The Isaacsons are OK

 Get it? We're OK? We're Oklahoma. 

Hmm, not my best joke, I'll admit it. 

Now that we've started a new adventure, I figured it was time to dust off my blogging habits and properly document our lives here in Oklahoma! 

To sum up: We left Washington on February 3, 2021. We took a relatively leisurely drive and arrived in Tulsa one week later on February 10. We arrived during an ice storm which quickly turned into a snow storm, then we experienced over a week of subzero temperatures. It was wild! It put a damper on our house hunt for sure as the roads were too dangerous to drive on until we'd been here over a week.

We looked at 20+ houses until we finally found our future home. It's a new construction home built in Verdigris, a very small community on Route 66. It is located between the towns of Catoosa and Claremore, which are both more substantial towns where we will likely do most of our shopping. At first, we were looking for a house with land, outside of a neighborhood, but that was hard to come by! We slowly started to expand our search parameters which is when we came across this house. All three of us had that feeling of "THIS IS IT" when we walked in. No walls, no roof, no flooring, but it felt like home for all of us.

The house itself is 1800 square feet and has 4 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. It has an open concept living room/kitchen area, a covered patio, a super duper large master suite, a large kitchen island, and a nice backyard. Soon after we move in, it'll get fenced and an underground tornado shelter will be installed in the garage. Blake and Liam will have a great workshop area in the garage and I'm getting my first craft room! Well, I had a craft room in Alaska, but it was haunted and creepy so I pretty much never used it. I never felt alone there and often heard voices. But I digress...

The neighborhood boasts two large ponds which are stocked with bass and home to geese, swans, and ducks. There is a paved path around the ponds which will be great for evening family walks with the dogs. There are basketball hoops installed near our home, too. Every time we have visited, people have been incredibly friendly! People are out and about on walks, playing with their kids, and doing projects in their driveways. There are always tons of kids out playing in the roads. It's going to be so great for Liam to have friends in the neighborhood. 

The neighborhood also has 4 schools: Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary, Junior High, and High School. Enrollment is only about 1,000 students in the whole district (which is only 4 schools in total). The schools are highly rated and everyone we have talked to has spoken very positively about the schools, which is, of course, one of our priorities. Schools in Tulsa are very hit or miss, so being in a community with highly rated schools is a giant win in my book!

That's all for now. I'll be sure to follow up regularly with updates on our home building progress and all things worthy of mention! Stay tuned!