Floors, Floors, Floors, Floors...and Gardening!

Since Thursday we have been working on refinishing our hardwood floors. Erik, our friend, Bill and brother-in-law, Billy worked on stripping the floors all day on Thursday. It is a smelly, icky job, but the three of them did some great work and got all but a 2 foot strip finished all in one day! Three bedrooms, the hallway and living room!
My parents came up on Friday evening and spent the weekend here working. First my dad sanded all the floors and then we put on three coats of poly. It was even my mom's Birthday yesterday and she spend half the day helping with the second coat of polyurethane! Happy Birthday Mom! Sorry you spent it working! My mom also helped me transplant a few plants and do some weeding at the end of our driveway. Thank you everyone for all your help. We have just one coat left in the living room and then the floors are finished...or refinished, I guess! We have also changed a couple of the light fixtures and we have a couple more to go. And I plan to do some painting tomorrow night. I'll post some 'Before and After' pics soon. We hope to be moving in soon...possibly this coming Saturday! We can't wait until our house is actually a HOME!

Bittersweet Day

Yesterday was a bittersweet day for us. We were very excited to close on our very first house! However, we can't take possession of the house until at least this evening but possibly tomorrow evening. The excitement is somewhat lost when you can't even go into the house you just bought!

However, the delay in taking possession of our house is just a small portion of the bitter part of the day. Yesterday we also found out that Erik's Grandpa has Stage 4 Lung Cancer that is inoperable. They don't expect that he will make it much longer. It was very hard to be at the hospital with the family last night and trying to accept their congratulations on our house through our tears. Things are very uncertain right now but they are arranging to have hospice care for Grandpa Johnny. We will try to spend as much time with him as we can these days. He is 89 and has lived a great life, but it is still so hard to say good-bye. Please pray for Erik's family during this hard time.

Homeowners!

Happy 1st Birthday Kaleb!

Yesterday was our nephew, Kaleb's 1st Birthday.  He's a big boy and all smiles!  It was fun to go to Owatonna yesterday to celebrate and also to go to the Steele County Free Fair.  It is always a hit!  We had cake and ice cream at Jana's house to celebrate Kaleb's Birthday and then had lunch with my Grandpa at the fair.  As you can see...Kaleb got the hang of eating his own cake pretty quickly!  He also enjoyed the mega blocks we got for him.

Eagles and Seagulls

Erik and I headed to the cabin this weekend with Erik's parents. We figure the next couple weekends will be busy with house stuff. We are scheduled to close on our house a week from TODAY!! Then we are most likely going to redo the hardwood floors (with a lot of help from my parents!) before we're able to move in entirely. I can't believe how quickly this is happening now! Thank goodness!

Here are a few fun pics from the cabin. We saw a lot of seagulls as well as a few eagles. I didn't take any photos of the seagulls --sorry, they are not as exciting. We keep forgetting to bring our bigger camera, but the powershot does a pretty good job too.

Complete With Party Dress

Last Thursday, we were very honored to be a part of Baby Raina's first outing. Only one week old and she's already hitting the town! OK, mainly this outing was for Kellie (Raina's mom). We had sushi at Akita in Woodbury. Kellie was very excited to take part in sushi since it had been 9 months since she could have raw fish or anything of the sort. It was VERY good (however, I only eat veggie sushi). We enjoyed our time together --even though we had to sit at two different tables. The restaurant actually does not allow you to sit together unless everyone at the table gets the "all you can eat." They are too afraid of people sharing the all you can eat food with others who are ordering off the regular menu. Shane and I do not like sushi as much as Kellie and Erik...so, we didn't think it would be worth paying the all you can eat price. We thought that was pretty ridiculous, but they were not going to make any exceptions. So, the best we could come up with was that we would sit at two different tables that were next to each other. Yep, we took up 8 spots in the restaurant because they don't trust people! It's was pretty crazy, but the food was really good!

Traveling Nomads

This week has been a bit out of the ordinary as we are kind of 'homeless' and we've become a pair of traveling nomads. Erik's Aunt & Uncle are in town and they are staying in the guest room that we have been living in. We had many offers of places we could stay during this week. Thank you for all your generosity! In the end we decided to split our time. We spent most of last week at Bill & Carol's house with their two kids. We had a blast with the kids and spending evenings talking with Bill & Carol. I took three days off work and hung out with Carol. We hit a lot of garage sales, picked up some Craig's List finds and on Saturday, we painted their front entryway and hallway. It had been a work in progress and we decided to get it over with. It was also the least we could do since we stayed with them and ate their food all week! Thanks guys!


On Saturday evening we went with Bill & Carol to meet Little Miss Raina! Shane & Kellie had their baby girl on Thursday afternoon. We were so happy to meet her on Satirday. We brought dinner to them and hung out that evening. Raina is just a little peanut! So perfect, so cute!


Yesterday we spent the day at Erik's parents' (while his family was at the cabin). We caught up on laundry and relaxed...after Erik ran his 12 mile run for his Marathon Training. I biked with him so he could have water throughout the run. It went really well. I'm seriously so proud of Erik! It has been wonderful to see him go for his goal. I can't wait to cheer him on at the marathon!

For the next two nights we'll be staying in the Bethel Dorm! For all you Bethelites, we'll be in AV West with Miranda & Brian. They were gracious enough to let us stay with them and it will make my commute a breeze!

It's August Already?

This summer has been flying by and sometimes feels like it hasn't even started. It's been pretty cool and rainy here and we really have not gotten into the 'groove of summer.' This last weekend we went to the cabin and ended up wearing sweatshirts all weekend. It was still fun. Sue and I didn't mind having an excuse to go shopping! We had a lot of fun shopping in town on Saturday and I got some ideas for our house.

Ever since I was in jr. high or high school, I knew that whenever I got a house of my own, one of the first things I would do is get modern/fun house numbers for the house. Well, Sue and I had to get some things at Menards for the cabin. While I stopped at the restroom for a minute, Sue had gotten all 4 of our house numbers and set them up in order. I didn't even know she knew our address! She then bought the house numbers for us. I'm so excited to put them on our house!

On Sunday, Erik and I ended up getting a patio set and bocce ball set on clearance. So, we're ready for a backyard party this fall. We just need to find a grill --or we could use our little camping grill :) Can you tell where getting a little anxious to get into our first house!