Go, Go, Goers!

It's been 1.5 weeks since we've moved in, and I'm happy to say that everything is unpacked (at least what we're going to unpack for the next few months) and all of the rooms are in order.  The only somewhat disorganized space is the garage, and I'm leaving that in Scott's capable hands since 95% of the things in there are his.  Scott even managed to do some creative landscaping on our front walkway, so it has more curb appeal.  Overall, we're pretty happy with how this rental will be over the next few months, but we're still very excited to get into our new home this fall! Now that the sun has FINALLY made an appearance for more than a fleeting moment, we've had a chance to meet some of the neighbors, and see how the neighborhood operates when people are out and about.  The neighbors to the south of us just set up their pool yesterday, so I'm thinking they would be good people to get to know. :)  I've waved and said hi a few times to the mo...

And what a week it has been...we were able to start moving items into the garage on Monday night, but couldn't get into the house until Wednesday.  And we absolutely had to everything out and cleaned by Friday at 8am.  Needless to say, it was a stressful and exhausting week.  I took Wednesday off, as well as Thursday afternoon, and I supervised the movers who came to take care of the big, heavy stuff.  I can say, with certainty, I would never want to be a mover by profession.  Ugh.  What a job! We had help from family and friends, and somehow, managed to get the job done.  Ava and I did our final walkthrough of the old house on Thursday night around 9pm.  It was bittersweet...we're looking forward to starting a new chapter in our lives, but there were a lot of memories that kept flashing through my mind as we did that walkthrough.  Looking in Ava's room, I was remembering bringing her home from the hospital...walking through the backyard, I...

The time has arrived...it's moving week!  And, review your new house week!  And, hey, launch another big project at work week!  Maybe, it'll be...feel the baby move for the first time week, too! :) Last week, Scott and I made our selections for our new house at the Design Studio.  Thank goodness we agree on things, otherwise, that could have been a painful process.  Oddly enough, the only thing we got stuck on was the exterior lighting for the garage.  Stuck to the point where we had to move on, and revisit it (we eventually resolved it...)  We were very happy with the standard offerings, so the only place we chose to upgrade was the carpeting, the carpet pad, and the flooring for the baths/mudroom.  Well worth the cost to do it now, rather than later. Yesterday, we met with the sales agent to review the drawings for the floorplans.  We had a few minor tweaks, and a surprise that we were unaware of (all good!) so the next step is to get t...

Remember that week a few months ago, where we had a gajillion things happening? (If not, you can read about it here .)  But, as a recap, this is what we faced in seven short days at the end of February: Friday - we listed our house Saturday - we put Spanky down Tuesday/Wednesday - launched a HUGE project at work (biggest that BI has seen to-date) Wednesday - we sold our house Well...there was one other life-changing thing that happened, that I started to suspect on that Thursday, but didn't get confirmation until that Saturday...Baby Goers is coming our way, November 2013! Seriously, I'm not sure how much more we could have packed into that one week, and frankly, I don't want to try to top that week - ever.  I'm currently 13 weeks pregnant, and feeling great!  No morning sickness at all with this one (I had a tiny bit with Ava.)  I'm mostly just more tired and hungry than usual.  And honestly, we're so busy with everything else that I sometimes forget...

Our basement is full of boxes - floor to ceiling boxes!  It's good, because we need them to pack and move, but...bad because that means we need to do the work of getting everything into those boxes.  Yesterday was the first nice Saturday we've had in 6+ months, and while I should have been in the basement starting to pack, I just couldn't do it.  I needed to sit in the sun.  So....the boxes will wait for another day! A little change in plans over the last week...we opted not to go with the dog-friendly townhouse I looked at last weekend, because last night, we signed the lease on a larger townhome, which is much closer to Maple Tree Day School.  That means we won't be driving an extra 20 minutes out of the way two times a day to drop off/pick up Ava this summer.  Instead, we'll be driving just an extra 5 minutes - all the way from Inver Grove Heights!  Sometimes, things just work out like they are supposed to.  I was getting stressed...

It's that time of year...my birthday!  I've been so focused lately on everything that is going on with the house, work, etc, that this one snuck up quietly on me.  Besides the snow that's coming down right now (snow?  really?  it RAINS on my birthday not SNOWS! c'mon Mother Nature!)  we've had a good weekend celebrating...I went out with a good friend on Friday night (her birthday is two days before mine, so it was a joint celebration), and last night, Scott, Ava and I went out for dinner.  We ate waaaay too much food, but we still managed to squeeze in a little bit of dessert.  The thick, warm chocolate chip cookie filled with liquid chocolate, topped with ice cream was too good to resist! Our house is being cleaned on Tuesday, so I was even able to skip cleaning this weekend - and THAT was just about the best present I could have asked for.  I got so much stuff done around here, so I can relax a bit today.  Later this afternoo...

We had a wonderful Easter gathering with Scott's family last weekend...even though the weather was a little cooler than it has been for the last few Easters, the kids still got outside and ran off some of that Easter sugar.  The adults probably should have done that, too, since we all seemed to eat so much food while we were there! This year Easter was really fun for us...Ava totally participated in coloring the eggs, and she couldn't wait to find all of the eggs hidden in the house.  Once again, she looked in places that I thought would have been too hard...the EB really needs to step it up for next year! It was also a busy week of looking at houses, meeting with a builder, and moving forward on the housing adventure!  We decided on a lot in Rosemount this past weekend and have put a verbal hold on it.  We need to see if one other lot in the development could fit a three car garage, and if so, we'll need to see if we can purchase that one instead...