Happy Easter!!

These are pictures from the Chihuly Exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. Our next door neighbor is a ranger there and treated us a couple weeks ago. The picture above is of his piece titled "The Sun" - I thought it was appropriate for today. Dale Chihuly is a glass artist who has pioneered in glassblowing- all of his sculptures are blown glass. The Sun is over 700 tubes wired together. For each exhibit (it's a traveling exhibit), the pieces are wired together, so the pieces never turn out the same way. Chihuly also comes to the location, and chooses where he wants the pieces and builds the garden into his art. It was amazing! Even just the Desert Botanical Garden was incredibly beautiful.




Heather and I in front of a very rare crested saguaro- this is a mutation that only happens rarely.







Happy Easter!
Love,
Laurie

Here's our tiling project.

More recent pictures of the outside of the house

P.S. Now I see what you mean about the pictures loading backwards. Very odd.

The Floorplan and other details

I haven't measured anything, so please disregard the numbers. This is the layout of the house. I built it upside down, so north is at the bottom. Whoops.

It is 1289 sq ft, built in 1989. It is about a mile from our last apartment, before we moved to the condo last year. It is on a corner lot in the middle of a little neighborhood, with a grass "square" in the middle. At the end of the street there is a walkway that connects to the elementary school and the nearby park, and also to a walking path that runs east-west from the dog park and swimming pool on Kyrene (south of the Kyrene apt- for those of you who saw the jogging path there, it is not the same one- I wish! this one is concrete sidewalk- can't run on it...) to the small airplane airpark on McClintock. We are smack in the middle- Kyrene is 1 mile west, and McClintock is 1 mile east. The seller wants a 60-day escrow, so we're scheduled to close June 15th.

Our house :)

Here's the house that we are signing the contract for tonight!

Back yard

House from the front

Looking at the front door

Looking from the front door

Kitchen

Dining room

Family room

Third bedroom

Second bath

Second bedroom

Master bath

Master bath

Master bath

Master bedroom

Skiing with Marcus Libkind

Mom & I spent the weekend skiing with Marcus Libkind. Marcus is the author of the "Ski Touring in the Sierra Navada" series of guide books. He has retired and is working on updating his tours so that he can put them on his website. http://www.backcountryskitours.com/index.htm On Friday, Marcus & I skied Big Meadow and Cabbage Patch. Saturday the 3 of us skied the Osborne Loop, including a sidetrip to the overlook of Union & Utica Lakes. Sunday we skied up the west side of Poison Canyon and over into Bee Gulch. After a fun run down into Bee, we skied back into Poison Canyon and down the east side. Awesome weekend!

new offer, new house

We canceled escrow on the other house and put an offer in on a different house. It is a long story that most of you know. This one is 5 bed/2.5 bath and about 2000 sq ft.
Escrow is supposed to close on April 22nd.

we made an offer on a house

As you may know, we have been looking to buy a house. We made an offer on a house a few weeks ago that was not accepted. We saw another house that we liked in the same neighborhood and made an offer yesterday. Both houses are foreclosures. We received a counter offer from the bank today and we are still trying to decide if we are going to accept or counter the counter. It is a 4 bed/ 2.5 bath, 2000 sq ft house on a 6000 sq ft lot. Here are some pictures.

More pics from Pres. Day

President's Day 2/15/09

Here are some pictures from our weekend with Christy & family at the cabin. William really enjoyed the snow and his new skis.