A New Start

I am not going to apologize for the delay in updating...Life has been much too busy and stressful lately to bother with recreational activities or blog posting. I posted an incomplete posting just now before this one about house hunting. Well we were successful! So, as you can imagine we have had our hands full lately, but hopefully we can keep you posted more frequently from here on out.

We closed on our house towards the end of May and moved in the second weekend in June. Our family helped us and I think it was the fastest and easiest move ever. We really can't thank them enough. Life has been much different for us coming from our tiny condo into a decent sized house. We have much more room to spread out, and a lot more empty spaces since we don't really have enough furniture right now, Ada thinks it's great to have so much room to play. We also have new responsibilities, such as yard work and lots more to clean. It has taken some getting used to, and we are still adjusting. All in all I think it is a big improvement for our family. We technically are living in a different city now, Peoria which is really just part of Phoenix, but since we never spent much time on this part of town before it really is like a new city to us and we are having fun exploring our new neighborhood and finding new places to eat and things to do, I especially like Rita's an Italian ice shop nearby.

Ada has grown a lot since my last post both physically and as a person. She turned ten months old on friday. She has been crawling for a few months now which has meant some baby-proofing for Mom and I and a lot more freedom and fun for her. She has also been eating lots of people food, it has been fun to see her reactions to different things. She loves rice and hates beans, really likes cheerios, bananas, and pancakes, but doesn't really care for cheese. We have also been working on sign language with her. So far she has successfully picked up, waving "hi" and "bye", milk, more, clapping for things she enjoys and to say "Yea" and food. She can also shake her head yes and no. It makes a world of difference having some type of communication with her. One of the best things in the world is that she routinely shows affection towards Jennie and I. We pray as a family before bed every night  and for the past week at the end of every prayer she leans towards me for a kiss goodnight, it is the sweetest thing in the world.

There is probably a lot more I could ramble on about but I will save some for another post. I hope everyone is well and enjoying their summer. Hopefully, we are back blogging again and will have more to share with you soon!

Our new house

The inside of the house the day we got our keys

Ada on the Fourth of July

On vacation in Sedona

Onward and Upward

I didn't have any work today so I decided to stay home and play with Ada. I thought it would be a good use of time to update you with what has been going on in the Reese household, and post some cute pictures of Ada of course. Hopefully this post will explain some of the absence of new posts.

Jennie and I never seem to sit still for long. I wouldn't really think of us as active people, but we are rarely idle in life and always seem to move from one project or endeavor to the next. Recently that has meant shopping for a new house. Every since Ada has been born it has been very clear to us that our current residence was not going to work for very long. It is a mere 800 something square feet big, and is not located in a great neighborhood for families. It was fine when it was just Jennie and I. It is centrally located, cheap, and requires virtually no maintenance. But we are a family now and we wanted more for Ada, like a nice yard to play in, a good school to go to, and room for a little brother or sister. The only real reason not to move is that we, like nearly everyone else in America were upside-down  on our current mortgage a fact that had haunted us for months as we lay awake at night trying to find a solution to get out of it. Finally I urged Jennie to at least call a real-estate agent to find out what our options were. To Our surprise he informed us that we were in a great position to get a new house and be able to rent our condo, thereby saving our credit and even protecting our chance of one day cashing in on some equity from it. We couldn't be more thrilled, at first...

It had been quite some time since we had been house shopping, and we were quite excited to dive right in. Our constant diet of HGTV had led us to believe the whole process would be a lot of fun. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of house hunting will know that we were very mistaken. I will spare you the details and just say that we have been at the Six Flags of emotional roller coasters over the past few months. After many failed attempts though we are very close to closing on our new home!