About 2017

2017 was a big year for the Pandemonium Family. After 19 years in Illinois, we said goodbye to the Heartland and hello to the Sonoran desert of southern Arizona, following my job to Tucson.

January was consumed by trying find a suitable house to move our crew into, poring over a seemingly endless list of homes for sale. Nothing seemed to fit the bill.

Andrea and I traveled to Tucson in February to look at a final few places, but still couldn't find what we were looking for. Instead, we decided to try a new construction with a plan that seemed promising in a development on the east edge of town - an area that we had liked from the start for its quiet, rural feel. We were assured that the house should be finished by the beginning of August.

We worked on getting our house in Illinois ready to sell in March and Andrea worked on getting an overwhelming pile of accumulated stuff sorted and pared down to a manageable amount in preparation for a June move date.  Anthony finished 8th grade wrestling and both Kenrick and Anthony started track.

We sold our house in April after 12 days on the market. We continued to work on getting rid of a few more things that we wouldn't be needing in Arizona. Like lawnmowers. Sadly, our friends in Tucson reported only limited progress on our new construction - just a bit of dirt moved around.

We finally got some pictures of form work and plumbing in May with foundation slab planned for the end of the month. Our last track season at Monticello concluded with no small amount of sadness and we said goodbye to a nice little group of kids and parents. Our friends in Decatur hosted a surprise going-away potluck in the park. We feel very blessed to have such a special family of friends.

The movers came during the last week of May to pack everything in boxes and load the semi trailer from top to bottom, stem to stern. 27,000 pounds. We should have gotten rid of more stuff.

In June, we became officially homeless. We packed the van and truck and car with everything we thought we'd need over the summer and headed west. The kids experienced their first amusement park with real roller coasters at Silver Dollar City in Missouri. Anya loved the rides. Paxton didn't. We saw the Hot Rod Hall of Fame in Kansas and jumped in the Blue Hole in New Mexico before pulling into Tucson. After a few days in a hotel, we left our extra stuff with some friends and looped back north into Colorado for Hotchkiss convention and then on to Idaho for Parma convention. Both are special places and we got a much needed boost to soul and spirit from our time there.

We returned to Tucson in the middle of the three hottest consecutive days on record and worked on getting moved in to our rental house. We retreated to the mountains on the weekends to avoid melting. We also learned about cactus thorns and repairing bike tires. The framing work on our new house was almost done by the end of June, but it's pretty obvious that we wouldn't be moving in by August.

The kids started school again in July - a modified year-round schedule made the summer break pretty short. The high school is huge but Kenrick and Anthony dug in and learned how to negotiate the new environment. They both joined Marching Band, so that helped with the transition. Paxton and Anya started in the same grade school for the first time.

We had to find a storage unit for our household goods in August because our relocation storage benefits expired. The movers unloaded the truck into a 15' by 40' unit and I wasn't look forward to moving it all again.

Work was going fine. Same job, different office. I traveled back to Illinois and Wisconsin for some meetings with collegues there. It seemed odd to be traveling west to go back home.

We moved into a different rental house in September. This one was in a much better location and had better space, but the kids were still sharing bedrooms. The new house was progressing nicely now, but we still didn't have a solid completion date. Some of our old friends from Illinois came to visit and we introduced them to some of our new friends. We took them to check out the Desert Museum.

October was a month of much anticipation as the house was finally getting its finishing touches. Last decisions were being made and almost daily inspections on my part were probably doing more harm than good. We got a closing date for the end of the month. Now to round up some moving help.

Official move-in date was November 4.  I'm very grateful for the help of our small moving crew with a couple extra pickups and a trailer to supplement my rented U-Haul. We managed to transfer the bulk of the storage unit to the house in four trips, but it was well into evening by the time we unloaded the last box. Thanks again to Mark, Barry, Andrew, Jacob, Barbara, and Laurel. The new house looked great, but was plugged to the rafters with boxes. We definitely have too much stuff.

Our first Thanksgiving in Tucson was a quiet affair. Andrea had worked hard to unpack most of the boxes and to arrange the bedrooms and living room and kitchen into workable spaces and we were slowly getting a better idea of what needs to be done to make everything fit right. The weather didn't feel like it should be fall just yet. There's no indication of the change in seasons in the desert except that the temperatures become quite pleasant and the neighbors start putting up Christmas lights.

I can't say that we're really settled in yet, but by December we're at least starting to feel like it's possible. The temperature dipped below freezing for a few nights in a row and the mountains got a dusting of snow so we're not entirely deprived of a little winter weather. We headed back up to Idaho for Christmas to see our families and the fewer miles and dryer roads were a welcome change. Now, at the end of a very busy 2017, we're looking forward to heading back down south, into the desert, to our new home and whatever new adventures that 2018 may bring.