First House Party

This last week Mara had a well deserved week off from the long days of residency...although she is having a blast...:) The first couple days she relaxed, the only way she know how, by keeping busy. She worked out, did tons of house projects, and found a few minutes to relax by the pool. Wednesday she kept Rohan home and took him to the Phoenix Children's Museum for several hours. Awesome way to beat the heat, and Rohan got to explore and run around. It's funny how different he is from the first time we went last year. Thursday and Friday I took off and we had some time together to work on the house, and just enjoy some time together! :) We both went and got our official AZ driver's licenses as well...:) Awesome to have the Grand Canyon on the license! They are good until 2043, so that's nice. Hopefully we'll be here that long! We had tons of yard work to do. We did lots of pruning, weed pulling, watering, pool cleaning, organizing and a host of other stuff. It was mostly little things we've been wanting to do since we moved in, just not a ton of time to do it until now. Unfortunately it was 115°F outside, so we were pretty wiped out when we were done, but the everything looked great, and we even found some energy to climb at AZR. Friday night we were out grocery shopping and running little errands when we came home to a surprise. A guy walked off our front porch and said "Is this where the party is?". It was my Dad! He came to crash our housewarming party! It was a really nice surprise...:) We gave him a tour and chatted until about midnight his time, then he crashed. Saturday we got up early and went and played some baseball at the park with Rohan (since it was only 95°F at 10am). Then walked to our favorite coffee house, Matador, before heading home to relax before our party. The party was pretty solid from ~2pm to the end, I think around 11pm. We had a great mix of people from TGEN, PCH, and AZR, and tons of kids to keep the dogs busy playing fetch. We had the grill going for several hours for lunch, supper, and later supper. We had tons of food since everyone brought something, and of course some adult beverages. We broke in our new volleyball net. Ringo the dog broke in our new volleyball...good thing we had a spare...and we had a great time with some great friends! Can't wait to do it again! Hope everyone had a great week, and stayed cooler than we were! Thanks again for coming Dad!!!

Yardwork!!!

It's funny that we are excited about doing yard work, but having a house again has reinvigorated us to work outside, even when it's 110°F! Friday night we hit AZR since we have been neglecting our climbing gym! It felt good, and we both were checking out some new routes they put up and doing pretty good on them too! :) One of our friends from AZR came over and helped us un-install a stubborn faucet we had. The faucet was very corroded and was unusable, so we haven't used our kitchen sink since we moved in! We could not get ONE bolt undone since it was so rusted, but Chris came over with his tools and got it taken care of. We installed our new faucet, and have been LOVING the opportunity to use our sink! Saturday we borrowed another friends truck and hauled A TON of yard waste from our yard. When we moved in 3 weeks ago we took down a HUGE vine that was taking over our back yard, as well as trimmed some palms that hadn't been trimmed in probably a year, and also removed some thorny shrubs we hated. We also got rid of the old gas stove from the previous owners...all in 2 trips! It all made the yard look SO much better though. Mara had to cross cover in the ER that night until 2am, so she was one tired girl! Good think she has a week off now! Sunday was more of the same, but this time it was our anniversary! :) We started off with some tee-ball with Rohan at the school park by our house. We got out super early so we could beat most of the heat. Afterwards we walked to our coffee shop, Matador for some iced coffees and bagels. While Rohan napped we did some more yard work in the front yard, pulling weeds, removing more vines, and cleaning up after our cactus. The cactus is HUGE and has some really big, pretty white flowers that bloom every night. Unfortunately they die that next day, fall off, and rot on our lawn. It does this every night... The cactus is due for a hacking, but that will probably wait until later this week... We spent the rest of the night celebrating our anniversary. We went swimming for a while with Rohan, then hit our new favorite sushi place, Sushi Brokers. After filling up on sushi, we went to the batting cages at Crackerjax to prep for our upcoming softball league. After thoroughly wearing Rohan out, he crashed and we had our dessert. Mara had made some tofu chocolate/espresso mousse earlier, and it was AMAZING! Highly recommend this recipe...i'ts from a chocolate company (SCHARFFEN BERGER), so you KNOW it's good!! :) Hope everyone had a great week! We are looking forward to our open house party this weekend! Can't wait to break the house in! :)


Rohan Rar-ing...Be ready for a good "RAR!" to start and end the video:

San Diego (Sans Rohan!)

