Loving it

Abbie helping in her Easter dress

I've had quite a few people ask me if we're liking Arizona.  The short answer is: yes!

The long answer is:  Are you kidding me??  We freaking LOVE it!  So far, we love EVERYTHING about it!  Granted it's not 120 degrees yet - our feelings might change a little bit mid-July, but then again, maybe not!

Living here is amazing!  Everything just seems easier here.  We know where everything is, and if we don't, we can easily look it up online.  And everything is SO CLOSE!  We've never lived this close to all this shopping and it is so convenient.  Within a 5 mile radius is Kohl's, Joann's, Tuesday Morning, Wal-Mart, Lowe's, JC Penneys, Target, Michaels, Best Buy, Pier 1, Ross, Barnes and Noble, Old Navy, Babies R Us, Marshalls, TX Maxx. Homegoods, etc, and that's forgetting a few and not including any of the smaller stores.  I could WALK to Target in about 10 mins.  There are about 40  - 50 restaurants within 10 mins (and they're not all Italian!!!!!) and gas stations, grocery stores, banks, churches and Abbie's preschool (plus the other one we want to send her to).  There are nice parks, SIDEWALKS (didn't have those in Italy near us) and even bike lanes throughout our neighborhood.  We have a great yard for the kids to play in and we can just turn them out there and let them go and they have a great time.

I think the main reason we are loving AZ so much, and the reason we disliked Italy so much, was because of our houses.  We hated our house in Italy.  It was too small for the 4 of us and 2 dogs, to start with.  It was always cluttered because there was no storage.  It wasn't big enough to get away from the kids ever and with Abbie not being the best sleeper in the world, it made it difficult.  This house in AZ is obviously a lot better.  It's over twice as big, so we're not on top of each other.  We can put the kids to bed upstairs and enjoy our "free time" downstairs, watching TV or studying or whatever.  We can make popcorn after Abbie goes to bed without her being able to immediately smell it and start yelling, "Are you making some pa-corn??",  "Will you save some for me?", etc.  The kitchen is ginormous compared to the one we had in Italy and I don't have to keep my pots and pans on the stove because they don't fit in the cabinets.  Our master closet is 2-3x bigger than our master bath in Italy and our master bath here is bigger than our bedroom was in Italy.  We are a bit spoiled here with all this space, but it's another reason we are loving it.

The dogs don't drag as much stuff in because it's dry here, not wet 70% of the time.  The dogs drug SO much stuff into the house in Italy.  Dachshunds don't have much clearance, so they drag tons of stuff in on their bellies and paws.  I had to sweep the floor every single time they came in in Italy since they brought half the yard in with them.  And since it was muddy, they left paw prints everywhere also.  Have you ever tried to clean up wet dog poop?  Even cleaning up dog poop is about 300 times easier in AZ.

I miss my friends in Italy, and I miss living by the mountains and the travel opportunities we had there.  But we are surrounded by pretty decent hills/ mountains here and we're excited to do some hiking around them.  And we have some great travel opportunities here also that we're excited about.  Not traveling around Europe exciting, but exciting none-the-less - and cheaper!

I loved having the experience of living overseas, and someday, I wouldn't mind living overseas again - when the kids are older and more independent.  But for now, at this point in our lives, we are SO happy to be back in the States.  Now if we could just get the house done so we're not in the constant state of renovations....

I am so sick of painting!!!  Three more bedrooms and a hallway to go!

Mark installing our new backsplash!  We love the way it turned out!

We own a house!

 We got in to Phoenix on Friday, March 8th.  Stayed in a hotel Friday night, moved to base TLF's on Saturday and stayed there Saturday - Wednesday.  My parents got to Phoenix on Sunday evening, and we closed on our first house on Monday!  Here's the grand - pre-renovations - tour.  It already looks a lot different, but here's what we bought.

The entry way, formal living room and formal dining room

The kitchen with eat-in area behind the island

Staircase to the upstairs

Downstairs guest bedroom

Downstairs/guest bathroom

Family room

Master bedroom

Part of master bathroom (door on the right is the toilet room)

Other part of the master bathroom  (2nd vanity not pictured)

Half of the master closet
(This closet is about 4 times bigger than our bathroom was in Italy)

Upstairs hallway
Master bedroom is right to the right (not seen), hall closet, Ben's room is next to the closet, Abbie's room is straight back, the play room is right next to Abbie's room and the upstairs bathroom is next to the playroom/across from the closet

The playroom

Upstairs bathroom

Ben's room and walk in closet

Abbie's room and walk in closet

Part of the back yard

Our pool!!!  Who's coming to visit?!

Built-in grill that's hooked up to the house gas.  (My stove is also gas.)

Not pictured is the 3 car garage with a whole bunch of built-in cabinets and shelving, under stairs closet with lots of shelving, side yard with more trees and my raised garden with sprinkler system already installed, and the rest of the porch that has ceiling fans and shades that roll up and down.  The previous owner also gave us a less than year old lawn mower.  The house included all the kitchen appliances and also fairly new washer and dryer set.  This house has a lot of great features, one of which is a built-in sound system in the living room and master bedroom.  We are really happy with it.

That being said, it also needs a LOT of work to get it updated.  We put carpet in all of the upstairs bedrooms and hallway (which were originally tiled - pics on what it looks like now coming later) and replaced the carpet in the family room and living/dining room and stairs so they all matched.  We've repainted most of the first floor and we will eventually repaint most of the second floor also.  In our repainting, we discovered that the original wall color was this horrid PINK color.  Gross.  All of the door handles, bathroom faucets and light fixtures and drawer/cabinet pulls are gold and silver, so we plan on eventually replacing all of that as we get the money for it.  We discovered on one of our 28 trips to Lowe's in the past week that interior door handles are $20-40 EACH and we have about 15 of them to replace.  Yay.  We're going to replace the ceiling fans on the 2nd floor also since they are pretty dated.  We're putting a back splash up in the kitchen and I've already ripped down the vertical blinds and have plans to put sheer curtains up in their place - once I get my sewing machine, that is.  We're still debating painting the kitchen cabinets white, but right now we're all painted out and we still have the entire stairwell and upstairs to paint so if we do redo the cabinets, it won't be any time soon.

We're loving being able to call this place our own, although we've spent a scary amount of money at Lowe's already and we haven't even owned the house for 2 weeks!

I'll get more pictures up of the renovations as soon as possible.  Please come visit us!!!  We'd love to have guests!