Painting

We had promised the girls that they could have their rooms painted any color they like. Well, they picked some wild colors but I think that it is turning out nicely.

Moving

I thought you would like to see this picture of the U-Haul. Unfortunately, we could not get the truck for two consecutive days and will have to finish moving everything out of storage on Sunday. However, we did take a timeout to make an IKEA run. Everything you see is from the first of several runs we will end up making.

It's a home!

Finally, after a lot of drama we have a new home in AZ. Everything finally came through this afternoon and we are now in the house. We only moved a couple of things over this evening. As we were heading over, we saw a rainbow over the neighborhood.

Tomorrow a cleaning crew is coming to clean the house and then we will move a couple more things over. I am taking Friday off so that I can try to get everything out of storage and make the all important Home Depot and IKEA runs so that we can stay busy setting up the house over the weekend.

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Sold and sold!

The house in Virginia is sold and out of my hair, that made the weekend so much easier to deal with, except we were supposed to also sign for the Arizona house on Friday. We were unable to sign due to paperwork problems.

As previously mentioned, I was at the Downtown Campus and Dawn with in class at the Tempe Campus today. As I was heading out of my meetings to catch the shuttle back to Tempe, I get a call...

Great news!! Everything fixed with the paperwork. The way things work in AZ, you do all of the paperwork and then after the Deed of Trust is filed, you are given the keys. Whereas in Virginia, you sign the paperwork and get the keys and the deed is filed a day or two later. So in order to hopefully get the keys on Wednesday, we had to sign today.

I managed to let Dawn know before she left campus so that I could meet her when I back there so that we could go sign. It meant getting up to the northern part of Scottsdale, but we made it and we signed. On Wednesday, we will get a call from our super wonderful real estate agent and she will give us a secret code to the lock box at the house to get our keys. Then the real fun can begin - painting and getting our stuff out of storage.

I think the above picture symbolizes what it has felt like at times. This is a new sculpture that has been put up at Central Park in Phoenix across from the ASU Downtown Campus.

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First day of the new semester

Today’s bike ride into campus was a bit busier than it had been - lots of bikes, cars, and people walking. I guess that is what happens when a campus with more than 50,000 students starts a new academic year. ASU know how to move students into campus and I was impressed by the operation they had setup last week for the move-in. I thought ODU had a nice setup - it does not compare to the scale of what happens here or how well organized and staffed.

Dawn got a chance to see today in action on campus since she is also taking one of her last prep classes for SCNM.

I was at the Downtown Phoenix Campus again for part of the day and snapped a picture of the new Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication building that opened today.

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Hanging with Shaq

That really is Lexi standing next to Shaquille O'Neal. We had gone to Stratum Laser Tag this evening for a birthday party and right as we came out of a game, there was Shaq playing air hockey. I had left my camera at home so I had to use my cell phone to take the picture when Lexi got his autograph.

The VA house was finally sold yesterday and the new owners have already started moving in. Unfortunately, the mortgage companies are being very slow approving loans due to the current economic crisis, the one that they caused, and we were unable to sign our paperwork to purchase the house here in AZ. There is a chance that we still might close on Tuesday and be able to move in, but it is looking like it might be later in the week. Our long homeless journey might be near an end.

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Frustrated with things in Virginia

More brick walls were encountered today. Today was supposed to be the closing of our house in VA; however it did not happen (and will not happen tomorrow either). This time the hold up is the carpet that the buyers wanted was originally on backorder and the company that was supposed to be putting it in decided that “rush job” meant take your time and use as few people as possible.

Another wall is the listing agent of the house we are buying in AZ and supposed to be closing on Tuesday. He has decided not to be responsive to my agent, loan company, or title company - thus putting the closing date in jeopardy. Of course, the VA problems can delay this too.

For the record, both my agent here in AZ and the one I am now using in VA are great and I would recommend them in a heartbeat.

So we dealt with all of this while trying to celebrate Dawn’s birthday.

There are good things going on, but I am too drained to post about them tonight. I will do it soon and include some new pictures I have taken.