"Sold" in Phoenix

Well, after being on the market for just a week or so, we actually accepted 2 offers on our house in Gilbert.  And with further negotiations, I think we picked the right one as the sale process went very smoothly! Kudos to our realtor/friend as well!!!

4 1/2 years later, we finally decided to close on the sale of the house this past Monday (Oct 15).  It was definitely bitter sweet!  Definitely not going to miss the scorpions though. Gosh... so many during our last few visits!!!  We would normally find one in our shower stall in the master bathroom.  But a couple of months ago, the painters actually found one in the boys' bedroom! YIKES!!!  And I was actually in the room moving furniture around and Graham was actually on the mattress on the floor. So glad no one got stung. Can you imagine??!  I think we actually squashed one on our bathroom mat.  I noticed it while I was packing/clearning up the house.  Eewww...

I have left ALL the boys to themselves while I drove to Phoenix one last time.  Here is Bobby's to-do/reminder list :-D

The mountains along the drive is so pretty:

Beautiful Arizona sunset as I get into Gilbert:

We hired professional movers this one (no more PODS!) and they decided to show up one day earlier to wrap and box.  Box they did!!!

And wrap too!  They were very efficient:

Day 2 (Saturday) and the movers are back at 8am... and it is raining!

It actually rained all day Friday and most of Saturday.  No wonder the scorpions are out!

Okay, here goes...!

A few hours later, it's lunch break.  Clouds are so low over the mountains:

Almost done!

It finally stopped raining:

Movers are done! House is definitely feeling empty now:

Except for all this stuff that I need to pack into the car.  How is it that there's still so much stuff??!!

But first, it's my last night in this house.  Thankfully I remembered to put the air mattress aside.  Those air mattresses have come a long way.  It was actually really comfortable and I didn't want to get up the next morning!  Obviously so tired and so sad:

But... it's time to move on.  Thankfully I still have that car-packing skill handy from back in my golf touring days :-)  And Bobby's grandma's silver (brown wooden box) takes another trip back to Cali.  Ha ha!

The movers can't take care plants so I had to drag this SUPER heavy fleur-de-lis planter into the car.  I took one of the boy's entire seat out so that helped in having some more storage space in the minivan.  I LOVE the minivan :-)

The movers backed into this shrub and of course, now I have to clean that up before leaving as well.  Oh well:

I make a quick detour via Tempe to see Karsten Golf Course - to visit some friends, but it is closed for overseeding! Ahhh... old stomping grounds across the street from the golf course:

Unfortunately the golf course has been sold and will be demolished.  The ASU golf team will officially start practicing at Papago Golf Club starting in Nov. So sad! I really liked Karsten Golf Club as it was really close to campus as well. I have not seen Papago GC since the renovation so perhaps it is better, especially with all the new fancy short-game area that is being created and designed by Phil Mickelson himself!

There are so many new buildings and apartments and garage structures... and yet, it's nice to see that the old flour mill is still here:

I was going to drive down Mill Avenue but it was so busy!  I decided to make a U-turn and found "A" Mountain.  No... no kissing boyfriends up on this mountain.  That would be South Mountain. LOL!  Just kidding ;-P

This bridge is really pretty when it's lit up at night:

Good bye Phoenix!!!

With the 7-hour drive alone, I started going through all the satelite radio stations starting from #1.  And I somehow got stuck on Station #53... Dance and Electric.  It definitely got me through the drive!  Especially when I couldn't get on the HOV lane:

 Here is to our new chapter in SoCal!

Recent happenings

While Mommy was away in Phoenix to settle the movers there, Graham and Charlie were busy at the mall playing Virtual Reality games!  WHHHAAAAT...!!!  This is Charlie:

And here is Graham:

I guess VR is the future of gaming??!

And now that I have been going back and forth to the new house from school, I have to drive on this one lane road that has lots of horse ranches.  I guess back in the day that's what this place was all about (and I guess still is). I only just noticed that the horse riders have their own button that's placed a bit higher than the pedestrian button to cross the road.  How neat!

I was carpooling with some other moms earlier this week during Charlie's field trip and they were talking about all these horse accidents with vehicles on this road.  YIKES!!!  I have yet to see riders along the road. Supposedly there are tunnels as well for them to get around.

We are all geared up for Ball Hockey!  Although I still need to check that his helmet fits properly. I keep thinking it just might be a tad small. Another to-do this weekend!

