Packing...

Thankfully we don't have tons of stuff since our annual moves help clean out junk. But still, packing is packing and I don't like it. It's even more challenging with a 17 month old wanting attention or unpacking as I pack. We've been packing mostly after he is in bed, which leaves his room almost untouched. I have boxed up his too small clothes and too big clothes but the rest I'll just toss into a box. We have his room, the kitchen, and odds and ends to finish up.

Our closing is tomorrow. I have some friends coming over tomorrow evening to help me clean the house and then we hope to get most of the moving done on Sat. I don't want to be in limbo too long. Another blessing is the house is only about 5 miles away so we can just through stuff in.

I can't believe this day is already here. When we set the closing date, I thought it would be a long month, but as usually we somehow managed to stay busy. My sister came up one weekend, Mike's cousin got married last weekend and then this weekend is it.

We are excited to get moved in, settled and get the fire pit dug!

THE house

The Friday before we left to help my sister move in in Madison, our realtor sent the usual email with a list of houses for us to look at. One house stood out because of the price and location. It was at the top of our price range but just 2 miles from Mike's work. One downside of where Mike works is all the house in that area are usually at least $100,000 more than what we can pay for. But not this house!! We drove by on our way out of town and decided it was definitely one to look at. I emailed our realtor and told him if this house is still available on Mon, we'd like to take a look at it.

Monday afternoon came and the house was still on the market, but barely. Apparently the seller's realtor had another offer to present but hadn't yet. This is usually pretty odd for a realtor to sit on an offer but we had until 7 that evening to put in an offer if we were going to.

The house wasn't a foreclosure which is pretty much all that we had been looking at so far. It was neat to walk into a house that had been cared for, currently lived in and had fresh flowers, music and the a/c running in anticipation of us coming!! So we put in an offer that evening and started the waiting. This is our second offer we had put in on a house, so we expected to have to wait like we did with the first house. Maybe about two hours later we heard back that if we adjusted our offer slightly we'd get the house. Thankfully it wasn't a price adjustment! We sent the adjusted offer back in and got THE house!

It happened so fast, literally one day, that we had a hard time believing we just bought a house. The funny thing is Mike has only been inside the house twice. My parents and grandmother were able to see it and they really liked the house.

A few details about the place: it's a story and a half house with 4 bed/1 bath, has two wood burning fireplaces!!!!, a huge unfinished basement and backs up to a lake. Now that lake part isn't too rare up here in the Twin Cities where there are tons of lakes. This lake is a wildlife refuge so no motorized boating is allowed but we are hoping we'll still be able to canoe on it.

So here we are, joining the masses to be first-time home owners!!!

(I'll post pictures when we actually own the house.)

What we've been doing

It's been 3 months since the last post and we've been busy this summer. Camping with friends, visiting with family, eating some great food and the occasional house hunt (that's enough for it's own post later).

In July, Mike surprised me with a backpacking trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota. We dropped Josiah off with Mike's parents for four days and headed west. We stopped at the Badlands National Park on the way and hiked a short trail to an overlook of the park.

We backpacked in the Black Elk Wilderness just down the road from Mt. Rushmore. We swam in Sylan Lake and hiked Harney Peak. At 7244 ft, Harney Peak is the highest peak east of the Rockies. On the way back home, we drove through Sturgis, where everyone one was getting geared up for the rally. We had a great time and the weather was perfect besides the afternoon thunder storms that blew through. Check out the photo albums to the right for pictures of our trip.

In August, we went on our third annual berry picking trip to Bayfiel, WI. Our friends and their brother's family joined us so we had six kids under 4 in tow. We camped along Lake Superior and survived the nightly thunder and lightening storms. The kids slept through it all while the parents were awake praying and counting the miles between lightening and thunder. We picked blueberries and raspberries and probably ate as much as we picked. We arrived to the farm late so many of the berries had been picked but we still enjoyed the annual berry pancakes the following morning.

That next weekend, we drove to Madison, WI to help my sister move in. Yes, that's right, Lauren is now 4 hrs east of us in Madison starting her Doctorate program in Music Education at the University of Wisconsin. She had many universities to choose from but this one seemed to have the best program and also it was closest to us! That weekend we also got to visit with my Dad and Grandmother who drove up with Lauren to help her move. And with Mom who flew in for about two weeks.

The Monday after all this visiting, we went and looked at THE house. Stay tuned to find out why it's THE house!