June and then July...

We had already made a few plans for the summer, and one included a trip to Kansas for a family reunion! Yes, the big 110- year celebration of the Niemann Farm was already on the books so we went a few days early and did some house-hunting with our good friend and realtor Amy Priester. We found a few options but nothing that we were ready to jump on.  Little did we know it would be a LONG while before we did any jumping… 

In true Niemann fashion, we made a couple of spur-of-the-moment decisions...like a trip to Hawaii!  When John and I took our little jaunt in the wine country, we talked about how we will possibly never live as close to Hawaii as Fresno and that we should surprise the kids with a trip to Hawaii.  As we sat in Starbucks enjoying the morning (and using their wifi), John got on the phone with Costco and booked a trip for the family to Maui!  So in July we spent a week in Hawaii and had a great time.

So then we started thinking seriously about where we were going to live…we were planning to leave Fresno in a couple of weeks with the dogs, guns, ammo, lawn chemicals and a suburban full of kids and we had no idea where we were going to be living.  Fortunately for us, Dalhart was on the way so at least we knew we could stay there for awhile! 

One night I got a text from Melissa May telling us that her friend’s mom lived in the country near Andale in a really neat old farmhouse on a few acres.  She got us her number so John dialed up Jeanne Steven.  45 minutes later he got off the phone after a very lively conversation… not only had they set up a time for him to go see her place the next week when he was in Wichita, he discovered that she owns property near our farms in Arlington.  Small world.  First of MANY times we’d be saying that over the next couple of months!  Since John was in Wichita the following week he went to see the house, and liked it enough for it to enter into the “serious” category. 

The next week John came back to Fresno, we spent a few days packing up what we would need for the next 6-8 weeks and then realized we needed a trailer since we would be hauling the dogs with us.  Well that was no problem…John had seen one for sale as he drove down Ashlan avenue so he stopped, inquired, and bought a trailer the day before we needed to load it! That week we squeezed in few more dinners, coffee dates, pool parties and cookouts, and Mountain View’s Summer Spectacular.