New investment property

Since my golf has taken a step back after Graham's arrival, we decided to take advantage of the great interest rates and purchased a second home in Phoenix, Arizona! It took us 3 trips to Phoenix before we finally found the right one and being a short-sale, we had no idea how long the home-buying process was going to take. And fortunately, it only took a month and once all the paperwork was settled, we finally had a chance to see the home again this past week!

We decided to get rid of all the carpet in the house as the previous owner had a dog, so when we arrived on Day 1 with our new air-mattress and pillows from Wal-mart, we parked ourselves in the bedroom on the concrete floor.
There really wasn't much we could do in the rest of the house either:
Or... in the weed-infested yard!And oh, did I mention about the cactus too??!
Thankfully, the toys at IKEA are really affordable!
And the new place needed cleaning:And Graham's been busy learning how to drink from his sippy cup:

We were able to have a few things taken care of during this first trip to our new place here. We had new carpet installed in the bedrooms. Here are some before and after pictures:
As you can see, we got a brand new bed as well... King size bed! It's super-comfy and Graham got to sleep in it first!
We picked out berber-style carpeting. It looks really nice but it gives terrible rug burns! I only realized that when I had to put together Graham's new crib:

We also got the yard taken care of:Ah... so much better!

During the rest of our trip, we spent lots of hours at IKEA:
Graham had his first experience (and taste) of crayons:And we've invented a new game to play with Graham at restaurants to keep him occupied while waiting for our meals to arrive:


And my cactus finally got a new home! When I had left Phoenix in 2005, I had left my cactus (which I think I actually named Bob!) with my friend whom I was renting from. I think "Bob" looks quite happy in his new spot!
And crazy enough, one of it's pads (I just had to look up the anatomy of a cactus on Google!) had broken off and more baby pads started sprouting on it!
Graham has had so many flights now in his first 10 months of his life. And just when I thought I was running out of ideas, I'm going to start going through the toolbox to entertain him during the plane rides!