known you for years come on down neighbor

We have been so busy trying to finish up everything that I haven't checked in on this forum in a while. To answer some of your questions Marys1000, My home is a display model off of the sales lot. We completely tore all of the sheetrock off of the upstairs rooms walls, ripped out the bathroom fixtures and flooring, and carried all of it out ourselves so the rafters could be folded down to move it. When I say we did sheet rock and the electrical ourselves, the upstairs is mainly what I am talking about. The foundation has a crawlspace. The downstairs was completely finished except for where the marriage walls had to be joined and finished. We stick built the laundry room and the garage. My husband is a licensed electrical contractor and also a carpenter. He did about 90% of the unfinished work himself. We paid approximately $94,000 from the sales lot. We have paid probably another $100,000 for the foundation, garage, laundry room, 2 bay shop, upgrades to floors, and finishing the upstairs. The 2 acres Of property we already owned appraised at $50,000. The house and land was appraised at $275,000. No, this was not a faster solution than a stick built house. But because it was a show model It saved us some money in the long run. And by the way, a lot of people can't tell that this is a modular.

Georgia - happy to see someone else reading "The Moonflower Vine"... It was a title I found somewhere and dug up and enjoyed. I've been reading (and reminding myself) how to write by reading "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. A book straight out of the late 1970's, Zinsser was/is? a prof at Yale and has a journalist's background. It's more of a primer than anything, but he has a good sense of humor and I've finally learned the plural of "genius" is "genii". And then speaking of well written, I am also reading and enjoying "Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain" by Judith Flanders which is *packed* with detail about this time. Obsessed with Victorians as I seem to be, this is a great read and I'm having fun. However, it suffers from a steady stream of typos which is a bit distracting. Speaking of distracting, I am also reading "Skippy Dies" by Paul Murray about a death in an Irish boarding school. Light hearted and the writing is fine, but whoever decided to "translate" all the English/Irish bits into "American" needs to smothered. "Mum" or "Mam" is now "Mom". "Shopping Center" is now "mall" and numerous other examples. Unless things have been decidedly American in my long absence from living in UK?... All good reads if you're not too pedantic about stuff other than the story. (The pains of being an editor.) :-)