House Work

Moving is a much slower process when you have a little one.  We closed on the house and then spent the next week in between the condo and our new home as we painted, frequented Home Depot, and slowly moved things into the house.  The POD was delivered on the Thursday before Easter.  Jeff and I moved a good bit of the smaller things in that night as I held Clara and used one arm to carry.  Let’s be honest, I am no longer much help.  A friend of ours from grad school who is now working for Intel as well came to help Jeff move some of the bigger items in on Friday.  Easter weekend was spent painting and making trips back and forth from the condo with the rest of our things.  We went to church on Easter morning and spent the afternoon at the house.  Our neighbors have been incredibly friendly and had invited us to join some of them in the park for a potluck lunch.  We made it just towards the end to introduce ourselves to some more of the neighbors. Monday night was our first night in the house.  We even managed to make a special dinner to commemorate– steaks, homemade mashed potatoes, and asparagus. We still have tons on the list of to-dos for the house but are just happy to be here now!

Pictured below is the “LumiDome.” Jeff recently located the paperwork for this gorgeous light fixture, and we found that it has a very apt name.

We painted Clara’s room a soft gray with an aqua closet and ceiling.  She seems to like it.

So much space to crawl…

Our attempt at a family photo on Easter.  Thanks to Jeff’s new tripod.

We are officially homeowners again and are thrilled about it! With our nomadic lifestyle of the last several months coming to a close, we are very thankful to have a place of our own. We closed on a home in Tempe, Arizona on Friday, March 22nd.  We originally put an offer on this house on January 13th.  It was a short sale with two banks involved, and we were a back up offer.  It didn’t look too good… but we really liked the house.  We continued to look but just kept coming back to this house on Magdalena Drive. It was an ideal location for us near the freeways, was an easy commute to work, had an awesome yard, and was right across the street from a park. Yes please! We definitely felt God was leading us to this home, and this was evident as the process went quicker than we ever could have imagined.

As we saw with our house on Prince Road, buying a home is never a dull process.  Although this time was less eventful, we did have to fill the pool, deal with some inspection issues, and scramble to have all appliances in for the appraisal. After a long week, we decided to celebrate on Friday night after everything was official. We started a tradition in Tucson of having Chinese takeout and wine on the floor of our new home for the first night.  We continued the tradition with this house but splurged a little with takeout from PF Chang’s (versus Panda Express) and opened a bottle of wine we have been saving from our trip to Napa Valley a while back.

Clara enjoyed some sweet potatoes and butternut squash for the celebration

And here are a few pictures of our new home…