Just Moved from Orange County CA to Irving!

Welcome to Texas! I know that it's probably been a roller-coaster of emotions. Having lived in Chicago all my life, when I moved to Texas 17 years ago, I was exited and nervous. I would definitely encourage you to find a playgroup, mom's network, etc. It will provide wonderful support for you and your family. Even after living here for 7 years, once I had children and stayed home with my kids, I needed to make another whole circle of friends.

As for where to move, you have lots of wonderful options in Texas, and the cities you're looking at are great. When we moved here, we also lived in corp housing in Irving (Las Colinas) while looking for a house. We bought in Flower Mound and have loved it ever since. It's a wonderful family community, and has excellent schools. To learn a little bit more about what this area has to offer, I would encourage you to take a look at a few issues of Family eGuide www.familyeguide.com. We feature family activities in the Flower Mound, Lewisville and Highland Village area. We have a new website launching in about 2 weeks, which will also give you an extensive calendar of events, and comprehensive resource list of family-friendly businesses.

Good luck! Based on your choices, you really can't go wrong.

Welcome to Texas!! My husband and I use to live in Las Colinas before we had our daughter. That area is great but I think its geared more towards adults rather than families. We currently live in Dallas near Lovers and Inwood. We LOVE this area. Highland Park is wonderful but I personally grew up in Plano and hope to end up back there. School are great, sports are good, its close to everything, nice, fairly new and lots top do. Check Plano out and good luck! Let me know if you have any questions about anything here in TX or want to know where anything is. :)

Try looking at homes in Hackberry Creek area. This neighborhood is still in the City of Irving, but it belongs to the Carrollton-Farmers Branch School District. I've known many people who live in Hackberry and have kids at Valley Ranch Elementary, Barbara Bush Middle School, and the high school and they have ALL been very happy with the schools. The neighborhood of Hackberry has lots of community activities every year, including food festivals, carnivals, garage sales, etc. We live in South Irving (south of 183 near hospital) and although we LOVE the neighborhood and our neighbors, if we had kids getting ready to go to school we'd either send them to private school or move to another area, like Lewisville, Coppell, or Flower Mound. Even my MIL who taught in in Irving for 20+ years wouldn't want her grandkids to go to school here. That's sad, but true.

Welcome! The nice thing about the DFW area is that you can get so many places pretty easily. You have identified some really nice areas, all of which have excellent schools.

When we moved last year, from downtown Dallas (where the schools were not desireable) to Plano, I considered many of our alternatives. We chose to rent for a few years first (although we still own our prior home downtown), so we could get a feel for the area before we chose to buy in this economy. The main reason we chose Plano over all of the other choices was due to the fact that the schools are fabulous, and there were virtually no signs of distress in the housing market. (My husband and I own/operate our own Realty and Mortgage Loss Mitigation company, specializing in short sales, pre-foreclosure mitigation, and homeowner counseling). We chose a feeder pattern in Central Plano (ends at Plano Sr. High) where ALL of the schools my kids will attend are consistently Blue Ribbon. The neighborhood we picked rents from $1600+/mo, and the homes are priced from $250-550k, so we were pretty happy with the idea of owning here (2500-3800sq ft). We're also in walking distance from K-8, and on the main jogging trail in Plano, and big community pool.

I work out of the house, so don't get a lot of "office" exposure to others, and I've found many friends in our neighborhood and from being involved in the elementary school!

So, you don't have to chose my neighborhood in Plano, I just want to give you an idea of what I looked for in a short and long term plan when I was in your shoes.

Good Luck! Call me if you would like - I'm happy to help!

C.
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