My winter came and went pretty much as usual.  Went up to Alaska in March to volunteer for the Iditarod again.  I’ve been doing that since 1995.  We’ve been continuing with the Friday homeschool program for three of our grand children.  They have learned a lot and have produced a couple videos for YouTube about current events.  You can check them out at YouTube.com.  We’ve also taught the kids to swim pretty well on Friday nights at the YMCA pool.

This spring we took a couple fun road trips with the grand kids.  First we went on a loop from Olympia, WA south to Vancouver, WA and then west to the Oregon coast to fly kites and wade in the ocean surf.  We spent the second night at Astoria, OR and toured the Lewis and Clark exhibits at Fort Clatsop National Park.  Last weekend we took a loop north to Steven’s Pass, Hwy 2 and east over the Cascade Mountains to Leavenworth and then south to Yakima and over Highway 410, Chinook Pass to return to western Washington.  The weather was beautiful as was the scenery.  We fit in a couple short hikes and lots of swimming time in the outdoor pool at our Leavenworth Hotel.  Temperatures climbed to 92 degrees in eastern Washington.

This week I’m leaving for my 16th summer as a tour guide in Alaska.  I was packing up my stuff today and came across something one of my tour members had shared with me last year.  It defines success based on age.  Hope you’ll enjoy it!  It sure gave me a chuckle!

Success is. . .

At age 4 success is not peeing in your pants.

At age 12 success is having friends.

At age 16 success is having a driver’s license.

At age 25 success is having sex when married.

At age 35 success is having money.

At age 50 success is having money.

At age 60 success is having sex when married.

At age 70 success is having a driver’s license.

At age 75 success is having friends.

At age 80 success is not peeing in your pants.

And so it is that life goes full circle!

I doubt I’ll find time during the tour season in Alaska to write any blog posts, but if anything really exciting happens, I’ll do my best!

Here are some pictures of our two oldest grand children enjoying our last road trip over the mountains to Leavenworth.

How could we find a housesitter?

I got on-line and did some research on housesitters and found a great resource in HouseCarers.com. This web site shares the profiles of thousands of people all over the world who are looking to either house sit or hire a housesitter. After filling out our profile and stating exactly what we were looking for in the way of a house sitter, the offers started to roll in.

We read the profiles of the people who were expressing an interest, and if they looked like a possibility, we would private message them back. Once you’ve communicated with a person on the web for awhile, you get to the point where you can decide if you’d like to exchange more private information like phone numbers and email addresses.

Like I said, we had lots of offers, but one stood out from the rest. It was a couple who had both recently retired from major companies in this area and moved to Arizona for retirement. They were not, however, too interested in spending the hot summer in Arizona and wanted to come back up here to be near their grown children.

They were coming up to Washington in April for their son’s wedding, so we had plenty of time to set up a meeting. We first met them for dinner at a local restaurant, and after that we felt comfortable asking them over to the house. Soon we came to a mutual decision that this would be a good working arrangement for both of us. I can only say that you have to listen to your gut feelings once you get to this point. For us these folks just “seemed right.”

Since we were both familiar with the guidelines of HouseCarers.com we all knew basically what to expect in the way of contracts and responsibilities. I was able to download a sample house sitting agreement from the web site and with a few modifications, made it work for us.

The HouseCarers site will answer many of your questions about housesitting. If you’re even remotely interested in getting a house sitter, or being a house sitter, we suggest you surf over there to do some reading. Here are some topics you’ll find interesting.

• What is House Sitting?
• What are the advantages of using a house sitter?
• What are the standard guidelines of a house sitting agreement?
• Why do people register to housesit?
• Who pays the bills during housesitting?
• Will house sitting affect my homeowners insurance?
• Should I require a bond or security deposit from my house sitter?
• How do homeowners and house sitters register and communicate?
• Making your decision – Steps to selecting your housesitter.
• Finalizing the arrangement – preparing a house sitting contract

What does it cost?

As a homeowner looking for a housesitter, you can register for free. If you’re the person looking to be a housesitter, there is a $45 annual membership fee. There is, however, a limited non-paid membership that allows you to try out the service, but does not allow you to actually apply for housesits.

So how did it work out for us?

It worked great! I have to admit, we were a little nervous about the whole thing to start with, but finding someone who had been well respected in our community prior to moving away was a big plus. They took care of our house like it was their own, and managed to keep the yard work in check. They also took good care of our cats.

One thing to caution you about if you have animals – be sure your housesitter knows how to reach your vet and that you have a payment option set up with the vet before you leave home. One of our cats, shown here, required a $250 surgery while we were gone, so I was grateful that HouseCarers.com had reminded me to make sure to include veterinary information in the agreement. We also had an issue with a broken water pipe while we were gone, and again, because we had included information on what plumber to call, our housesitters were able to get it resolved quickly.

And to top off our experience, our housesitters have recently contacted us again to see if we’re going to Alaska this summer because they want to stay in our house again. We haven’t decided yet on Alaska, but at least this year the decision will come easier.

So What’s the Take Away?

If you’re planning a trip and want your house to have that lived in look while you’re gone, or if you’re looking for a place to stay for short or longer term, take a look into housesitting. It’s another way to experience new places without spending a lot of money.