Last week I presented a poster at a conference (Mechanisms & Models of Cancer) at the prestigious Salk Institute.  It was a really cool conference, albeit long.  It was 8am-10pm every night from Wednesday through Saturday, but VERY informative and lots of great science being done.

The best part, is since TGEN was paying for my ticket and hotel, we got Heather & John to watch Rohan and Mara was able to come and stay the weekend with me!  It's been a while since we've done something like that, and especially since we needed a break after finally getting the house, Mara's busy schedule, and just needing a break from the heat. We definitely got a break from the heat. It was ~110°F in Phoenix, and the first couple days in San Diego, it never got above 70°F!  We have been to San Diego a couple times, but there were things we still wanted to see.  We finally got to a rock gym we've seen before, Solid Rock Gym, near the airport.  We also got to fit in a couple runs.  I ran a couple times around my hotel in Del Mar, and Mara and I both got runs in around Torrey Pines park.  We both ran on the Broken Hill Trail, which ends at a breathtaking point!  Highly recommended!

Friday  night when Mara got in we hit up a cool restaurant called Crepes and Corks in Del Mar, then hit another place to relax by a fire pit at Zel's.  We had to head back fairly early since I had one more day at the conference...:(

Saturday., after my conference,  we hit up an AMAZING sushi place, Sushi Ota, in Del Mar.  The only way to say it, was it was awesome, period.  Afterwards we hit the boardwalk and saw some awesome ships and art along the way.  We've always driven by the boardwalk, but it was great to see close up!  We also hit up Little Italy area for some dessert before calling it a late night after walking several hours around town.

Sunday we got up early and hit a coffee shop before heading to the Gas Lamp district, and one more coffee shop...called The Village Coffee & Wine Bar.  Very good lunch there, then headed to Coronado Island and walked around Spreckels Park, and then the beach where we saw some pelicans diving and even some dolphins! One last stop before we headed to the airport was a stop at our favorite coffee shop in Pacific Beach...Cafe By The Bay.  A really cool end to our trip!

We have been working on the house little by little, and hope to have a little shindig for those who can make it!  :)

Dolphins at Coronado Beach: Bird diving (really just the first 3 seconds of video...the rest is waves and wind...):

Getting Settled

We reached a pretty awesome milestone for moving in...we got to the point we could get both cars in the garage! :)  It just means there are more boxes inside, but we are making headway trying to figure out where everything goes.  Rohan is already loving the space!  He runs around the kitchen/living room/front room/hallway track several times a day, usually we are chasing or being chased.  The dogs have adapted VERY well to the new house, I think they enjoy the room too.
We have already started some projects (like replacing some leaky faucets, light fixtures, door knobs, etc), and we are also getting reminded how big of a pain in the ass that can be too.  We are having a lot of fun though, and it's been a good weekend.  Putting things away and innumerable trips to Home Depot & Lowes are taking up most of our time, although we did get a run and stroll in through the new neighborhoods.  It will take a while getting used to the new terrain since we usually ran through less populated areas, but we're getting some good routes down.  We have also started traingin for the Tough Mudder race in January.  11 miles, 23 obstacles...10,000 volt electrocution at the end...should be fun...:)  It all supports the Wounded Warrior Project, so that's a great thing to be a part of.  There is time if you want to join us too...:)
Saturday, Greg and Nico came over for a bit and we caught up and grilled out chicken & brats, then hit the pool to cool off.  It will be a lot of fun to have a house warming party when we finally get settled!  Mila and Rohan were fast friends again.  I think she is really interested in what he's doing, and vice-versa.
Not much else to report other than getting settled and figuring out where to put everything and all the little nuances of the new place.  I have a Mechanisms & Models of Cancer conference at the Salk Institute in San Diego this week, so I fly out Tuesday night and attend Wednesday through Sunday.  Mara is going to join me on the weekend while Heather watches Rohan.  It will be a REALLY nice break for us (and Rohan).  It will be nice to get to SD without Rohan and find some fun things to do outside the conference.  We found a rock gym to check out too...:)  Should be fun!
We'll send out some more pictures of the house when it's not just boxes and tools sitting out everywhere...:) Here are some pics from the last week, and some videos from the last month or so. We had packed our camera, so the video is from our cell phones...not great, but better than nothing!

