Mini Kitchen Re-model

So it's official, we're moved into our new house and completely out of our apartment! We closed on Friday morning at 10:00 and have been on the go since then moving load after load from the apartment up the hill to the house! It was hard work and I think I can say for everyone that we are thankful that this will be the last move for a LONG time!

We had everything moved into the apartment by Saturday afternoon and this morning we spent cleaning out the old apartment. We took a trip to get painting supplies so we could start on the kitchen! We are repainting all the kitchen cabinets and the walls.

Here are a couple of pictures of the kitchen before hand:





This is the progess we have so far and here is some proof that I helped!









Our goal is to have the kitchen done with by the time our families come to visit this upcoming weekend!

Good News!!

We just found out yesterday that we are for sure closing on this Friday at 10:00 am (a whole week early)! We are both really excited and now we have a whole week to move out of our apartment and clean it versus only one day!

Now we're going to try to paint the kitchen cupboards and walls during the next week so we can put the new cupboard knobs on that we bought last night :) We've been looking at colors but it's really hard to pick out what we want!

The other good news is that I passed my Commercial Insurance Exam this afternoon although it was much harder than I expected it to be! I was so nervous to hit the "End Exam" button and see whether I passed or failed. Thank goodness it said PASS! Now that I have that out of the way I can focus on how I want to decorate our house.

We're both off on Friday for the closing and will start making trips from the apartment to the house with our stuff! Good things they are only about 5 minutes away from each other. Hopefully we can have a lot of our stuff moved out of the apartment before Dave & Julie come with the trailer to move the big stuff out!

We'll be getting our new upstairs and downstairs furniture next Saturday and hopefully we can have all of the kitchen and possibly our bedroom painted by then. I might have high hopes for getting this all done right away, but I'd like to be done with the painting before we get Maple!

I got our Charter transfer moved up to this Saturday instead of next Friday, so I'll be able to keep this updated with things about our house as we get them done :)

Busy Week

We found out earlier this week that we may be able to close on our home a week early! We had a few changes with our loan which will allow us to close earlier than we planned! This means that we have a week less to pack up our apartment if all works out! The good news is we will have one week to move out of our apartment instead of only one day!

We won't find out until Monday or Tuesday at the earliest as to whether or not we'll be closing on the 23rd. We would love to move in a week early, but if it doesn't work out that way, we'll have another week to pack!

In the meantime, I have been studying for my first Commercial Insurance exam which I will be taking on Wednesday. This will be the first exam of many I will be taking over the next years to earn my different designations at work. After this one, only about 11 more exams to go! It will be great to have my first test out of the way and then I'll have some more free time to focus on making our house a home and training our new puppy when we bring her home :)

This weekend Jeremy is going ice fishing with his cousins and a couple of friends while I will be staying in Owatonna to study and pack! At least I'll be taking a break to head to Rochester and go out to dinner with Lindsey!

Maple's growth

Maple

Here is the story of how we found our puppy!

My friend Andy from work and his wife had gotten a Brittany from a breeder in Mazeppa, MN back in July and over a month ago I asked him for their breeders information because we knew we wanted this type of dog!

Since we are close to moving into the house I thought I would send him an e-mail this past Monday to find out when they were having their next litter! Never did I think he would say they had one the day prior to me e-mailing him! They were born on Sunday, December 28th, 2008. He e-mailed me back with a picture of the mom with the litter and of the dad. Britta & Remmy are the parents names.


He told us how they reserve the puppy you want and will start to call her by her name so she knows it when she comes home! Of course we were interested in the puppies so I asked if we could come out and visit them on Saturday. This is their third for fourth litter and possibly their last for a while, so this must have been fate! They had 9 puppies - 5 boys and 4 girls. 7 of them are liver & white and 2 of them are orange & white. 3 liver & white girls and 1 orange & white girl.

We headed over to Mazeppa this morning, it's about an hour drive and we got to see the puppies! When we got there, my car couldn't make it up their driveway - we only made it halfway! So I got out there and Jeremy went to park the car. As soon as I got out the mom, Britta, came up to me and greeted me! Brittany's are very friendly dogs who are highly intelligent and obedient. Brittany's are easy to train and this makes them great for inexperienced dog owners!

We went inside and held the 4 girl puppies and tried to decide which one we wanted! Originally we wanted the orange girl because I was more drawn to the look of the orange and white Brittany's. She was the first born and is really attached to her mom. She is always eating and as soon as she gets taken away from her mom she starts to cry! She didn't have the best marking on her either - she is mostly white with some orange on her back half. She was also a more pale orange so she more than likely would not have become as red/orange as her dad.


Once we decided we would rather have one of the liver and white girls we had to decide which one! Out of the three, we picked the one with the best markings! Here are the two girls we did not pick.





Here is our little puppy we reserved!



We will be able to bring her home anywhere between 6 and 8 weeks old. 6 weeks old is the week after we move into our house, so we are going to wait until week 7 which also happens to be Valentine's Day! So about 6 weeks from now we'll be new dog owners! The breeder is going to send us pictures almost every week so we can see how she is growing and we were also encouraged to go out and visit her as often as we want! We are possibly going to go out there next weekend since we'll be busy the next few weekends with moving into the house!





They are getting their tails docked on Tuesday and their eyes should be open sometime this week so it will be a good time to go back and visit our little girl!