Business (so very not) as usual

This weekend we went down to see the property again.   Friday day Chris and I had appointments with an accountant and a commercial lender at a local bank.  The accountant had invited Tiki into her office when we made the appointment and explained that we'd have our dog with us.  We figured for the bank meeting Chris would go in and I would wait in the car with the dog, listening in via cell phone.  Well about 5 minutes after Chris went into the bank he came back out saying we were ALL invited inside.  Hilarious.  They couldn't have been nicer - giving Tiki a bowl of water and a small bone.  Said they have "Dog Day" at the bank every so often.  Seriously....gotta love small businesses! 

Can't see that ever happening at Bank of America.  So by the time we got to the accountant's office, Tiki was all "Meh, this business stuff is boring", took off his tie, closed his powerpoint presentation, and took a quick nap.

Saturday morning The McLeods drove down from St. Pete and we came over with the Petersons, with whom we had stayed Friday night. As we were heading from Rich and Lesa's to Matlacha, Chris's mom called and said she and Pete were planning to drive from Venice to Matlacha and Pine Island to see what crazy thing we were getting into check out the area.  Among all of this coordination with our friends and family we were planning a specific time to meet the owners and thankfully they specified we come alone at first.  They knew we had friends with us, but not an entourage of us + 6, so I'm happy we didn't make an unfortunate mistake by invading their privacy with our mobile party unit without a warm up first.

As it turns out they were extremely gracious.  We spent some time looking over old pictures and hearing stories about how they fixed it up, how they ran it over the years, etc.  JC (the male owner) offered us a delicious German beer and we had a great time getting to know him and his wife.   After about 1 1/2 to 2 hours we felt there was an appropriate break in the action where we could ask about having the rest of our group over (who were chomping at the bit from a restaurant across the street).  At this point, JC decided he just had to offer up a pitcher of margaritas.  Love it!  He gave our whole gang the official tour, margaritas in hand, then we sat down and talked some more.  It was a fantastic day.  I think we were there about 4-5 hours when we finally felt maybe we should give them back their privacy.  I think they had some fun too, and hopefully they feel confident that their beloved property will be in great hands...not only ours but those of our best friends and family.  Thank goodness for my mother in law and her camera, because the only pictures I took all weekend were of Tiki in his business meetings. 

So what is next?  I think we will be back down when we get the property inspection planned.  The bank and accounting meetings went flawlessly, we've hired an attorney, and hopefully our house will sell soon!  Then there will only be 12,486,954 things on the to do list....Oh and I'm working on perfecting my bedazzled yellowdog shirts, get your orders in before they're all gone :)