It thrills me to see the city of Midland in such prosperity! The irony of me residing in the most economically depressed area of the country isn't lost, either.

Do you know if anyone has closed on & moved into any homes out there yet? And if not, how soon? Just curious, I guess.

And wow...talk about friends in high places! ;-)

Tricia, almost all the homes are custom (very few spec homes) and so families are moving into them as soon as they're completed. I counted 51 houses either completed or in the framing stage; I figure people are actually living in about half of those.

And, yes, it's pretty cool to be friends with a pilot. ;-)

Oh, and the beautiful natural lake!;)

Hey, that's as natural as it gets around here: pure-dee aitch-too-oh!

Can't wait to put a ski boat on it. ;-)

Very pretty.

Now, let me ask this because I find it incredibly irritating...why does this developers website (and they're not alone in this massive conspiracy, they're just the latest to receive the full brunt of my annoyance) have a link to floorplans and then show...model home pictures. I don't want model home pictures - I mean sure, the decorator did a nice job on the 3 rooms they're showing me...but I want to see floorplans. You know, little line drawings that show me the layout of the house so I can pretend I'm moving and choose the one I am pretending to want to build?

Grr.

Let me add 2 things:
1) I know it should be developer's (with the apostrophe), I was typing too fast and didn't catch it,
2) I suspect it has something to do with copyrights and intellectual property and blah blah blah. Just show me line drawings already! :)

Beth, I have a couple of custom home builders as clients (including the one you're ragging on) and I can tell you that one reason they don't show floor plans is that they want to build your house for you – not give you a floor plan to take to someone else. At the very least, they want the chance to sit down with you and discuss your ideas .

Now, having just gone through the new home design process, I share a bit of your frustration at not being able to see floor plans on a builder's website. However, we found plenty of plans (too many, actually) on sites that specialize in selling plans, not building houses, and in books (Barnes & Noble stocks about a gazillion volumes of nothing but plans). We found a few that had the general layout we wanted, then took them to the builder and went from there. He had nothing in his inventory that was exactly what we were looking for, but he was able to quickly create the layout we wanted (actually modifying a plan he did have in his system).

I'm sure that doesn't relieve your irritation, but, otoh, if that's the worst thing you have to be irritated about, you're in pretty good shape. You might even live to be 99 or so. ;-)

Eric, I have this theory that home developers use a massive database of "names" to help them choose subdivision names and street names. Listed in long columns are colors (black, green, white, etc) names of foreign, esp. English cities (Sheffield, York, Cambridge, etc) kinds of trees (pine, oak, maple), and then geographic features such as meadow, forest, dale, glen, woods, creek, valley, etc.

So the developer chooses three of four items from the assorted columns and mixes them together until the combination sounds pleasing and/or at least exclusive. Black Maple Glen, Sheffield Green Woods, or a Houston area specialty: Pine Forests Meadow ... which means that there was a forest there but all the trees were bulldozed to make it easier to build streets and houses!

So Woodland Park makes perfect sense :)

All very true. And very valid. And if I were (was? I never did get that) a builder, I'd probably do the same thing. For the same reasons.

I just like being able to compare really pretty photos of actual elevations to the floorplans (vs. line drawings of the elevations that you find in books/online floor plan sites.) Yes, it's a double standard. Yes, I can live with it. :)

I have to say, I really don't want to live to be 99. Maybe I should start looking for more stress. ;)

Maybe I should start looking for more stress.

Well, you've come to the right place, grasshopper! ;-)

Deborah, I think you're exactly right. But the names database has to be limited to those things with positive connotations. Thus we never see "Dusty Plains" or "Sinkhole Circle."

In the case of this subdivision, the developers were working from a specific set of rules. Woodland Park is, of course, a town in Colorado, and all the streets are named after Colorado locations (Almont, Breckenridge, Keystone, Aspen, Telluride, etc.). I can assure you that prior to the development going in, there was neither woodlands nor park in that particular location. ;-)

Here's a funny tidbit: we learned that our new neighbors to be are actually relocating from Colorado. My wife remarked that she hoped they didn't buy the house sight unseen, focusing only on the name of the street and development!

My husband jokes that if we can ever afford to live on a golf course lot, the streets will be named Mulligan, Chili Dip, Elephant Grass, and Hook.

As for your soon-to-be neighbors from Colorado ... I am speechless. Maybe you can give them a little bonsai spruce or something.

My aunt and uncle (ok, fine, they're Tim's aunt and uncle, but I love them as my own) live in a golf course community and most of the streets are, indeed, such lovely things as Slice Ct. and so forth. They, unfortunately, live just off Dog Leg Ln.

Dog Leg Ln...that's funny!

Very nice, but apparently they haven't seen the future. They need to take a look at the economic model being utilized downtown. Parking lots. Nobody wants homes way out there....they want parking.

OK, wait...that's where you're building? I'm a little slow as of late.