Memory Monday

Well...I get lots of comments about this, but I never get anyone who wants to PLAY with me. C'mon...I KNOW you've all got memories to share...and you can share them on MONDAYS with ME!!!

Today's memory Monday comes with kudos to Suzanne B (no, not Suzanne B or my other Suzanne/Suzy B friend...)

She did a little photo montage of places she'd lived. So that's my memory this Monday. I'm only going to do some of the places we've lived.

I can't seem to find any pictures of the place I lived when I met Scott. It wasn't a huge apartment complex...it was on Channingville Road in Wappingers Falls, NY. There were only 2 buildings. I had a basement apartment...a studio. It was good enough for me. I paid more than I really wanted, for a studio, anyway. Before we moved to Atlanta, I lived with Scott for a short time. Once again, I don't have any pictures. I'm sure we have some upstairs in the photo albums, but I don't feel like going up to get one! This was a one bedroom condo that Scott rented when he got to West Point. I didn't live there long.

When we arrived in Atlanta, we tried to find the best place at a good price, with a short 20 commute for Scott. We ended up at the suspected soon as our Rivermont Apartments. They weren't bad looking...there was a pool (I fast minutes...that never used it) a cute little pond with ducks, and a tennis court (we did get some use out of that amenity). We lived at the top of the hill...there were no sidewalks down to the clubhouse/office area, so we never walked down (cars went WAY too up the curvy road). Aside from the regular palmetto bugs (flying cockroaches, for you uninformed) we didn't have any vermin problems. What problems we DID have, however, were worse. We didn't feel safe and so we moved out as soon as our lease was up.


The Rivermont, College Park/Riverdale, GA - I think this might even be our apartment, based on the tree right outside the window. We had the 2nd floor unit.


The next place we lived was in McDonough. It was called Waterford Landing. It was really a classy place, and really quite large. We got another 2 bedroom apartment on the first floor of a 2 story building. We seemed to have hit the jackpot...for the first few weeks. All of a sudden, the people upstairs showed up (they must have been on vacation). What ensued was month after month of noise, disruption, obnoxious behavior and pleas that fell upon deaf ears of our management. The people above us would go do their grocery shopping at 11:00 p.m. Then they'd stand at the top of the stairs and holler down to each other...the other person was usually stationed RIGHT by our bedroom window. Didn't matter how much we complained, management would tell us they'd take care of it. The teen boy upstairs would stand on his deck and SPIT down onto our teeny-tiny patio. They had about 10 people living up there. It was always SO noisy; drove me NUTS! The management had enough written complaints from us that they had no choice but to let us out of the lease early (only by a few months, though)

Waterford Landing, McDonough, GA. We lived in a building opposite of this one. Those that you see are 3 story.


When we left Waterford Landing, we swore we weren't going to live in an apartment anymore. We were blessed to find this great house in Stockbridge. The rent was a bit more than we wanted to pay, but the lot was HUGE...almost an acre. We had decent neighbors and the neighborhood was quiet and pretty. This was a nice 3 bedroom, 2 bath house. It had a huge living room, decent dining room, GIANT kitchen with floor to ceiling windows which made the kitchen warm and sunny. It had a good sized patio out back, too. This was Hannah's first home...we brought her home to this:


This was on Winterwood Drive, Stockbridge, GA. The only thing that was a pain was the big lot...for Scott, anyway. He had to mow it and it grew FAST...as did the fireant mounds. He mowed more than a few of them down!

We moved out of Stockbridge after Scott became a Warrant Officer. We spent 6 months in Virginia Beach. We lived at North Shore Apartments. They were nice, but not what we really wanted. We knew, though, that we were only going to be there for 6 months, so we made do. We had a 2 bedroom apartment. It was hard to go from that big house in GA to this, but at least we didn't have ALL our stuff...a lot was in storage. We lived on the 3rd floor and had an end unit, so we had the big Palladian window in our bedroom, which gave us an little nook to stick our computer desk into! We arrived in July and left in January. I think we used the pool a few times.

North Shore Apartments, Virginia Beach, VA

Scott's first assignment as a Warrant Officer was at Ft. Gordon. We left Va Beach with no home lined up. Housing waits on post were 5 months (or so we had been told by the housing office). We looked at a LOT of places, but nothing seemed to click. We had been looking at another house and called on it. The rental agent told us that house had been rented, but she had one that wasn't even listed yet. This ended up being our home for the 2 years we lived in Augusta. We LOVED this house. It didn't have a garage, but it had a little yard (less mowing for Scott), a swingset in the backyard for Hannah, and it was in a great little neighborhood. This home holds sweet memories for me too, since it was Scotty's first home. We brought him home to this:


Dunes Drive, Evans GA

We were sent to Germany after this. We KNEW we'd have to live in housing. We also knew we'd be assigned a "stairwell" unit, and we'd heard these were small and cramped. We ended up being quite blessed with the unit we got. It was a large 3 bedroom with 2 bathrooms. The kitchen was tiny (as are most European kitchens) but everything else was decent sized. We were on the 2nd floor. Our upstairs neighbors moved out about a month after we got there. No one ever moved above us for the rest of the year we were there. We had decent neighbors, too. Of course, I don't have a good picture of OUR building. We were not supposed take pictures of the buildings on post (security reasons). But in this picture, you can see the buildings we lived in. Ours was to the left of the photo, but they all looked the same!


Haupstmoorstrasse, Bamberg, Germany

The last place, of course, is our current home. We moved here to Kansas after only a year in Germany. We were heartbroken, of course. We'd wanted our three years in Europe. But as with everything, we made do. Coming to Manhattan was HARD, though. We arrived in 107° degree heat. Housing was almost impossible to come by because we were fighting with the other thousand or so soldiers and families who had returned with the Big Red One. Everyone was trying to buy, and houses were WAY too expensive. We STILL can't figure, to this day, why housing is so expensive in a small college city. It's about 13 miles from the major highway. There are NO huge industries...the largest employers in the area are Kansas State University and Ft. Riley.

After deciding that there was little chance of buying a decent house, we looked to renting one. THAT was another exercise in futility. What was available was HORRIBLE. Most of these homes were rented by college kids..they were trashy, nasty places. Scott was getting desperate and he took the phone book and started calling ALL the apartment complexes listed. Of course, there was very little available...especially to fit our needs (3 bedrooms). He was at the letter M in the apartment listing...when he called McCullough Development. They said they had a house and we were excited. When we drove up, though, we realized it was a duplex. But we decided it was better than living in a hotel or apartment. And if we'd get housing on post, it would likely be a duplex anyway. So we took it. And it's been our home now for almost 2 years. And it will likely be hour home for another year or so.


Manhattan, KS...ours is the left unit. We currently have the party boys (see my post about Ha ha not funny and the CrazyPsychoNeighbor reference).