Bringing Maple Home!

Jeremy and I have spent the last three days getting used to taking care of our new little puppy we brought home on Thursday night!

Maple had 5 brothers and 3 sisters and of those, there were only 4 left when we picked her up on Thursday! She was 6 weeks and 5 days old when we brought her home and she's 7 weeks old today! When we picked her up on Thursday night there was a Father and Son who were bringing home the only orange and white boy. She ran around and played with her brothers, sisters and parents for a little while before we got ready for the hour long car ride.

She was pretty curious in the truck and didn't want to sit still for quire a while! She wasn't very keen on sitting on my lap at the time and kept trying to crawl on Jeremy's lap to help him drive! Finally she got used to the car ride and curled up right next to daddy in the middle seat of the truck!



When we got home we took her out into the kennel to go potty before bringing her in and she did great :) We fed her a little food when we got home as Brian told us she hadn't eaten yet for the night. We spoiled her with a few toys right off the bat and tried to tucker her out so we could get some sleep! She really liked her pig chew toy!



The first night was a little rough for her in her crate. We have a couple of differnt crates so we tried the smallest of them the first night. I'm not sure if she really ever stopped crying but I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep in between. After taking her out a couple of times during the night and playing with her to try and get her to fall asleep, I gave up with the crate for the night and brought her to bed with us at about 5:30 in the morning. She really likes to cuddle up in our bed!

Friday we both took the day off so we could spend some time with her before having to put her in a crate all day! We spent the day playing with her and getting her acustomed to our home. She doesn't care very much for the stairs in and out of the house but she is going up/down the little step right inside the house between the bedroom, side doorway and the kitchen. Friday night we tried putting her in a more open kennel and she did a little better. She still cries and needs to go out a couple times a night, but she did better.

Yesterday we slept in a little bit with her in our bed and watched some TV. Later in the day Jeremy's parents came down to visit their little grand-puppy! She went on a little bitting spurt on Saturday and we're hoping we can get her off of that pretty quick as her little teeth sure are sharp! She's got about 10 toys to choose from, but she loves to go for feet, hands, and clothing instead!!

Tonight we're hoping she does better in the kennel especially since she'll have to be in it during the work day! Luckily, I work about 5-10 minutues away from our house so I'll be coming home during my morning break and during lunch to let her out. If necessary, I'll start taking a break in the afternoon and let her out then too! I usually get done with work around 3:30 so hopefully between lunch time and then she can hold her little bladder!

Here are a few more pictures we took of her over the past couple of days!

Home Sweet Home

We are completely in and settled and it only took a little over a week! Not too bad if I must say so. We finished up the kitchen on Saturday morning by putting the last coat of paint on. Jeremy had Friday off so we was able to put all of the door handles on and the put doors back on the cupboards.

We had some company over the weekend, my mom, Eric, Matthew and Rose came to visit us Friday night. My mom, Rose and I spent Friday night putting the kitchen together and by that I mean putting all of the dishes and such away. It took us a good 3 hours! It's amazing how much thought needs to go into where to put dishes, pots, serving plates etc. It's great now that we got it done and we even had some extra space!! We even got new silverware thanks to my mom & Eric :) LOVE IT!

After a late night Friday night we had to get up early because our new furinture was being delivered anywhere between 8 and 11 am. I believe it came around 9 am. We got 2 new sets of furniture and when they got to the house they were pretty sure our downstairs furniture was not going to fit in the door! After being a little disappointed I figured we would just have to go pick out new furniture that day. Thankfully, the delivery guys decided to try and get it in anyway, and with a little help from Jeremy and removing the doors on the house, they were able to get it in and downstairs! Lord only knows how we'll ever get it out!!

After we got the funiture, Jeremy's mom, dad, sister and granda made the trip down to Owatonna to see the completed house! They graciously got us a couple of pictures from Cabela's which fit perfectly in Jeremy's "man cave" downstairs. We went to Lowe's Saturday night and got some new light fixtures for our bedroom, the kitche, the downstairs and the side entrance - much better than the old school ones we had!

Sunday we finshed hanging the last few pictures we had and made a trip out to Cabela's before the family left. Jeremy and I then went to Fleet Farm and had a good ole' time getting a rug for our downstairs and purchasing all of our puppy supplies for Maple who we are picking up on the 12th!!

We spent the rest of Sunday night relaxing watching the Super Bowl on our nice new furniture :)

Here are some pictures of the house:

Dining Room




Upstairs living room



Kitchen

Upstairs bathroom

Our bedroom



Second spare bedroom



Third spare bedroom

Downstairs living room



Downstairs living room



Downstairs extra room



Our laundry/utility room

Jeremy just relaxing when we were all done!

Downstairs Bathroom

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!