I found something in my dryer the other day....

Well...nothing's changed in the past week and a half since we've been in our new home...I'm still in love with it! We're completely unpacked...we have been for a while now, but I don't think anyone that knows us would be surprised by that...we're "pro" movers. We've moved six times in six years, and we're very organized people. I love organization, but that's another post for another day...

Now that we're all moved in, we're so excited to host when people come to visit. We both love having guests (whether it be family or friends), so we made sure to end our first week in our new home with friends coming over. Heath and Heather came to cookout with us and brought their adorable daughter Kaylynn with them, so we had a great evening hanging out with the Schiesher family. Kaylynn is 3 and ran around the house a million times until she found the laundry room. At that point, it was all about the laundry room. She loved the laundry room, and I couldn't blame her...I love my laundry room too. Heather and I watched her play in the laundry room for quite a while. For Heath and Heather's sake, I hope she continues to love the laundry room so that they don't have to do as much laundry when she gets older. That would be a great one for her chore list...

Our First House

There are a lot of things in life that I absolutely love, and our new house is one of them. I may even venture to say that I might choose our house over a million dollar mansion (if I were ever given the choice).








I love our shutter windows, our sun porch, our new bedroom, our new garden, our my laundry area, our original hardwood floors...I could ramble on for hours about everything I love about our new home. And I'm extremely excited that we have no future plans to move.







I'm not too excited about the noon whistle that goes off EVERY DAY at noon. I'm not even sure why anyone needs the reminder that it's 12 o'clock every day...just get a watch. It's 2011 not 1950. But anyway...that doesn't change the fact that I love, love, love our new house!!


 




We've only been in our house for a week now and that week has flown by. I can only imagine how fast life is going to go by as we enter into this new phase in our lives, but for now, I'm going to enjoy every moment of it...even the noon whistle.

  

Thank you, Barb & Terry!!

We close on our house this week, which is really exciting, but we also say goodbye to living with the Hoffbergs. Barb & Terry have been such a huge blessing, and we've had so much fun living with them. We're definitely going to miss hanging out with them every day. We've had tons of laughs, played quite a few card games, and enjoyed absolutely delicious dinners. We're so excited to finally move into our new home, but I am definitely going to miss Barb's cooking and Terry's sense of humor...actually they're both hilarious. It was so nice to have dinner ready when I got home...on several occasions. After a long day at work, that's always a blessing, and Barb & Terry have been awesome to live with. We pray that some day we can be a blessing to someone else the way they have been a blessing to us. Thanks, Barb & Terry!! We're going to miss our housemates. We love you both!!

Life Happens

Life, in general, has really caught up with us lately. We've been busy non-stop for the past month, and I'm not going to lie...there's been moments where I felt like it was all I could do to stay afloat. Only by God's grace do we ever get through these moments in life, and praise God for that. Over the past couple weeks we've been...

 

Volunteering with Barb & Terry for the Boys and Girls Club, and enjoying all the "little people" that came to the wrestling camp that they coordinated.

 Helping my dad and step-mom move and "purge" some of their things.

 Refinishing our dining room table for our new house...

  with the help of my father who's very gifted as a woodworker...thank you, Dad!

 Learned about the Chinese culture from Ma & Pa Kaney's Chinese guests...so fun!

I somehow got lost on the way home from a woman's retreat in Lake Geneva even with four women, two cars, an atlas, and a GPS in one car, but enjoyed every moment of it nonetheless.

 Went to a baby shower that was decorated with the cutest tissue paper flowers...such a cute idea and so inexpensive to do. Loved it!

 I got a kick out of watching three people try to play a DVD...hilarious!

And I had time to pull over on the side of the road on my way home from work to watch the sunset...something my husband would have never agreed to do if he were in the car with me.

Life definitely caught up with us the past couple of weeks, but that's just how life happens sometimes. Even though my list of things to do is never-ending and my schedule is always full, God only puts on our plates what we can handle.

A Lull of Excitement

Lately Aaron has been laughing at me because I'm excited "all the time". I guess you could say I've been a little overly excited about too many things lately. I never thought I'd be getting made fun of for being excited too much. I thought being excited about something would be a good thing, but I think I may have reached the point where it might just be plain annoying. I'm not going to lie...I'm sitting here thinking about all the things I've been excited about lately, and I'm having to resist the urge to run in the other room and tell Aaron yet another thing I'm excited about. I know exactly what his response would be too. He would just laugh, shake his head, and say "you're excited about everything".

I'm excited about the fact that I only have to work four days this week. I'm excited to get to spend some time with family this weekend. I'm super excited about the fact that we're refinishing a table for our new house at my dad and Jody's. I was really excited about the fact that it was going to reach 60 degrees this weekend until I heard that it was supposed to rain for almost the next ten days straight. But then I got excited again when I remembered how "April showers bring May flowers" (or so they say). I was really excited about dinner tonight when I walked in the door from work and could smell Barb's delicious meal cooking for us, and I'm sure I'll be really excited about at least ten other meals this week. Not to mention, I'm extremely excited about my our new house!! I'm excited to be able to paint the walls, work in the garden, sit on my sun porch and drink tea on a Saturday morning, make meals in my new kitchen, and do all the other things that homeowners do.

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of things that I could not be excited about, but it's so much more fun to be excited about things. The Lord has blessed us so much, and I'm thankful even for the ability to get excited. I hope I stay in this lull of excitement for a long time.

Small Town Life

It's official...we're small town people. It's amazing how quickly we became acclimated to our new environment.

This past week...
I didn't have to tell anyone we were buying a house because everyone I ran into already knew.

Without thinking, I waved to all oncoming traffic on my way to work.

I felt out of place at Wal-Mart because half of the people there were in overalls. (I continue to tell Aaron that I need a pair, but he just laughs at me.) 

I got stuck in "traffic" on my way to work...or (in other words) I got stuck behind a tractor on my way to work. 

I also came to realize that... 
My weekend excitement now involves a trip to a Wal-Mart where I will run into at least a dozen people I know.

My car stays filthy because of all the dirt roads, and there are about 1,234 bugs on my windshield. (By tomorrow I may reach 2,000.) 

It is normal to see an old man riding through town on his lawn mower...with a small trailer on the back.

And...the closest mall is an hour away. (sigh) 

O' the joys of small town life...

The Perfect Home for Us

The past few weeks have flown by...literally. We've been looking at a specific house for quite a while now, and we finally made an offer about a week ago. After many evenings of counter-offering back and forth with the seller, we finally had an accepted offer. Praise God I have an attorney for a husband so that he can read all the small print that I signed this week because I really had no clue what I was signing. I could have been buying a shack down the street for all I knew. 

Our new house really is perfect for us, and I really hope it wasn't a shack listed in the contract. (If it is, it's a really expensive shack.) This house fits our personalities so perfectly, and we can't wait to start enjoying our new home. We close on May 26th, so let the paperwork and inspections begin....I'm already exhausted, and we are still 6 weeks away from closing.