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:)

The Wedding

My little brother got married at the beginning of May. It was exciting to be a part of that. We just love Jenna. She is hilarious and perfect for KJ. As my mom put it, now someone else can worry about taking care of KJ – you’ll notice his ankle is in a cast and he was actually on crutches for the wedding.

Me and my sisters:

Houses

Out with the old...

In with the new...
We spent last week in Michigan looking at houses. One might think that we are crazy for buying a house considering how much we are going to loose on our house in Tucson, but when we looked at rental prices compared to buying (especially in this market) we decided to go ahead and buy. Hopefully things will pick up a little in the next three years. We were able to find a house that we liked and put an offer on it last Monday. On Tuesday, we got an offer on our house in Tucson. It is a little bittersweet as we are very excited to sell and keeping our fingers crossed that everything goes through. However, when we bought, we obviously were not counting on the housing market taking a turn for the worst. But we felt like we should try to sell despite the financial burden so we didn't have to worry about a house half-way across the country.

We were able to spend some time with Casey's sister in Michigan who had her baby on Easter morning (and Casey's mom who was in town for the occasion). We made them Easter dinner and took it to the hospital. We are excited that we will be closer to them (about an hour away) even though they will be leaving soon. I just realized that we didn't take a single picture with them. I have never been good at taking pics and I think that it is even worse now that I have a kids that runs every which way. Luckily, I can steal a pic from her blog. Congrats Becky and Steven.

We were able to schedule our trip to coincide with Casey's Clinical Skills Test. All Med students have to take this test as part of their boards. There are five testing sites in the U.S. He had it scheduled to take in Los Angeles, but switched it to Chicago so we could make one big trip out of it. Here he is all dressed and ready looking like a real doctor. I guess it is a pretty lame test - however, it is 8 hours long and costs a whopping $1100 (it's really just a way to generate a load of cash)

Here are some other pics from the trip...

At the poolThe online house searches

Lake Michigan - we didn't have time to drive out to the beach so we stopped by the side of the road to snap a pic of Lake Michigan. We are excited to check out the beach this summer.

Paige in her "winter coat." I was informed that it is more like a spring coat for MI. However, she didn't even wear it in AZ this winter because it was never really that cold.

Paige was quite a trooper for the whole trip. She sat in that car seat more in those five days than she normally does in a month. Check out her new pose (and this is just the few times that I took a pic). She has a tendency to sit like this almost every time we get in the car. It must be relaxing.

Accidents

A few weeks ago, I came home and Casey told me that Paige had a rough morning. I asked him why and he told me to go look at the camera. I found these.

My first thought was that she got a tube of desitin and smeared it all over her face. Come to find out, Casey was touching up some paint in the kitchen and she pulled the gallon of paint off the table right on top of her. She was wearing pj's (that went straight into the trash) I can only imagine how covered she was. There was paint all over the kitchen floor and splattered all over our cabinets and appliances. Poor Casey...and Paige, but luckily s didn't get all over her eyes and mouth. I don't really know how she managed that one.

Paige

We like her so much, we decided to have another one. Paige will get a little bro or sis sometime in October. We are very excited, but as you can see, she doesn't know what to think about it yet.