Finally (somewhat) Settled In!

Rich, Me, and Macey in front of our house

Part of our Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen

Dining Room

Part of the Living Room

More Living Room

Living Room and you can see part of the Dining room in the back

Bathroom

Our bedroom

Again more bedroom

So as you can see we are all moved in, an as you can see from some stuff that was all over the place....we do live in it! Its not perfectly clean. I took these pictures Saturday morning as we had a very busy past weekend. My sisters arrived Saturday morning, Saturday evening we had a House-Warming Party. Sunday my parents brought all of my grandparents out to see the house. And Sunday Evening Rich's Dad and Grandpa arrived as a stopping point to get to their hunting destination in Fort Pierre. It was a very busy weekend but it was great seeing everyone!! Thank you all for coming and visiting! We hope to see more of you in the future. We also hope to have the basement done sometime so then we can have another get together!! :)

Rich left this afternoon to go out to meet his dad and Grandpa in Fort Pierre. He is so excited to go hunting! He really wants to come home with some pheasants (not sure I feel the same...). Wish him luck and pray for the safety of all the hunters he is with this week.

I am a little nervous as I will be in the new house all alone with Macey, Monday, Tuesday and Rich will come home Wednesday Evening. I'm sure everything will be fine as we live in a great neighborhood. Just wanted to get this update up, as I know its been a long time! We have been crazy busy getting everything together. Hope you are all doing well!! Love and miss you!

Moving

Well, Rich and I are both alive on Monday to tell about the moving process!! We have SURVIVED our move! The house is not quite ready for taking pictures to post yet. But we did get the move done, and we are living in our NEW HOUSE!! It is so exciting. We need to thank both sets of parents for coming and moving all of our stuff!! We never could have done the move without you! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR WORK!! We need to thank Alissa for coming and keeping the mood light, along with some work, and looking after Macey while we moved in and out of both places!! All of you guys' help is VERY GREATLY APPRECIATED!! We are excited to have our first home and to be on our own!! We are so excited to have friends and family over when we are all settled! We may need another week, but after that we are up for some entertaining!! We will update again soon when our place is a little less cluttered so you can see the finished product!!

New Updates

We are getting SO EXCITED!!! The final projects in our house are getting finished! Today marks exactly ONE MONTH until we will move in. We will close on October 23, and hopefully move a bunch of things that night, but who knows how much will get done as Rich and I both work afternoons until at least 4. The excitement builds everyday. Most of the indoor things are finished now, we are waiting for our outside doors, steps to the door, deck on the back, and step into our home from the garage. There are also some things that need to be finished up that I probably dont know much about, but the things that matter are the things that I can see :) These are some of the updates we've seen this week!! Its been a busy week at our house!

The Banister by the stairways.

The kitchen with cabinets, handles on the cabinets, the dishwasher, and the sink

Bedroom closet doors

The bathroom with cabinets, cabinet handles, countertops, sink, amd toilet!

The kitchen countertops, cabinets, and flooring together

House Update

Rich and I have been impatiently waiting for our cabinets to get moved from our living room into our kitchen! Tonight when we got to the house we found that they had been moved! The cabinets are now in the kitchen and ready to go. The flooring is also done in the kitchen, dining room, and bathroom. Take a look at some new pictures and check out our updates!

The flooring in the Foyer

The Flooring in the Bathroom

A Close-Up of the Cabinets

A look at the Kitchen

Macey enjoying the new house, and new cabinets

Our Busy Week

We have had an amazingly busy week! My students started school on Monday. I have a busy group of 3, 4, and 5 year olds!! They seem to listen and follow rules quite well for the first week! I also have a great group of parents this year. I can tell that we will have a great year!

We have been busy with Macey this week as well! She has transitioned well to our house and is definitely queen of our home! She stays in the bathroom while we go to work, simply becuase of the flooring in the bathroom. Its much easier to clean up tile flooring if she has an accident. We are diligently trying to potty train her to potty pads.....we have not seen much progress yet, but still hopeful it will come. She now looks when you call her name. She has found her voice a little bit and cries when we leave. Of course she loves Rich as I have been the one to put her in the bathroom when I leave and Rich has been home before me so he lets her out! She's very spunky. We have heard a few growls and barks as she is figuring out that the golf ball moves when SHE moves it. She loves to sleep on my side of the bed, and to eat human food. She has started to eat her dry food a lot better now and had her first car trip in a kennel tonight when we went to check out the progress of our new home.

Our home is coming along nicely. We went out there tonight and found that our brick has been added onto our home this week, it is fully sided and the siding has been painted to the color that we chose. It looks gorgeous. When we went inside we found that the drywall had been mudded and sanded and is now fully painted and dry. We are getting so excited for our home to be done and to move in, on October 23. Here are some pictures of the house. The first is of the outside of our home the color and bricks along with Rich, Macey, and our vehical (a snapshot of what it will looke like in 2 months when we're all moved in!! :) ), The second picture is of our living room all painted up, and the third is of our kitchen! The doors and woodwork are sitting in the garage! We are hopeful that they will go in this week and we will be able to post more pictures!