Charlie is getting so tall!  And Graham on the other hand is playing on the side of the hill while waiting for Graham.  I love how he is able to just do things on his own. He actually has a couple of sticks in each hand and he is sort of "downhill sliding" :-)

Here's Charlie in action in this week's ball hockey lesson:

And funny enough, just this week as well - Graham is also in ball hockey!  Looks like the LA Kings have put in some more money into the program and are offering it for free for YMCA members.  That made Graham really happy!  And that means more money out the pocket for gear.  Ha ha!

And Graham is doing well in water polo too.  There are still moments where he sorts of wanders off but for the most part, he is still participating:

Charlie just asked today if/when he can get into water polo as well.  He has obviously been playing a bit with Graham at the pool during the weekend.  I think he has to be 7 years old to join the program? I will have to check but there is an additional cost to that as well.  These kids are getting more expensive by the minute! LOL!!!

Why can't the boys just stick to golf??!  Speaking of which, I found some old persimmon woods at the Play it Again Sports store for only $1 each!  Although I can just hear Bobby say "Is that more or less than $0??? :-P
I had to buy a couple clubs - for the boys of course. I will need to have the shafts cut down so they can try it.  See... guess I am also guilty for spending more money. LOL!!!

This Guinness though was definitely worth every penny!!!  I was not feeling so great after my drive from Phoenix last weekend and somehow that one bottle in the fridge was calling my name:

Aaaahhhh.... Cheers!!! :-D

New house in Rancho Palos Verdes!!!

We did it!  Can't believe Bobby and I are now new homeowners again (as of Wed, Oct 10) .  It will be so nice to finally have that extra space!  And the house comes with a trampoline too - so if anytime Graham and Charlie are driving us crazy, we would just send them outside into the yard. Ha ha!

Here's a better view of the yard.  It's pretty much as far back as you can get from this point, which makes it a decent size I think for our two monkeys (still jumping away in that trampoline!):

Right now there is a tarp above the trampoline which we will probably remove.  I am sure the boys are ready to start during their somersaults and stuff!

Graham and Charlie are so excited about the new house too!

I only got to enter the house for the first time when I returned from Phoenix last Sunday - which in itself is another post (we sold our "Phoenix" house too in the same week!).  This was me returning from Phoenix, pretty pumped up after listening to 6 out of 7 hours of Electric and Dance music on satelite radio.  Ha ha!

The cleaners have come by to clean and wipe the whole house down, including windows and baseboards.  The master bedroom window was so clean I thought that the window was actually open!  And we also paid extra to have the back patio power-washed. Glad I didn't have to do it! :-)

Right now the house is being painted. Glad I didn't have to do that either!  But that particular invoice is definitely hurting the check book.  Oh well... we are sort of crunched on time because the furniture from Phoenix should be arriving later this weekend or early next week.  I think it will be easy to say though that we can't wait to see that green wall gone!

There are so many succulents planted in the garden.  This is just one section of it:

There's more on the other side of the garden and also in the front yard.  And I mean rows and rows of it!  I may have to just put up a sign for the neighborhood "$1 per succulent!"  There are also fruit trees in the back including grape vines - which have not been watered for the past few days. Somehow the water has been shut off in the backyard and I can't figure out how to turn it back on!  Hope these other fruit trees don't die.  We have apple:

Lemons (maybe??!)... although quite weird looking ones!  They are awfully big for lemons:

Figs... I guess I will have to figure out how to eat/cook these:

And a couple of orange trees. I hope the oranges are sweet!

This is probably one of our most exciting moves yet but it will be interesting and probably really time consuming trying to fit all of our furniture from both households into our "shack" :-D

More photos to follow once we are more settled in!

Buying a new home!

Well, I don't want to quite jinx it yet but we are closing on a house tomorrow!  Fingers crossed that all our i's are dotted and t's are crossed - we will be new home owners in Rancho Palos Verdes (RPV)!  Bobby and I are really excited about this new adventure and I think the boys are really excited about the trampoline that came with the home purchase :-)

In the meantime, we are also selling our home in Phoenix.  There were actually 2 offers within the week of putting it up for sale!  We didn't go too much into a bidding war and hopefully we picked the right people for the house.  So far so good with negotiations and if all goes well, the "Phoenix" house will all be cleared out by this Saturday and closed on Sunday.  I will be driving out there on Thursday to manage the movers - I can't believe we are moving stuff just within 1 year of being back from Abu Dhabi!  We still have things in boxes here, which I have been hiding away (out of sight, out of mind :-) So definitely will be so glad to have everything in one place.  Phew!!!

