That’s kind of how we chose where we’d relocate when we left San Antonio.  We took a map of Texas and a compass.  We measured out 150 miles with the compass on the scale.  Then we placed the point of the compass on San Antonio and drew an arc to the northeast of town.  Then we placed the compass point on Houston and drew the arc to the northwest of town.  Finally, we placed the compass point on Dallas and drew the arc to the southeast of town.  We had an area in the middle of those arcs to work with.  At that point, we began looking for land within that area.

After searching the internet, we found a piece of land we didn’t think was right for us, but we decided to go look anyway — we needed to establish a relationship with a realtor at some point, and we decided this piece was as good as any to begin the dialog with.  I was deployed to Kuwait, but Mr. L drove the 150 miles to talk to the agent, who, after a few questions of Mr. L said, “You don’t want that piece of land, but I’d like to show you a new listing we just got in.”  He took Mr. L to the piece of land that is now our ranch, and he fell in love.  He mailed me pictures in Kuwait, and I told him to move forward with the deal and sent him a power of attorney in case he needed to close before I got home from my deployment.  Closing didn’t come until afterward, so I was there for closing and saw the land for the first time then.  In 2001, we were established in our Central Texas location.

We’d planned to build on the ranch, but we hit an interesting health slump for a brief period of time which left me wondering if we would be able to build at the ranch.  Besides that the 150 mile distance was difficult to work with on weekends and days off — even with the motor home parked out there.  In late 2006, we decided to buy a little house in town, but as we thought about it more, we knew we had to find a house we’d be satisfied with just in case we never go to the point where we could build at the ranch.  That brought us to the Central Texas house, which we purchased in March of 2007.  Shortly after that, we abandoned plans to build at the ranch, and have settled into making the Central Texas house our long-term home.