Crandell Family: May 2009

The Blog

I know that I am terrible at updating our blog. I keep telling myself that I will do better when I am in Michigan, however, we’ll see how that goes. None the less, I figured that I better get this thing up to date prior to moving so I can start afresh. So without further ado, here are our happenings for the past month (or so).

The Funeral

Yesterday we were able to attend the funeral of my precious niece Jessica Lichele Stone. We postponed our move to Michigan in order to attend and it was definitely worth it. It was such a special service. She was born prematurely in February and sadly passed away last week. They had a beautiful display of her pictures and some of her tiny belongings. Both my sister and her husband spoke at the funeral after realizing that they were the only ones who really knew sweet little Jessica. They are so strong and have such wonderful testimonies. I love them so much. It was great to be reminded of our Heavenly Father’s plan for eternal families and we know that we will be able to see Jessica once again.

The Homelessness

We had three weeks between our house closing in Tucson and the house closing in Michigan so we decided we would spend most of our time in Heber with Casey’s parents and visit the rest of our family periodically during that time. I don’t know if coming to Heber was a good idea. The weather has been great, but Paige has been picking up some VERY BAD HABITS from her Grandma Crandell and her Aunt Amy. But despite the bad habits, Paige has had a blast playing at grandma’s and learning a few things along the way.

She constantly asks for ‘jumpy-jumpy’ or ‘trampine’,

she plays in the dirt,

she has become quite the piano player (Aunt Taunya would be proud)

plays with the cat,

flosses her teeth quite often – the bathroom is not baby proofed,

learned to use eye liner,

and has picked up various other skills. We will be headed to Phoenix tomorrow - Casey will start his drive on Tuesday and I will fly to Grand Rapids on Thursday. We are going to miss everyone soooo much (and Paige will probably go through withdrawals), but we are excited to get settled in our new home.

The House/Packing

We were supposed to close on our Tucson house on May 11 so we packed up and moved out and sent our stuff to Michigan where it was arranged to be stored until we got there at the end of May. We went from this...

To this...

To this...

Paige wanted to help with the packing too:

Here is Casey locking up for the last time

And me... ...driving... ...away!!!

However, after some major complications - clearly due to the stupid foreclosures in our neighborhood (and everywhere else for that matter) the appraisal came in too low are we are not able to sell. Total bummer, but we hired a property management company to find renters and take care of it whilst we are away and we are just hoping for the best.

The Graduation(s)

May brought us four graduations in our family – Casey’s mom, his brother, and brother’s wife, and of course the big one for us was Casey’s. After months and months or should we say years, Casey has finished medical school and is now an official Doctor. It was an exciting moment and I am so proud of him. He is the hardest worker. We are so excited to move on with our lives and start something new. Casey continuously jokes about his new $10/hour job, but the residency in Michigan is his last step in schooling and then we can go and do whatever, wherever we want. Graduation was an exciting moment – his dad was able to hood him for the ceremony. Our pictures didn’t turn out great because it was so dark in the auditorium, so I've got to lighten them, but here are a few that we have. Paige is crying in all of them:)