"Freezing to death"? Time was when the ponds would freeze over up here in Puget Sound and people could go ice-skating on them. That never happens anymore. We used to get several inches of snow once or twice a year...but the last significant snow we had was about four years ago. In all honesty, it gets hotter in the summer AND colder in the winter where I grew up in the MS Delta than it does here. Puget Sound is really, really nice - never too hot, never too cold, never gets hurricanes, thunderstorms are somewhat of a tourist attraction for the locals...and it's major shocking news when a funnel cloud forms, much less touches down (and even in the very rare occasion that they do, they never grow stronger than the low end of F1 on the Fujita scale). You know those snow storms that have hit the DFW area over the past decade or so? We hardly ever have those in Puget Sound. In fact, so far this winter I think we've had maybe ten days where the lows at night actually got a little below freezing, and I only had to let the water drip on one night. Right now, it's colder in Waco than it is here in Bremerton. I just checked, and Waco will go barely below freezing tonight - and we in Bremerton won't even go below 40.
That, and there's some things we have out here that you don't have: real mountains, the kind that make you feel really small. If I want to go ski or go glacier diving, I can do that. Also, our coastline has something yours doesn't - real waves. We still have old-growth forests with trees that have been there for centuries.
To be sure, your location has a lot of advantages of its own - a much lower cost of living, for one. Warm beaches is another (since our beaches get the Japanese Current coming down from Alaska). And I do sorely miss good BBQ and good Southern food! But every time I go on to the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle...I see why I stay here - it's the most naturally-beautiful part of America that I've seen other than Hawaii.
Don't get me wrong - we're still sorely tempted to move to Texas because of the cost of living - we're sort of addicted to "Fixer-Upper" on HGTV, and that makes it very tempting, especially since there's a sizable base down at Killeen. But...it's so doggone nice here. No mosquitoes, too.
