Wow. It's May. How did that happen? We were just celebrating the holidays in December, and Pam's birthday in January. Then our lives and world went on quite the roller coaster ride from January until now.
New Year's Eve day started with an unexpected blizzard in Sedona. By mid-morning there was already a half a foot on the snow on the ground, and the 2 main highways in town were closed. Traffic and town were at a complete standstill and shutdown, and if you were out, you were literally trapped for hours. When the roads finally opened up at 3:30 in the afternoon, I made the quick dash out the door from work. It was time to make the 9 mile drive home. My quick dash to the car in the parking lot was all that was quick, as the normal 20 minute drive home, took 3 and a half hours. What an experience that was.
New Year's Eve day started with an unexpected blizzard in Sedona. By mid-morning there was already a half a foot on the snow on the ground, and the 2 main highways in town were closed. Traffic and town were at a complete standstill and shutdown, and if you were out, you were literally trapped for hours. When the roads finally opened up at 3:30 in the afternoon, I made the quick dash out the door from work. It was time to make the 9 mile drive home. My quick dash to the car in the parking lot was all that was quick, as the normal 20 minute drive home, took 3 and a half hours. What an experience that was.
January was a somewhat quiet month, and a highlight was a quick overnight trip to Monument Valley for Pam's birthday weekend. We had been there once before in May of 2010. This visit was incredible. The beautiful weather accompanied by the remnants of recent snow on the ground. We stayed at the Historic Goulding’s Lodge, and had an early morning guided tour with a local Navajo Native. The views were breathtaking, and the tour was great.
February included a continuation of Pam's birthday, with a couple nights in Las Vegas. We had a lovely visit and dinner with my former boss at Pink Jeep, Ed and his wife Bonnie. We got a chance to visit the Pink Jeep tour operations based at our LV location. We also got to see Pam's cousins, Steve & Roxanne, and visited their booth Roxanne's Treasures at the Charleston Antique Mall. No visit to Vegas is complete without a Buffet, and we tried the Wynn (disappointing and overpriced), we stopped and watched the fountains at Bellagio, and ended the visit with seeing the Cirque du Soleil Michael Jackson ONE Show. It was fantastic.
February also brought us Sedona Snowmageddon on the 21st. Two days of continual snowing left us with about 2 feet of the white stuff on the ground. It was light fluffy stuff, and was really beautiful. Since town folks, governments, and businesses were all prepared, it all went very well, unless you needed a snow shovel to try to get out of your driveway. We were only stuck at home for 3 days.
Now for the big dips in the roller coast ride ... February started off fine, and then the 2nd week of the month, we got a phone call from the Property Management Company that the owners of our rental house decided they were selling the house, and we needed to move by the end of March. For those of you not familiar with the Sedona rental market, well there is none unless you are extremely wealthy. It took about 1 day to realize there were not any livable homes available to rent for less than a couple thousand bucks a month. We quickly decided that if we were going to be over-extended and broke paying rent, what about being broke and buying a house. Sounded like a great idea.
Now for the big dips in the roller coast ride ... February started off fine, and then the 2nd week of the month, we got a phone call from the Property Management Company that the owners of our rental house decided they were selling the house, and we needed to move by the end of March. For those of you not familiar with the Sedona rental market, well there is none unless you are extremely wealthy. It took about 1 day to realize there were not any livable homes available to rent for less than a couple thousand bucks a month. We quickly decided that if we were going to be over-extended and broke paying rent, what about being broke and buying a house. Sounded like a great idea.
Long story short, neither Pam nor I had ever owned a home. This whole process was new, exciting, overwhelming, stressful, exhausting, and full of learning all sorts of stuff that we never knew about. We looked at over a dozen homes, made offers on 4 homes, pre-qualifying loans, home inspections, more inspections by specialists, paperwork, emails, more paperwork, more emails, more paperwork, more emails, and a short 7 weeks later, escrow closed and we were homeowners. We got escrow to close in just over 3 weeks. We moved what I could by myself on Friday & Saturday with a U-Haul trailer, and in Sunday the 30th, a local moving company moved the big stuff like furniture and appliances. Yep, I talked the moving company in to working on Sunday, and we were out by the 30th.
The first week of April we were in our new home, and the first weekend we also had a trip to Phoenix planned from months ago. Last Fall I had bought tickets for 2 shows and gave them to Pam for her birthday in January. Saturday night was the show Wicked in Tempe, and on Sunday, the traveling Cirque du Soleil show called Amaluna in Glendale. Two more fantastic events. It was also nice to get away from the whole house hunting - house buying - moving tornado that had consumed our lives the past 7 or so weeks.
Our lives slowly returned to normal in April as we unpacked and organized our new home. It is a special home in many ways. Not only because it is the first home for both of us, but we bought it from the couple who had bought the land 30 years, and the place was a custom built home. The workmanship is great. They even gave us a photo album of every step of construction, a hand-written journal with all the events from buying the land and the $10 building permit, the receipts for everything spent, and the owner’s manuals of paperwork for everything inside and out. It is like having the history of the land and home all in one nice file box.
If you want to see a photo collection of us all unpacked, and organized, you can view the photos here ... The Millers House
Whew ... what a busy 5 months. Pam and I are looking forward to the continuing journey of making our new home, OUR home. We are also looking forward to celebrating our 20th Anniversary in June, and a return trip to Maui and Kauai where we were married and honeymooned.
As we slide through Spring, and towards Summer, I hope all of you are well, safe, happy, healthy, and wish you all the best always. ~ Jeff
If you want to see a photo collection of us all unpacked, and organized, you can view the photos here ... The Millers House
Whew ... what a busy 5 months. Pam and I are looking forward to the continuing journey of making our new home, OUR home. We are also looking forward to celebrating our 20th Anniversary in June, and a return trip to Maui and Kauai where we were married and honeymooned.
As we slide through Spring, and towards Summer, I hope all of you are well, safe, happy, healthy, and wish you all the best always. ~ Jeff
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