What a weekend!

Wow - where do I start???  First of all, Vickie came back down to Louisiana because Judy was back in the hospital again.  But as it turns out, she's doing very well since she's been having hyperbaric chamber treatments.  It's done wonders not just for her amputated leg infection, but Vickie says she looks and feels wonderful as well. 

So Vickie came over here to BR on Friday and Bruce came over from Mississippi and the two of them met with one of the owners of the property next to ours today to make them an offer. 

AND THEY ACCEPTED IT!!! 

Yeaaaaa!!!!  It's official.  We are going to have Vickie and John AND Bruce and Bonnie living next door.  I cannot begin to tell you how happy that makes me.  And I know Mark is going to be super happy to hear that as well!

They won't be ready to move back to Baton Rouge for another four years or so, though.  So they're thinking they may just have the property cleared after the closing and then we will help them fence it and let the horses go over there and keep it "mowed."  Clearing it out now would be best anyway.  They will need to have it graded so that the water will either run across our property and into that canal on the other side of our land, or out to the drainage ditch in the front by the road when it tries to flood instead of just getting a foot deep on the land - as ours did before we had ours re-graded.  And to do that, they will HAVE to have it cleared.  Clearing it will also let them decide where they want to have nice oak trees in their landscapes.  That way they can get them planted now and they'll be a fine size by the time they move down here.

As for their homes, they are both thinking of using Mississippi Cottage Company pre-constructed houses.  For starters, they are pretty much hurricane proof -- a fine thing!  According to their web site:

Not to mention the fact that the constructions would be incredibly faster than standard construction!

  And some of these houses are amazing!  Check out this "Tucker" house that both of them really like:

There are actual photos of almost all of the homes in that portfolio since they have all actually been built previously.  In fact, Bruce said there is a whole subdivision of them near his place in Mississippi -- so he knows for a fact that they really ARE just as lovely as they appear to be.

Here is the first floor of that "Tucker" house.

Vickie likes it because it looks good from both the front and the side since the porch wraps around.  That property they are buying together is four acres that is twice as deep as it is wide, so they will be dividing it with one property in front and one in back and a driveway / road down the side.  So the front house (Vickie and John's) will need to look good from both the road side AND the driveway side since Bruce and Bonnie will be driving by on the way to their own place (which will be much more private). 

Okay - so here's the second floor.

Wow.  I was really impressed.  But whatever they decide to do, we are just going to be really happy to see them all next door!

And while everyone was here this evening, Buddy fixed fried fish topped with a spicy shrimp sauce and giant deep-fried shrimp as well.  Oh - and white chocolate bread pudding!  Mmmmmm!  Everything was just wonderful.  And the BEST part is that there were a lot of things left over!!!  I know what I'll be eating the rest of this week!!!  I'll tell you what, those two have just been SO good to us.  I hate to think about what life would have been like for us by now if we hadn't met them.  Fine folks.

Oh - and I had been looking for a storage cabinet of some sort to put up in one of the upstairs guest bathrooms.  I found a PAIR of corner bookcases on CraigsList yesterday that were exactly the right size, so to top everything else off today, I drove out to Watson and picked those up.  I was pleasantly surprised when I got there, that's for sure. For the price I paid (only $110 for BOTH), they were really gorgeous!  I know the ad said "cherry," but I figured that just meant the color.  But it looks to me like they may actually BE cherry wood! 

In fact, they look SO good that I think I'm going to put them in the corners on both sides of the window in our dining room, then put the little white cabinet that we've got all our cookbook in right now up in that bathroom instead.  The cookbooks should look very nice in those cabinets.  And that white cabinet will actually work better in the bathroom since it has closed doors on the bottom half.  That way we will be able to store unattractive things like extra toilet tissue in there.  Perfect.

Here are those cabinets. 
They've been sitting outside in his garage and are really dusty and dirty at the moment.
But even though I haven't cleaned them up yet, they look pretty darned good!

I like the fact that the bases are flat against the floor
so no dog hair can go under them.  ;-D

So all in all, it's been a FINE weekend.  And it's almost time for bed, so I think I'll go downstairs and have just one more helping of that bread pudding!  (Thanks, Buddy.)