House hunting is something that can be fun.  You get to see a lot of great places.  Or at least the places look great online.  I’m not sure if we’ll look at that many of them in person.  But it’s still kind of fun. You can think of all the possibilities.

It reminds me of when we bought this place.  The possibilities were endless.  It was kind of a dream to get this place, and we both really like it.  Sadly now we’re leaving it.  We’ll not quite yet, it still has to sell.  But we get to start over with all the dreams and adventures.

But at the same time it can be tiring.  The projects that you’ll need/want to do on the new place, and the fact that it costs so much money.  Life is fun and cruel all at the same time.

And that is all I have for now.

That’s right!  I’ve got a new job!  I’m very excited about this new opportunity.  It’s the Director of Community Development position for the City of Wells, MN. (Map link)

I’ll be working with Economic Development Authority, the Planning and Zoning Commission, and the Housing and Redevelopment Authority.  I’ll be using my Master Degree heavily, and it’s simply a great step on my career path.  I’m really excited about the opportunities that lie ahead in this position.

Beth and I have checked out Wells, and some houses there as well.  We’re a little disappointed about having to move (we love our house!), but we are really excited about this next step in our lives.  So over the next week or two we’ll be working to get our house on the market.  If you know anyone who is in the market for a house in Blaine let us know!  As for buying a house in Wells, we haven’t found the one we really love yet.

I start the job on Monday, and I’ll be staying with my brother in New Ulm for a bit and be back here on the weekends.  That part will kind of stink, but it should only be for a few weeks. It will make for a few busy weeks, but it will be great!

Since we moved into our house I’ve never been really liked  the exhaust fan in our bathroom.  It was old, I’m guessing original to the house (ie 30 years old), and loud.

Last week it decided to not work so well.  Even worse than normal. So I decided now’s the time to replace it!  So today we went to Lowe’s and got a new one.  I was worried about how much work it may be.  I read some things online and it looked kind of tough.

But thankfully enough, and due to some measuring before hand, the one we bought was a perfect fit in the old spot.  So after crawling around the attic, finding the stuff, and ripping it out, putting the new one in, I was done!  It wasn’t so bad actually, and only took about an hour and a half or so.  It fit right into the exhaust pipe out of the ceiling, and all is well.

After trying it out it works much better than the other one ever did, and it is pretty quiet.  Not the most quiet, but the super quiet ones were way more expensive and would have required a lot more work.

So that’s just a snap shot of our weekend.  Now it’s time to get ready for bed.  More sleep is in order.

With the Legislature back in Session things are busy again at the Capitol.  For the most part that’s good.  The hours are a little long again, but that’s alright. I really like working with the Freshmen and helping get them acclimated to life at the Capitol.  It’s also really fun to work with my Representative, Tim Sanders.  Having worked with him on the campaign trail, it’s made things pretty easy to work with him there.

Life on the home front is good.  Owning a home is interesting… Our dishwasher broke and we’re waiting on fixing that.  We bought it new, and of course it stopped working about a month after the warranty went out.  With in the next month or two I’ll do my best to fix that.  The garage door sensor isn’t working quite right either.  We ordered parts to get that fixed, but they’re on back order.  So once those get here I’ll get that working properly again.

For the past month we’ve been going to the gym on a regular basis.  One of Beth’s coworkers gave us a couple of free trial passes and we used them, and liked working out.  So we joined up. Back in December we went to check out Gold’s Gym, but that was not the place for us.  The people were a little too pushy and trying to sell us stuff we didn’t need.  We joined the AnyTime Fitness and it’s a good place.  It’s a smaller gym, but it’s just a bunch of people getting fit.  No real body builders or anything.  Plus it’s not too busy most times.  So it’s easy to get in a quick workout and get back on with your day.

So life is good.  It feels like spring a little bit this weekend, and that puts a smile on my face.  Too bad I have to do homework today.

Until the election.  I’ve been super busy helping out, and homework, and everything else. I’m looking forward to November 5th.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  I think it will be close.  The polls show it’s tightening, but I don’t always believe the polls.  I missed the Obama informerical tonight.  I thought it was on at 8, but it was really 7.  Whoops.

I’ve had many thoughts about the election coming up.  If anyone believes Pelosi when she says “if the Democrats win, and have substantial majorities, Congress of the United States will be more bipartisan” I’d like to sell you some ocean front property here in Blaine.  The Obama tax plan scares me, and I know I’ll pay more and I make way less than $250,000.  With all of his talk of redistributing the wealth it’s clear he’s not holding the same American values that I hold.

But enough with the political rant.

School is picking up.  Pretty much starting on the 5th I’ve got to start my two final papers.  Both of those will take a while, since it’s 30 page papers.  But hopefully things will be alright.  I’m not overly worried.

