Winston and I started researching children's hospitals right away when we got home Friday afternoon. We had been told that we could choose anywhere in the U.S. but it was recommended that we pick a place close to home so that there would be an automatic, built in support system. Because of that we limited our search to the larger children's hospitals in Texas and Colorado. It didn't take long for us to decide that Texas Children's Hospital in Houston was going to be our best choice. It was a gut feeling. One that as I write this two months later I am glad I went with. Winston is from Houston and we have great friends in the area. It isn't super close to Midland (my home town and location of my family) but there are direct Southwest flights and my parents do a lot of driving so a seven or eight hour car drive is doable for them. So we had chosen. Houston it is!
Now what? It was still the weekend and there was nothing we could do to actually start the process to get us to Houston so instead we started trying to find a place to live once we got there. Originally we started looking at rentals but quickly opened our options to also buying. We could either put money into a rental home with no equity or we could buy and make it an investment. Winston and I like house hunting anyway and have watched a lot of HGTV House Hunters in our day so we pulled up the real estate sites and started looking. Lucky for me, Winston had been watching the Houston market for quite some time. Before we got the Italy assignment he had been looking in case we ended up moving to Houston. When we got Italy he didn't turn off the Houston "in our budget, in neighborhoods we liked" alerts on the different sites. Well, that Friday it just so happened that a new house popped on the market that he hadn't seen yet. The house was located in Spring Branch West which is considered a transitional neighborhood but from Google street view it looked like a really nice place. The houses around it were all well taken care of and there was a nice park really close by. Long story short, a realtor friend of Winston's came to look at the house and walked through with us on FaceTime. I also had a dear friend whom I trust come walk through to get another opinion. Some might say we are crazy, but after a little bit of a bidding war we bought the house that weekend! We didn't know if we would be able to see it in person before we actually closed on it but we both knew that if it was meant to be then it would be. In a few days time, we chose Texas Children's and had bought a house. No need to waste any time!
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