This little girl brings so much joy into our family. She is just so full of spirit and imagination. This picture just says it all.
It also expresses how we felt when we found a place to live the week-end before Alex was born. It seemed like such a daunting task whenever I thought about it before. Navajo county isn't exactly the tech capital of AZ and finding a place on the internet proved to be challenging. I had made about a dozen phone calls all of which were dead ends of leads I found on craigslist and the local newspaper's classifieds. Good rentals were in low supply and going faster than we could call on them.
We were also low on money and spending a week-end in a hotel was something that we couldn't afford. It was stressful to think that we may have to spend that money without being able to find anything. Luckily, I was reminded by a friend that we had another mutual friend from Phoenix with a cabin in Navajo county. I contacted her soon after and we were able to make plans to go up and stay in the cabin for the week-end and hopefully find a place.
These kids spent a lot of time in these seats. They were really good sports!
We didn't have any plans when we got there. I had a couple realtors phone numbers and that was it. I called about a property and found that it was no longer for rent. Then I asked where that property was. The realtor had told me there were other homes there that may just have signs in the windows and we decided to check it out. There weren't any signs...
We had been praying a lot and very specifically that we would be lead to find a place to live. We decided to take a trip to see the temple. On our way up to the temple, we found a nice home with a for sale/for rent sing in front. The house looked nice - too nice for our price range, but I decided to call anyway. When I found out the rent, which was too much, the realtor asked me what we were looking for and when. He said that he would have a move out around the end of May in our price range and that it was back in the first neighborhood we had looked at. Perfect.
We ended up looking at a model and did a drive by. We saw pictures of the property and decided to act on it. We had the place secured by lunch time! We took the kids to a park and out to lunch. Then we planned some meals and got some groceries for dinner and the next morning's breakfast.
We went back to cabin to celebrate. We barbequed then roasted marshmallows by the fire!
On Sunday, I woke up feeling really uncomfortable. We had planned on going to church to check our new ward, but ended up packing up and coming home. My feet swelled up so much I couldn't even wear the shoes I had packed.
When we got back to Phoenix we had to drop off the keys to our friends in town. The kids wanted to check out the "duck" park so we stopped off at Grenada Park while we were near by.
I'm glad we did, though I wasn't getting around too well. There were about 20 baby ducklings swimming around in the pond. We all got quite a kick out of that. They were so cute!
So that's it, the story of how we found a place in Snowflake days before Alex came. I had also decided to double up on my hours at the pre-school so that I could finish up a little early. I finished Friday, an hour before we left for the trip up north. We feel so blessed that everything worked out. The timing of everything was so perfect, keeping in mind we really thought we had two more weeks before Alex was coming.
Aaron finished up his Masters in Public Administration. He officially graduated! We are so happy and so proud!
But this is still how he spends most of his time...
