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!

Our Honeymoon!

We just got back from our Honeymoon in Mexico and it was such a great break from the cold! It was pretty sad when we got back into the cities to the ice cold of MN and snow storm! At least we had Monday off to re-coup a little bit. This was the first time Jeremy has flown and he really enjoyed it! I even let him have the window seat every time!!

While we were down there we layed at the pool or beach a lot and took a couple of day long tours. When we got in Sunday night we walked around the resort so we could learn our way around and ate dinner at the buffet dinner that had a Mexican show that night. They portrayed a Mexican ball game and different rituals - it was pretty cool! We even got our picture taken with one of the dancers!

Tuesday we spent the whole day traveling to Chichen Itza. We had about a 3 hour drive there from our resort but along the way we stopped at the Blue Cenote but didn't have time to swim in it. It was over 100 feet deep and extremely cold!! Very neat though.


After we left there we went to Chichen Itza for the rest of the day. I'd been there before, but didn't remember too much about the history of it. We saw a lot of different ruins and walked around the whole afternoon. We even got a picture in front of the largest ruin!


Wednesday we just spent the day lounging around the pool and beach and walking along the ocean. Thursday was Jeremy's birthday, he's an old man now - 24!!! We went to Xcaret for the day and did a ton of neat things! When we got there we went snorkeling down the underground river, which was really cold at first! We saw quite a few cool fish while doing that. After that we did a thing called Sea Trek. You wear a helmet, which looks like an astronaut helmet, and you get to walk on the bottom of the ocean! They run a pressurized hose to the helmet that puts air into it so you can breath under water! We were about 25 feet under water the majority of the time which was about 30-45 minutes. They have a railing that runs under water that you walk along and I even saw a sting ray!! We haven't gotten our underwater camera's developed yet, but once we do, I'll add the picture's of us underwater!

After that, we spent the rest of the day walking around the grounds looking at all the animals and historical items they had there. They even had an edible mushroom farm! We didn't dare eat any because we weren't sure which were safe and there wasn't anyone in there during the time we were there. We also took a trip around the river through the jungle and stayed until later that night when we watched their night show performance which was full of singing, dancing and hispanic rituals. The last exciting thing we did was we each held a parrot while another parrot sat on our head!! They wouldn't let us take pictures, but I quickly snuck one while he was setting the parrots up on Jeremy so he could try to get us to buy the pictures afterwards!


The rest of the vacation we spent hanging around the resort and trying different foods! We ate anything from sushi, octopus, ocean fish, duck and a few other interesting items! We branched out :) The last night at the resort we watched another performance at the resort and I gave into the performer that dragged me onto the stage to do the final dance!! How embarrassing, but it's not that easy to say now when they are pulling you up there! Here's another picture of us on our last night at dinner enjoying the last night of warmth before heading back to MN!!!

Merry Christmas

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