We made it to Florida! Moving across the country with an infant and a toddler was definitely an experience but, dare I say it, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. So anyways, we've been here about a month and are working on getting settled into our rental house. Last time I talked about Jacksonville, I mentioned that we found a community that we fell in love with and planned on building there. Let me fill you in on what's happened since then!
The community ( we call it the Beach Club) we fell in love with is very much up and coming; the particular neighborhood we were interested in is maybe 30% full. We could build any plan we wanted on our pick of the lots. I immediately knew which plan I wanted to build - five bedrooms, HUGE kitchen, two pantries and a butler's pantry, an office, and his and her's closets, which is one of the main things on my husband's list. I was SMITTEN and already mentally decorating this house. I wish I had better pictures of the model because these definitely do not do it justice.
This was our plan. We were going to stick to it. For a place to live while the house was being built, we rented a home (without seeing it in person) in Nocatee - about five minutes away. We had originally ruled Nocatee out for our forever home because they were no longer building in the neighborhood we thought we'd want to be in and it kind of fell off our radar.
Flash forward three months. The first thing we noticed driving up to our rental house was how active and social the neighborhood was - kids riding bikes, neighbors gathering in their driveways, dogs being walked. I realize this probably sounds very normal to most people, but our neighborhood in Michigan was a lot of empty-nesters and also not very social, so this was kind of an eye-opener for us. As time goes on living here, we're realizing that, with our girls being young, Nocatee is the type of community we need - somewhere a little more established and full of young families, and the Beach Club isn't going to be like that for several years. We've only been in Nocatee a few weeks, and we already LOVE this community. And my two year old absolutely loves the waterslides. So...we're staying here! Time to start house/home-site hunting!
