Happy 2009!

It’s been a long road since the blog was last updated. Hard to know where to start.

Most of 2008 was consumed by house hunting and to selling our house (complicated by rapidly falling home prices). After staging the house for sale, our two main occupations were keeping the house always looking as if we weren’t living there,
and then disappear- ing at a moment’s notice when a realtor calls. After a few offers fell through both on our house and on ones we liked, we finally got lucky.

Next, there were repairs to the old house, endless packing and finally miles of driving back and forth (even with hiring movers) to finish the move.


This is Mighty Mud Mania, just after the mud obstacle course.

On August 1st, just after midnight (sorry, neighbors), we finished the move to a southeast Chandler house (about 17 miles away) that our friends had dubbed the “Disney House” due to the animal topiaries in the front yard – a teddy bear, two rabbits and two elephants.

The Bear has been causing us much anxiety; it’s not going to look like a teddy bear much longer; but hopefully will again someday. An extended period of heavy rains, mixed with a misunderstanding of the dripper timer caused severe over watering and resulted in the Bear dying back – depressing, agonizing and guilt-filled to watch. (Shown here just starting on his downhill slide.)

Although it was sad to leave our beloved Ahwatukee home that we bought together in 2002, and we miss our neighbors, we are happy with the new home, new neighborhood and new neighbors and their kids. It does mean a longer commute for John (Podcasts are great!), and now Gayle has a commute too. We are right next door to a neighborhood park; down the street from our friends Art and Michele and their daughters, and in walking distance to a good elementary school.

Since the move, it’s been hard to find time to put everything in its new place. Still a long way to go. Surprise, surprise...moving is much, much harder with kids!

We had Bethany’s birthday party in the new house – she’s 14 years old! No wait, that’s just how she acts; she’s actually 4 years old. We set up the swing, sandbox, playhouse, and two play pools and sprinkler in the backyard. It was an exciting day, among still packed boxes, with friends and family.

Halloween was a treat. Lots of decorations around the neighborhood and the streets were filled with young kids. Grandma stayed with Angie at the house and gave out treats while we walked the neighborhood. Andrew went up to the doors this year to say “Trick or Treat”, last year he was too timid. The kids were Superman & Supergirl – sooo cute!. Got lots of candy...most of which we gave away later after they forgot about it.

In the beginning of December, we had Andrew’s 3rd birthday at a park playground in Chandler. Woke up to a cold, drizzly day, but the rain stopped and everyone had fun.

The kids got to see Santa a few times. Gayle’s work had a Santa Breakfast, and the jolly old elf visited Chandler Library where we listened to a reading of “The Polar Express”. Santa even gave them a phone call at home one night.

These are the stepsisters from the community theatre production of Cinderella.

We had fun making holiday cookies. Of course, we could not find the cookies cutters that we had stored since last year. Had a happy, and messy time, just the same.

Invited everyone to our house Christmas Day. There was mass confusion when our kids and our family’s kids all started exploding open the presents. Still not sure everyone ended up with what they were given, or that we know for sure who gave what – but it was a wonderful get together.

The kids are fully hooked on TV now, especially Andrew. The shows they enjoy are good teaching tools and do give us some free time to tend to the chores...so good and bad.

Andrew is a speed demon on his trike. Bethany out grew her trike, but has resisted her bike (with training wheels). She has not gotten the pedal braking yet and is worried about crashing. Still, she is getting better and enjoying it more. The other day we went for a walk, let them get out ahead too far, and before we knew it, they were out of hearing range (Andrew’s trike is rather noisy). That was the first full-out, extended running that I have done in years. Definitely left me a little beat up.

Looking back, 2008 (our first full year with the kids) was another difficult year of transition for us. But, everyone is healthy, happy and on the normal development curve; for that we are grateful. We’re hoping that 2009 is a great one and that we can finally finish unpacking boxes, finish decorating our happy new home and bump our physical conditioning up a notch.