It's all about porches

The first thing that captured us about the house we live in now was the porch. It's a lovely lazy wraparound porch that spans the full length of the house and is deep enough to hold all kinds of porch seating. Two dirty white ceiling fans with blades gracefully bent from Texas humidity provide the ambiance of a summer breeze when the air is thick and hot and vintage light fixtures cast a sultry romantic glow in the night hours.

It will come as no surprise then that as we search for our next home, finding one with the right porch was imperative. After months of looking and having survived a serious letdown with what we thought was the perfect property, we came across just the right porch.

The porch is in Bandera, and is attached to an old Mediterranean style home with lots of vintage windows, wood floors and a view that looks out over a creek and the town of Bandera. It sorta reminds me of something you would find in the south of France or in San Miguel, Mexico. You might not be able to see it from this photo but it's there.

Moving to Bandera would be a little like going home. I "grew up" not far from there, at Medina Children's Home which is about 16 miles away and I graduated from the Medina High School (I was even Homecoming Queen!). Mike has always loved Bandera and when his Wyoming buddies come to visit, that's the one place they always want to visit. It must be something about the Cowboy feeling the town exudes.

Since moving back to Texas in 1999, we've looked many times for a home in Bandera but have never found anything that suited us . . . until now. The possibility of moving back seems almost natural to me.

I've been to a couple of high school reunions and discovered that several of my old classmates and roommates have also moved back to the area, too. What fun it would be to have the Bakers over for dinner some 40 years after we all lived together at the children's home. I wonder if Della remembers the night we helped hoist a girl we didn't like over the fence so she could run away. She was caught about 14 minutes later and we all got in deep doo.

Or those late nights just before Christmas when we put Della, who was really tiny, in the laundry bin. Then we'd sneak the gifts from our sponsors out from under the tree and slip them to her to carefully open. If there was money inside, we took it out because if we found it on Christmas morning, we had to turn it over to the houseparents. Della was a real pro at re-wrapping.

This particular house is going to need a lot of work. We will rearrange rooms, create a modern kitchen in the center of the house and bring the laundry room inside to where the kitchen is now; turn the small 3rd bedroom into a master bath and build a pergola along the entire backside of the house to take advantage of the view. The front of the property will become a small, personal vineyard and a privacy fence will define the front yard. Yep, it will be tons of work but that's the part that excites us the most.

And everyday, when we've finished with our work, we'll meet on this fabulous porch and plan our tomorrows . . . and maybe share a glass of wine with our neighbors, one of whom, I understand, is a budding author. Or maybe we'll just sit and share stories with the Bakers, our Wyoming friends or whoever else ambles in.