The house stuff is kind of at a standstill.  We were hoping to redo some of the floors in the bedrooms and perhaps some of the downstairs.  But the new furnace took care of those plans.

We had a nice weekend get away earlier this month.  It was a lot of fun, and it was nice to just get away.  I wish we could do that more often.  We have some pictures, and I’ll try to get some up soon.

With that I’ll bid you ado, likely until November 5th.

It was nice to come home today and be able to jump in a pool to cool off.  Splash around and have some fun.  I really enjoyed that.

And tonight we had a small campfire, with smores and everything.  It’s like a nice getaway that’s fun and relaxing.  And we can sleep in a comfy bed at the end of it all!

So, I like our house.

Outside there is thunder and lightning.  It’s fun!  I like thunder storms.  It’s good for our lawn as well!

Yesterday we spent most of the afternoon outside raking the yard, and then I put down some grass seed to help clean up some of the bare spots.  So with the rain I’m hopeful some of the grass seed will start to grow.  We’ll see.  I think it’ll be alright.

It was a nice weekend, or at least a nice Sunday.  The weather was great, warm and sunny.  It was a nice day to get outside and be active.  Having a yard is good for that.  And living in a nice neighborhood.  I think most of the neighbors were outside working on the yard yesterday.  So it was quite nice.

How’s it going?  I must say things are rocking here!

We went up to the LP this weekend.  Weren’t we just there last weekend?  Why yes, yes we were.  But we left my car there on blocks, because the parts weren’t all there to fix it.  So we went back up, the parts were there, and dad and I fixed it.  Thanks dad!  It actually wasn’t hard to fix.  It only took about an hour or so.  It went smoother than I thought.

We came back home last night.  We brought Chad back down to school, and hung out in the Elk River with Beth’s sister and brother-in-law for a bit.  Good times.

Today has been low-key, which is nice.  The next couple of weekends will be busy, depending on the weather I guess.  Today we went to church and stayed for Bible Study afterward.  We were able to meet more people, and I really enjoyed it.  It was a little more fun and engaging than other Sunday Morning Bible Studies I’ve been to.  Next week we start our membership class there.  It’s nice to finally be joining a church.

After church we came home, and hung out.  We’ve been in the habit lately of coming home from church and each doing some reading.  Granted for Beth it’s ususally reading for fun, and for me it’s for class.  But it’s still kind of nice to just sit and read.  It’ll be great to be able to do that on the porch before long!  This afternoon we both fell asleep for about three hours.  Whoops!  But the nap was nice.

We were able to get outside this afternoon.  We got some firewood unloaded from my trunk.  We went for a walk.  I also planned a few things to work on in the yard.  The fence needs to be fixed, and we need some grass seed.  So those projects will keep me pretty busy.  I like being a handyman.  It’s kind of fun to fix stuff.  You never know how handy you are until you have to be.

With that I’ll leave ya’ll.  Have a great week.  I shall try to do the same.

That’s me tonight.  It’s a nice change.  although the relaxing weekend was quite fun as well.  It seems like it was our first truly relaxing together in a long time.

Friday I picked up my parents from the airport.  Their plane was late so we didn’t get back here til like 7:30.  We hung out that night and they told us their fun stories of Texas.  It sounded warm and fun.  I’m jealous.

Saturday morning the parents left at about 10 am.  So we hung out.  Took a nap.  Then we went out to a movie and dinner.  We saw The Other Boleyn Girl.  Beth had just read the book and she enjoyed it.  The movie was alright.  Natalie Portman was in it, so that rocks.  But I don’t think I would have put her in that role.  It didn’t seem to fit her.

Sunday was DST.  We set the clocks ahead before we went to bed.  Not a big deal.  We were still late for church though.  We’ve been going there for nearly 4 months, and we still cannot remember when church is.  Oh well.  Then it was home to relax and do some reading.  We both read for most of the afternoon.  Granted mine was homework.

Brad and Bethany came over for dinner, which was fun.  Their a fun couple.  And they’re getting married in October!  Congrats to them.  We had a good evening.  Except Bethany didn’t like the game we played (she lost, that could be why).

So tonight I got home from work (and boy was I glad to get out of there today) and got to work on some of the projects around here.  My drivers side rear window on my car was falling down.  Similar to what happened to my passenger side rear window a few years ago.  So I fixed the window.

After that I got out my drill and drilled a hole in the kitchen floor so we could hook up our automatic ice maker.  That was not nearly as much work as it could have been.  Mainly because the previous owner had tapped the pipe in the basement for other reasons which I’m not sure of.  So basically it was just drilling a hole in the kitchen floor and running the pipe through it.  Now we have ice automatically made for us.  Sweet.

