And This is a Picture of My New Condo...

Well it isn't actually ours yet but yesterday after seeing about a dozen houses and condos for sale in Las Vegas, we made an offer on this two bedroom, two bathroom, 1000 square foot condo which is in a gated community only 15 minutes from The Strip!  We had kind of planned to buy a place eventually but this deal fell in our laps and the timing was actually pretty good too because being permanent house guests is getting old.  We always thought we would find a small house or condo in Seattle, but, as it turned out, we were having a great time in Las Vegas and hubby's cousins (four of them) had bought condos in this development for rentals and one of them mentioned that the condo next to hers was for sale for only $60,000 (sadly they all bought condos here when the price of the exact same units were going for $191,000(!). I took one look at it, thought it was perfect, quickly calculated that the price of the mortgage plus fees would run about $500 PER MONTH and we quickly made an offer.  Hopefully we will hear later this week whether the offer was accepted. 
It's kind of a surprising turn of events but I think this will make the perfect "home base" for us for a variety of reasons... the monthly cost is super low (lower than anything we could have found in Seattle), relatives live near by so when we are traveling, they can always check in on it for us, it is much smaller than our old house which is exactly what we wanted, and if we decide to live permanently somewhere else, I think it will be a great investment property since our price is $500 per month but it could be rented out monthly for $750+, or weekly to tourists for even more.  Plus, there is always so much going on in Vegas, there are numerous airlines flying to and from the city, often at very low rates, and the cost of living there is pretty low (the cousins were showing me all of their tips of finding discounts and getting the best deals at many places around the city so I figure when we move there I will have plenty to blog about!). 
I'll let you know what happens.  Now we are back in Seattle staying with another set of cousins until we figure out what to do next (either go to Japan first or wait until the condo closes, move the stuff out of our storage unit to Las Vegas, then go to Japan),  Just thinking about all of that makes me tired!
And of course, Happy 4th of July to you all!!