Probably got about 85% of the house packed up during this last trip:

Graham and Charlie were a bit busy helping me out with some boxes.  Okay, to be fair - Graham did start out legitimately helping me:

And then, it was this...

And this... not technically "helping"!!!

Anyhow, one last drive to Phoenix and funny enough, we made the best time going and coming back this past weekend. The traffic in and out of LA was actually manageable! We'll see how it is with just me in the car - will probably be so bored without the kids!

There was a major down pour last Sunday morning in Gilbert - with lightning and thunder so loud and cats and dogs for rain.  And my first thought when I heard the storm was "The outdoor cushions!!!"  But thankfully they did not get wet! Here is perhaps remnants of another storm when we finally hit the road:

Can't believe we have made probably at least 10 road trips to Phoenix this past year to check on the house.  That's about 430 miles one way, which makes it 860 miles both ways... which would be 8,600 miles in total for 10 round trips.  That's basically a flight from Sydney, Australia to Dallas - one of the longest nonstops by distance!  And that flight only takes 15 1/2 hours. Ha ha!

One last dust storm to deal with perhaps??!

Anyhow... back to our soon-to-be new house in RPV!  It was a house that I had spotted online from a database that was set up by a real estate agent, whom we met at one of many random Open Houses. I put the house as my "Favorite" and a few days later, she emailed me and mentioned how she liked the area as it was close to where she had lived for 10 years. So Bobby and I went to see it on August 19 and boom, almost 2 months later, we are going to close on it!  I guess I will reveal the house once we all get in it.  The Seller have 3 days to move out after closing so we will be there this Sunday. InsyaAllah as they would say in Abu Dhabi! Somehow I still say that in my head even despite being away from the U.A.E now for a whole year!

But in the meantime, I can ponder about how much of a house I will get in Morristown, NJ for the same amount of money...

Or in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma:

It almost makes me cringe thinking about the money we are putting into this "humble and little" house.  YIKES!!!  But we are SOOOOOOO needing the space.  Graham and Charlie are literally on top of each other at times and we can't wait to have a backyard again... and a garage... and no neighbors upstairs!  Actually, the neighbor upstairs has just moved out and a new gal is moving in next weekend. Hopefully she's not noisy but at least we will only have to deal with her until the end of the month.  And it's funny how things have worked out as our apartment lease actually ends early next month. So we are not having to pay a month-to-month lease. Yay!!!

I have been so excited about moving in that I had even picked out paint colors last week!!!

And we have brought "Bob the Cactus" back with us on this road trip to be put in his new home soon.  Hope he likes the SoCal weather! (But seriously, who doesn't!!!)

We have already mentioned to Graham and Charlie about trick-or-treating in the new neighborhood.  Although I will miss this view - it's so calm and pretty by the coastline here and having the resort next door was also a bonus.  You just can't beat this view!

Everything will be happening next week (fingers crossed!) with cleaning, and painting, and the electrician... to start.  It's going to take a while to get through that Home Inspection list.  Wish us luck!!!

Charlie starts Ball Hockey

Well, another sport to take up our time in the evenings!  We decided to sign up Charlie for Ball (street) Hockey.  It's actually a league that has the same name as the LA Ice Hockey team, so I guess eventually we will take Graham and Charlie to go watch that!  I always wanted a Phoenix Coyotes jersey but looks like it will be the LA Kings first :-)

So here Charlie is... in his Captain America t-shirt - our future pro!  Wait... who wrote that? He he...

The coach actually got really excited when he found out I was a golf professional.  Ha ha!
Charlie seems to really like the sport so I guess we are vested into it now:

The stick and ball were provided but we had to buy shin guards and gloves and also the helmet.  Still having a tough time finding the helmet in the stores so might have to buy one online. It was more expensive online weirdly enough and then of course, I always worry about the fit!  I couldn't even visualize Charlie's shin length in the store, let alone trying to figure how to size his head for a helmet online??!

