Back to Arizona (Aug & Sep)

The family spent all of July in California while our new house in AZ was being built. I flew down from Seattle and drove them all to Mesa to get them ready to start school. As part of our relocation package, my company included up to 60 days of temporary housing. We spent the first two weeks in a Hampton Inn Hotel until there was an opening at a Corporate Housing condo in Mesa.

I had to go back and forth from Arizona to Washington because I was moving my company's Data Center down to Scottsdale and I was managing it from the Washington end. I also had to handle the sale of our house up there. After I got it all moved I was finally able to get back to Mesa for good.

We were able to watch our house being finished and that was fun. I have included some pictures for you to see. I'll write more later.

Moving (How to get your house clean!)

Here's the latest in my installments to move this blog forward in time instead of simply "jumping" to the present!

Leslie and I packed everyone up in the van and headed off to California. We worked our tails off and got the house ready to be sold. We were exhausted! For those of you that actually visited, the place was probably cleaner than you remember. We decided to get everyone out and stay out so that we could keep the place clean and ready to be shown. For those of you that didn't know, we sold the house after it being on the market for 18 days! We also, thank you Lord!, got our full asking price. The house is just a memory now, but we enjoyed it while we were there. For those of you who never saw it, here's what it looked like!

Here's our bedroom.

Here's our kitchen/dining room.

Here's our family room.

Here's the music room.

Mikey's 1st Album

Mikey has grown so much during our years in Washington. He's become quite the musician and he really wanted to record some songs with his friends from the Life Teen Band, Truthful Reign. Mikey got together with them all on a Saturday in the church and recorded a number of his favorite Christian songs as well as some of his own original material. He had a great time doing it and is looking forward to the next time he gets the chance to record some music! If you want to here some of his work, send me an email and I'll work out how to get the music to you.

Pomp and Circumstance

It's hard to imagine, but Rebekah's preschool time is over and she is graduating on to Kindergarten! She went to a great little school called Sunshine Mountain and she had a great time there. She learned a lot of neat things there and made a lot of friends. She will miss them when we move to Arizona over the summer.

Mikey's B-Day

Once again we had a nice birthday party for Mike and a bunch of his buddies from the Life Teen program at St. John's came on over. It's been a hectic time with his confirmation and all the other activities, but we all had a great time as you can see from the pictures.

Public Service Announcement

For those of you who have come back here looking at this poor abandoned Blog, your patience will be rewarded. Anyone familiar with this blog is aware that we are no longer in Washington, but have moved to Arizona. I will keep the name of the blog the same but will continue to post our family info here to share with our large, extended family. Thank You for your patience. You will see some entries here to document the transition of where I left off with this blog and bring you forward to today. Bye!

Johnny

Mikey's Confirmation (5/9/2007)

Mike worked long and hard and finally made it to his confirmation day. We are so proud of him! The Bishop really put a lot of the kids "on the spot" asking them some hard questions. Mikey did just fine. He showed us all that he was ready for this day. Here are some more pictures of his confirmation. His sponsor is Jim Battles. Jim was the man that walked up,greeted and welcomed Leslie and I when we were looking for a church to settle into in Washington. He is very invloved in the Life Teen program and the teens love him. Mikey was very happy to have him as his sponsor. I know that Mikey chose well.