So that’s my fun evening.  Now I’m relaxing.  I should read some homework.  But that will come shortly.   I need to blog more, so here it is.  Happy reading!

Have a great week!

The post Christmas sickness tradition that is.  Over Christmas one of the little tikes running around here got sick.  Yesterday Beth was sick.  Last night dad got sick.  This afternoon I don’t feel too good.  So the tradition continues.

On a brighter not Christmas was good.  I got a few of the things on my Christmas wish list, which was sweet.  I also got some things done around the house, with the help of my dad.  Thanks dad!  As a Christmas present to all of you I’ve finally got some pictures of the completed version of the house, for your viewing pleasure.

There were lots more things that happened, but I think I’ll get to those later.  The laundry is done.  We’re supposed to go to the LP to celebrate Christmas with Beth’s family this weekend.  Perhaps more stories after that!

I finally get the last piece of the floor in!  That’s exciting.  Now I just get to fix the holes. (In case you’re wondering how I did that, I had to use a crow bar to get the last pieces of the floor along the wall into place.)  And tomorrow night we’re going to pick out floorboards so I can put those on Friday.  I’ll have a number of projects to do tomorrow and Friday as I have both days off.  It’ll be nice though.  We’ll get things into place, and have this place just that much closer to being done.

I finally got my airport working properly!  Well, I did this last night.  But it’s still blogable.  There must be some interference on the same spectrum, because I would loose signal, but the airport would still be on.  But messing with some settings made it all work nicely.  That’s good news.

Anyway, hope everyone enjoys the last of their week.  I for one shall enjoy my 4 day weekend!

Okay, maybe not so much, but it’s not so bad.  In fact, I haven’t done any tonight.  I should start soon though.

People have requested pictures, and we’ve got some.  We have before pictures here and pictures of making the changes here.  We didn’t take a lot of photos during the move, but mom did.  Sadly, those are real film and I probably won’t get those online.

We’ll get some after pictures up sometime perhaps.  When we’re officially done I suppose.  Or you’ll just have to come over to the house warming party to see it all.

If anyone wants a stove, we’ve got one for sale.

And, to close, I went to the Governor’s Mansion last week with some of my co-workers on our lunch break to tour it all decorated for Christmas.  It was pretty fun.  Pictures of that are here.

That’s right.  We’ve moved in.  Things look great as well.  We got the appliances delivered on Friday, finished the tiling in the bathroom, finished painting the bedroom (with help from Brad), and with some great help from the parents, siblings, and some friends (Thanks again Amy!) we got all of our stuff moved in.

Last night we got the dishwasher hooked up.  That’s easier to do than I thought it would be.  The fridge fit in the fridge spot (which I knew when we bought it, but I forgot it).  The bathroom vanity and sink got put in.  The toilet got put back in after the tiling (and only one spill over later it’s working great).

We’ve got a lot of boxes sitting in the basement that need to be unpacked.  But we have cable hooked up (expanded cable) and so we have lots of channels to distract us.  I need to get the surround sound hooked up some time.  And the rest of the floor put in.  I think I have to patch a hole in the wall that I made (whoops!).  That last section of flooring is a bugger.

But all in all we’re super excited!  There’s a fair amount of work to do still, but I think we can get it done in the next two weeks.  That’s when my side of the family is coming down for Christmas!  So we’ve got some work to do still on that, but it will all get done on time.

Now I think we should go to Target to buy some food.  We have a brand new fridge and approximately four things in it.  None of which is very good by itself.  So hope you had a great weekend, because I sure did (even if it was a lot of work)!

That’s what we’ve been.  But the house is starting to look like a home.  We’re thinking we’re going to move on Saturday and we’ve got some stuff to finish first.  Basically it’s just painting that has to get done.  And a small bit of tiling in the kitchen, I think.  I’m not positive where that’s at, Beth’s been doing most of it.  I’m super impressed!

This weekend we had some help from Beth’s family, and we blazed through a lot of stuff.  The bathroom was gutted and we’ve got to pick out some paint and a vanity to get in there.  After tiling the kitchen Beth isn’t sure she wants to tile the bathroom, so we’ll see what happens there.  We got the living room floor done this weekend.  Well there is a small part that we still need to do, but it’s mostly done.  Hopefully the last 6 pieces that need to go in don’t take that long.  The big thing will be getting a table saw from some place to cut the wood.

We have to paint the bedroom and the bathroom, but then we’ll be ready to move in.  There will be some things that we need to do once we move in, but we should be able to move in on Saturday.  I’ll have a few days off this week to work on stuff, and Beth has Thursday off too.  So I think it’ll come together nicely.  We’ll see.

That’s the wrap on my weekend.  How was yours?