Tansy got to participate in Operation Spirit this year.  It's for kids 5-12, and they get to spend the morning with a parent pretending to deploy.  They get a call at 7:00 Saturday morning with instructions to report to the deployment center.  They have briefings, go through legal and medical stuff, and get to check out some other stuff.  She had a great time with her dad.

Sydney turned 9 on April 23.  Since Ben is on swing shift, I wasn't sure how to go about this.  However, with our move coming up, he had a short meeting that morning at 7:00 a.m.  When we got home, I had Syd open her presents really quickly before heading to the bus.

That evening was her piano recital.  She did a great job.  Although she is ready for a break until fall when we will have our piano back.

After the recital, we dashed home to scarf down some birthday cake and get Ben back to work.  Syd had a good day, which is all that matters.

Since it was her ninth birthday, I kept the birthday party small.  She had a movie night with her best friends.  They were too crazy for me to get a good picture, so here's what I got.

Yesterday was her last day of karate.  She has done an amazing job, and I am so proud of this little girl every day!

It has come to my attention that I have failed to properly update some people on our house hunt a few weeks ago.  Although we fully intended to buy an existing house, we spent our first day looking at our favorites and were really disappointed.  We agreed to look at some spec homes if they were going to be done in time for our move, so our realtor planned for us to visit the builders the next day while we went back to my sister's house and tried to reevaluate our search criteria.  

While we didn't find a spec home that really met our needs, we fell in love with the first model we saw and kept coming back to that with every property we looked at.  We both felt that this was the home for our family and went back the next day to sign a contract.  At that point we still hadn't figured out where we were going to live for the 2+ months until the house was finished.  Turns out that fully furnished vacation homes are dirt cheap in Arizona in the summer. Go figure.

Here we are on our lot.

We had 3 1/2 hours to choose every finish for the house since we had to go back to Missouri.  All of our flooring is in the front.  The cabinets, granite, and paint color are propped up behind them.

We are really excited about this house it is even in our target school district.  You can see the floor plan at this link: http://www.meritagehomes.com/assets/phoenix-az/del-mar-at-sedella/2415/MRT_PHX_Sedella_1-B_145-2415_Sierra_Web_Brochure.pdf
If you scroll to the bottom, you'll see Opt. Home Office ILO Flex.  We chose that option, but everything else is the same as the floor plan at the top.

My photo of the exterior colors didn't turn out at all.  You'll just have to wait for the post of the completed house.