Swannsnest

Sunday, February 6

Ballerina Jolee

I couldn't decide which picture I liked the most of Jolee in her ballerina skirt and bow from Aunt Emily, so here are a bunch. She is so silly.

On a completely unrelated note, when we were at the park watching the ducks, we saw an osprey catch a fish. It was so cool. I looked them up on the fish and game website and it turns out that osprey are extremely rare for this area and that they can pass by while migrating and will often eat out of lakes and ponds in the city as they are passing. It was a huge and beautiful bird.

Tuesday, February 1

Still Not Moved

I guess I should be keeping up with the blog, but I don't as Jolee doesn't like to let me type. Right now is is actually pulling on my arm and yelling Mommy and then she does a little dance and tries to pull me over. So as quick as I can I will try to get us updated. The sell of the second house fell through last week, major frustration! On Thursday we went and looked at more house and found one that would work, I don't love it, but it is in good condition and the only thing we will really need to do before we move everyone in is put up a fence so Chonkiri can move with us. With how quickly everything started off with this whole house hunting and moving process, it has certainly taken us a LONG time to move. We are waiting to hear from the seller to see if they will accept our offer. I really hope they do. We are frustrated and definitely tired of living in boxes and having Randy have to drive so much each week. We are a little stressed about the drama in Egypt right now as the cost of gas is again rising. We spend so much in gas to get Randy too and from work that it is painful. Besides the cost of gas, the loss of family time is also pretty painful. When we move Randy will get to sleep in an hour longer, have breakfast with the family, and be home in time to have family activities and not be exhausted all the time. We are starting to wonder if we will ever move.

Besides moving, we have had more frustrations. Jolee and I have been awfully sick the last week. The fevers are gone, but we are both left with runny noses and barking coughs. Last night was the best sleep Jolee has had in a week, she only woke up 3 times and went right back to sleep. Lately she has been waking up between 1-3am and staying up until 4-5am then getting up at 6am. We are all exhausted.

Okay, enough on the complaining. A few weeks ago Randy had a conference in Tempe and as he was the only male going from Nogales area, he got his own hotel room and they said Jolee and I could go too. So we had a family trip up to Tempe. While Randy was in conference, Jolee and I went to the Sea Life Aquarium at AZ Mills Mall. It was a blast. We played there for an entire day. We decided to stay on the wild animal theme and we went to the Rainforest Cafe. Bad choice, Jolee hated the thunder storms and the food was awful. The next day Jolee and I hit the Phoenix zoo and again played all day until she and I were both ready to collapse. We then picked up Randy and headed back home. Randy learned or I guess he would say relearned a lot of techniques that will help his teaching and Jolee and I had too much fun. So overall a great trip for us and a welcome escape from the boxes. Oh, and the king sized bed was great. Jolee wouldn't sleep in the crib, so she ended up sleeping with us and even with all of us in the bed, it felt like I was in the bed alone. Big difference between a king and a queen sized bed. I actually was able to sleep without being kicked by Jolee all night.

Last weekend we went to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. Such a weird and fun place. All of the rocks and gems and random stuff that you could ever hope to see. Got some good deals, but won't say what we got because it will probably be gifts over the year. Jolee had a blast looking at everything. My feet were so tired at the end of the day, what a lot of walking.

I am no longer running and I am missing it like crazy. I have had some issues with my hip, so for now it is just walking. Frown. I look forward to my hip feeling better and getting back in the swing of running. If we end up moving, Rio Rico has tons of hills for hill training :)

Overall life is good and thoroughly busy. Hopefully I will stay caught up with blogging and I can start telling some of Jolee's more hilarious stories.

Monday, December 20

Moving

Wow, it has been so long since we have posted. Hmmmm, were to start. Mid to end of November we decided to move closer to Randy's work so that he wouldn't have to continue to drive over an hour each direction for work. Randy has been wanting to move for months, but I wasn't so sure about moving closer to the border. We looked at a bunch of homes and made a decision on a home in Rio Rico. We put in the offer, they countered, we countered back and they finally accepted the offer. We were a mere week and a half from closing when the roof inspection came back requiring a new roof. We offered to pay for half of the costs of the roof, but the seller refused to pay any more than a fourth of the cost, so we cancelled the contract and went back to look for more homes. We drove by a bunch of homes and without even going inside, we were sure we didn't want any of them. We did however find a few that we wanted to see the inside, with one in particular that we really liked. The one that we liked the most is off of a creek that runs year round, has tons of trees, a workshop and a storage shed, on just under an acre, 3 beds, 2 baths, a huge fireplace, and over 2000 sq feet of space. When we went to go for a full tour, we brought Sandy with us so that we had a less biased opinion. We all really like the home. Sandy even said that she felt like she was in Idaho with how green and pretty the land is. Jolee loved running around the home and she even found the room that will be hers and hid in it. Although she did pinch her fingers in the door trying to close it. The master bedroom has a large walk in closet (hurray!). We plan on remodeling the kitchen, but everything else is pretty much okay! So we will see what will happen, if they accept the offer and everything goes through with the inspection, then we should be moving mid to end of January. We are very excited and can't wait to have more space. We have already started packing (if the first house would have gone through, we would have moved next week) and we are ready to be out of boxes.