Do you have an interesting arrangement for caring for your grandchildren? Please send details to Jane Ridley at jridley@businessinsider.com<\/a> if you’d like to share your story.<\/p>\n Our trips lasted between a month and six weeks, and there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the two cities.<\/p>\n We’d either stay with the family or rent Airbnbs<\/a> to give everyone a bit of space.<\/p>\n The Cherrys enjoy an active social life in Tampa.\u00a0<\/p>\n Courtesy of Valerie Cherry.<\/p>\n It felt great to be hands-on and useful, especially because Jamal and Sierra work very hard in finance and forensic psychology, respectively.<\/p>\n Back home in Florida, though, we lived life to the full in our gated, suburban community. Glenn, a relief veterinarian<\/a>, and I had meaningful friendships there.<\/p>\n We knew lots of people, particularly fellow alumni from our colleges in Georgia<\/a>. There was always something going on, like book clubs and fundraising activities.<\/p>\n Want more Business Insider in your news feed?<\/p>\n \n Add BI in Google so our reporting is easier to find when you\u2019re searching for what matters.\n <\/p>\n Then our grandson was born two years ago. We continued our long visits to care for him and his sister, flying between the two cities.<\/p>\n We started to look at places in Houston<\/p>\n Soon after his birth, Jamal and Sierra approached us about what it felt like when we weren’t there. They were a bit nervous and wanted to know whether we’d consider moving close by.<\/p>\n We were torn. As much as we wanted to be with our grandchildren, we valued our time in Tampa. Still, we started to look at places in Houston.<\/p>\n The trouble was that if we were to purchase something in Houston, it would have had to be in the suburbs<\/a>. Traffic is terrible, so it would have been around a 40-minute drive to my son’s.<\/p>\n The Cherrys dressed as superheroes last Halloween to trick-or-treat with their grandkids in Houston.\u00a0<\/p>\n Courtesy of Valerie Cherry<\/p>\n Another factor was that we didn’t want to be tied down by taxes, insurance, and all of that in Texas because we didn’t want to give up our home in Tampa.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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