Our New Addition

Today, October 23, 2009, Rich and I decided to add another member to our family. We are now proud parents to a beautiful 8 week old Yorkie-Poo named Macey. Here are just some pictures that we have taken since she has been home!

Our Trip to Michigan!

Our first stop.....Chicago Illinois, to see my sister Andrea and her husband Eric!

Our first ride on the train in Chicago

Another train ride, Rich and Eric decided to wear their team shirts when the Cubs were in town!

Watching Ronnie Renner do a 63 ft jump on his motorbike to set a new world record

Rich and I in the new boxes at the Willis (Sears) Tower 103 Stories up

A fountain in Chicago, usually the water just runs down the tower that has a picture of a smiling face on it. Every so often the face changes and the water comes out, there were tons kids running and playing in the water!

Our next stop, Michigan, to see Family, and our new neice Caitalyn, Rich and I are watching softball while holding Caitalyn.

Rich holding his neice Caitalyn at his birthday celebration

Me holding my neice Caitalyn

We also had time to hang out with friends! We took a night and went to Craig's Cruisers with the VanderKooi's and had a great time! We even earned enough tickets for Treydan to get the ball he is holding!

We were very blessed during our trip! We were able to take time to spend with all members of our family. We had a great and relaxing 8 day vacation to Chicago and Michigan.

We are now back in Sioux Falls, working hard. Rich is working like crazy at his Landscaping and Irrigation job, and I am moving like crazy trying to get everything ready in my new classroom, for Open house on Tuesday August 11, and I was working hard to get things ready for my first practice as a Cheer Coach at Dakota Spirit last night. I have a great group of girls in grades 4-6! They are hard workers and I know that we will have a great season!

Proud Home Owners

Rich and I just bought our first house on July 10. Our July has been so busy that this is the first time I have been able to sit down and get some picture of our house being built up. That and....Its not much yet...just the wood pretty much! But this week we got Windows and doors put on our home and I believe shingles will be going on as well! When we stopped over to check out the progress on Wednesday the packages of shingles were on our roof! We will close on the house on October 23, 2009. And start moving in that weekend. We are very excited to move to a place with a little more space. This home is on the Southwest side of SIoux Falls. It is off of 57th Street and Grinnell Avenue. Our address will be 7801 Wilson Drive. We bought a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house. We found out that we had bought this house early enought that we were able to pick out a lot of details of the home. We have been busy picking out siding color, brick color, interior paint color, carpet and vinyl flooring, cabinets, counter tops, etc. It has been fun and a little bit scary! I hope it all turns out the way we are picturing it!! We will keep you updated on the progress, but for now....here it whats out there!

The inside is just all boards yet so you cant really tell what anything is...hopefully when we get back from our 8 day vacation we will be able to see lots of progress!!

My New Godchild

This weekend Rich and I had the opportunity to go home to my parents' home and see my new Godchild. Riley Micheal Krohnberg is the son of my best friend Maria (Stock) and Brady Krohnberg. He was born Tuesday July 7, 2009 at 5:12 pm. Riley was 8 pounds 12 ounces and 21 inches long. We were able to spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon with Maria, Brady and Riley. What a precious little miracle. We are so blessed to be a part of his life. Here are a few pictures of him just 4 days old!

4th of July Weekend

This past weekend Rich and I were blessed to be able to spend some time with both of our families. Rich's sister Meredith and Brother in law Justin came out to visit us. We went on a short vacation to the St.Paul/Minneapolis Area. We did some shopping at the Albertville Outlet Mall, Mall of America, and IKEA. We also were able to catch the Tigers vs Twins game on Friday. We were able to watch the 16 inning game that the Tigers won against the Twins! We found it really nice and relaxing to get away and do some things that we dont alway get to do!

On July 4, after shopping at the Mall of America and IKEA, we were able to spend some time with my family in Bricelyn MN. We played some baseball with the family and watched fireworks. We had an amazing relaxing weekend with our family!

Father's Day Weekend!

This past weekend Rich and I enjoyed a short vacation with the Vee side of the family. We went to Wisconsin Dells to camp. We stayed at a Yogi Bear Campground. Rich and I were able to use our tent for the first time!! We didn't do too much, but we had a great relaxing trip away from home. We went out on a DUCK boat tour, walked around the town, go-cart riding, shopping at the Tanger Outlet Mall, and swimming at the pool at our campground. We also hung around our campsite to relax and enjoy some time with our family. We spent Father's Day with my amazing father by Eating at the Ponderosa Steakhouse, driving 4 hours to Wells and then another stop to see my Grandma in the Nursing home while she recovers from knee surgery. We thank our family for such a great weekend! Hoping there will be more of those little trips in our future!