Rohan running the bases at Chase Field during the Brewer's extra innings win...:)
Rohan getting his exercise running around the house:

WHAT A RIDE!!!

YES! We are still here! We have been consumed by the home buying roller coaster that we have been riding since we put our first offer in on Valentines Day, 2011.
Long story short, banks suck, and they've been stalling this process, which took little more than 2 weeks to actually close.
Want the long story? Here ya' go...Bank of America (BoA) was the primary lender for the seller, who bought the house for $350,000 in 2007, and Wells Fargo (WF) was the lender for the second mortgage of around $50,000. The house was worth $400,000 at some point! The guy defaulted (after a divorce) in August 2010, and the house sat empty for 6 months before we saw it. The pool was clear, but lots of leave and such on the bottom, the yard was a mess, but Mara loved the house. We put an offer in on VD Day (:P) and then waited for nearly 3 months before we heard anything back from the banks.
In the meantime I started taking care of the pool. Our realtors were great and had the water and power put in their names so we could run the pump and get it cleaned up. Everyone thought the sale was right around the corner... The pool ended up being a disaster. Nothing structural, just dirty! There was a HUGE algae problem, and the organic material from the leaves wasn't helping. We drained the pool and refilled it with clean water, then fought algae for the next couple months. In this interim Mara became a D.O., I had a birthday, and our lease ran out on our apartment so we were renting week-to-week for an obscene amount of money...it's only going to be a few more weeks, right?!?!
Wrong. We closed, once on the house on July 11th...then got an e-mail right in the middle of signing documents.  It stated that the banks could not agree on the monies doe to them at closing...grrr...  The way it usually works is the 2nd mortgage (WF) get's $3,000, and the primary (BofA) gets the rest.  Kind of a "you shouldn't have given this guy any more money" to the 2nd lender.  WF wanted $5,100 instead of the $3,000, essentially 10% of the defaulted 2nd mortgage.  BofA said "No".  We talked it over, and we said we would pay the $2,100 to close this deal out.  WF said, fine, but it has to say "$5,100" on the paperwork...BofA said it had to say "$3,000".  Then the stalemate began.  The two banks were having a pissing contest, and essentially holding our house hostage.

Then the next stage of our saga began...  Our apartment complex didn't like us renting for an indefinite amount of time, and we sure as hell didn't like paying $400/week to stay there, so we moved out...but where?  Heather & John offered, but Rohan's daycare was about 30min past downtown (where we were both going to be), so it would have been a hassle that way.  We ended up crashing at our friend Jeanette's place.  Single, lives in a 3br home, and close to the house we are trying to buy.  She was such an awesome host!!!  She made a little bed for Rohan out of a futon mattress, and took us, our dogs, and a rambunctious 2 1/2 year old in without blinking an eye. Truely a great person in every sense. Thank you SO much Jeanette!
We stayed there for about 3 weeks before the good new came that WF finally accepted the $3,000...now we wait for paperwork...they had to get new HUD documents and new offer acceptance letters in.  Just in time for one guy to take a vacation and not tell anyone.  Our realtors, title company, and lender all tried contacting him, but he never responded (no "out of office rely" either).  Finally someone contact his supervisor, and within a week we had the new documents, and then we could start the closing process all over again.  Locking in rates (which went up almost a percent from when we started this deal!!!), credit checks, bank statements, the works.
FINALLY...we closed on the house, and we can start the next chapter in this saga...

For those interested, here are some pics of the house from when we toured it with my parents, back in MARCH! :)  We've already started some projects so look out for those pics.  We'll also be updating the last month or so of being "homeless"...:)