In the meantime, I have learned to tape up a hockey stick :-)

The team has not had a game yet. Will keep you all posted on his first game and first full-on attire!
"Tap-tap (with hockey sticks)... Go Kings!!!"

And oh, on a side note, while waiting on Charlie, Graham gets to join a Fun-and-Fit class for 45 minutes.  He is definitely getting really strong!  Check out his chin-up!

That's my boy!!! "Proud mama" moment :-D

Random photos

We finally started Graham and Charlie in Chinese classes!  It started about 3 weeks ago and all was well until last week, when Charlie started to cry when we walked into the building.  He was literally clinging onto me, saying he wanted to go home.  I told him there would be no tablet time if he didn't go.  That seemed to work!  We will see what happens this week. I did convince them to learn to write their Chinese name :-)

Graham's Chinese name is Lee-Wen - "Wen" meaning language and culture.  Charlie's Chinese name is Lee-An - "An" meaning peace.  I'm not sure how "peaceful" Charlie is??!!

We drove out to San Pedro to try out this place that serves shaved ice and floats.  When I wanted to order a specialty float, the girl at the counter said it would take 45 minutes. Wait,... excuse me??? 45 minutes??!  Are you kidding??! Well, the shaved ice probably took almost 30 minutes to show up. And it really wasn't anything fancy either!  I suppose as long as the boys are happy!

At least Charlie was happy.  But after a few scoops, I was like... "Where's our ice-cream???".  Not like the boys cared:

Well, a few minutes later - pretty much when the boys were almost done, the ice cream finally shows up.  Charlie actually ends up dropping this one on the floor after a couple of bites.  Thankfully the girl at the counter was nice enough to give us another (even bigger) scoop of ice cream!

I guess that was our first and last time at that place!

Charlie has been really busy with some art pieces again.  It's funny how he places them on the floor to dry, sort of what we did when we lived in Abu Dhabi.  We would just line his art work along the wall on the floor :-)

Charlie recently used this one for his presentation at school.  He has a presentation every week! Well, his teacher calls it "sharing", not "presentation".

This piece of artwork was inspired by a computer game, according to Charlie.  It's called Slither io. Here's a still image that I found off the internet.  I guess there is some resemblance???

Speaking of computer games, the boys are down to just playing their tablet over the weekend.  Here's the normal scene by the time I wake up:

More fancy car sightings... and this one is especially fancy!

It's an old Bentley.  WOAHHHH!!!

Last but not least, more fog!!!  Which is sort of nice because it keeps the weather pretty cool around here.  So spoiled now for sure!

It is suppose to rain tomorrow and/or Thursday.  I can't remember the last time it rained.  It is almost like Abu Dhabi here weirdly enough when it comes to amount of rain throughout the year!

Dressed up for class photo

I don't know why but somehow I totally forgot to get matching shirts for the boys' Fall class photo!  I found some sort of checkered shirts in their closet. And somehow, Graham and Charlie loves wearing long socks for school now.  I couldn't really get a good photo in the hallway of our apartment.  Charlie is being cheeky again, as usual:

Gosh, Charlie is getting so tall!  I think Graham is too but somehow it is not as obvious.  People are still asking if the boys are twins.  And now, Graham and Charlie don't want to buzz their hair short anymore.  Graham says the girls like it short but he likes it longer as his hair feels softer that way.  And Charlie wants to part his hair like Daddy.  What a difference a year makes!  Here's a photo taken last year at the end of October:

Makes you wonder what will happen next year??!

Graham starts Water Polo

We started Graham with water polo about 2 weeks ago.  It was one of the water sports made available at the local YMCA, which we decided to join a few weeks ago. There was an introductory family rate for September so I figured - why not!

Graham hasn't really figured out how to tread water yet, so I guess that was my biggest concern!  His coach was trying to give him a few hints during his trial class:

And what is Charlie doing during this time? Just fooling around in the pool.  He has signed up for Ball Hockey instead (also at the YMCA):

Graham does a few drill with the ball in the water.  He wears a floating device strapped around his waist to help him float.  You can almost see that little bit of that blue foam on his back:

It is a "Go" after his trial class!  Graham is going to give Water Polo a shot.  Momma bought him a pair of new speedy Speedo :-)

Hopefully he will stick with it for a while.  There is a monthly fee but I feel it will be really good for him in the long run, especially if he plans on being in the ocean more for body boarding.  Only time will tell!