Month: March 2013

Our New Home!

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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.

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Clara enjoyed some sweet potatoes and butternut squash for the celebration

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And here are a few pictures of our new home…

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Seven Month Pictures

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So… a lot has happened in the last month! Clara started crawling shortly after her 6 month birthday and is now all over the place.  She is even pulling up on toys and furniture.  She has two bottom teeth and has started eating solid food. We are even starting to hear more babbling. Whew… what a big kid she is.  She seems to love being around people and just out and about.  We are very close to the Phoenix zoo in this rental, so we take advantage of that regularly! We also frequent the park to get all of us out of the house, particularly Walcott as he traded his yard for a small patio.  Clara’s interest in books has greatly increased with Brown Bear and Goodnight Moon being favorites right now. She really is a joy!

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Someone was a little upset towards the end…

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Foodie

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Clara is officially eating solid foods.  It has been fun introducing her to new things!  She has done well… not overly excited about it but seems to be enjoying it more and more. We started with oatmeal and now she is eating sweet potato, avocado, and banana.  I am attempting to make all of her food.  Thanks to friends for the inspiration!

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Tucson Visit

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We were able to visit Tucson in February for the first time since we left at the end of November.  I cannot even begin to describe how good it was to see everyone! We are thankful that we are still so close so these visits are possible.  Matt and Dana were extremely kind to host us for the weekend.  Thank you friends!! Jeff had Monday off of work so we were able to have plenty of time to catch up with everyone.  We were even able to worship at Rincon on Sunday.  A main reason for the visit over this weekend was to coincide with Ben and Lis and their boys in Tucson as well as to catch Ryan and Yunuen in town. It was amazing to be back together with so many of our good friends all in one place! Jeff says with good friendships, when you get back together you pick up right where you left off.  This was definitely the case!  Only wish we had taken more pictures…

Here is Clara with her newest friend Tiago, Ben and Lis’s youngest.  We were thrilled to meet their youngest two that were born since their move to NM.

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Lunch with Nick, Betsy, and Silas at one of our favorites, Shish Kebab House.  It was fun to see Silas and Clara together again after a few months!

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Breakfast at our favorite breakfast place in Tucson, Robert’s.  Grilled cinnamon rolls!

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Six Month Pictures

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Six months! Hard to believe.  Clara was almost crawling at this point- not for lack of trying!  These are my favorite month pictures so far.  These were taken in the short term rental that we are in right now in Scottsdale.  When it’s time to take pictures for the month, Jeff always thinks I go overboard on the amount of photos, and he is right.  But, this is the result!  Love our sweet Clara bug!

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Five Month Pictures

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These were taken shortly after Christmas at Nana and Pops.  We so enjoyed our time in Mississippi! The best pictures we took this day were when Pops walked in and Clara just beamed.  She knows he is a special guy already!

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Pops!!

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Christmas 2012

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We were able to spend just over a month back in MS before heading to Phoenix to start my new job. It was great to get such an extended period with family and to let them get to know Clara better. Since we are so behind at posting we are just going to summarize this Christmas in pictures. Hope you like it…