Frustrations

Mike has been busy the last few days working on the house since he's been off work because of the rain. He put the first coat of paint on the bathroom. It's a little bright, but I think it will look better after he puts the final coat on and we get the new mirror and lighting put in. He also took out the purple carpet and the purple linoleum in the bathroom. It's always frustrating to find that there are two layers of flooring to rip up.

Last night Mike and a friend put recessed lighting above our fireplace. We couldn't put them quite where we wanted to because of the trusses in the attic. Mike had to spend quite a bit of time in the attic, much to his dismay, and came down sneezing and itchy after being up there for a while.

He also replaced the hall lighting and took down the lovely flowered and crystal light fixtures. Here's a few pictures.

Updates..

We haven't done too much on the house lately, mostly because I can't make up my mind on anything. Since I can't decide on flooring for the house, we decided to start with painting the bathroom. I finally picked out and purchased paint so hopefully we can get that done this week. The walls needed a lot of prepping so Mike worked on that last week.

We had a friend come do some electrical work on Saturday; he replaced our fuse box with a breaker box. He will also be coming back next week to put recessed lighting in a few of the rooms and to replace some of the light fixtures, which I am super excited about!

Here's a couple pictures of the house after we moved our stuff in.



My new chandelier!!!

I took these yesterday at our lake.

New House Pictures

We closed last Friday on our house and we are moving in this weekend. This past week we have been cleaning and slowly moving some things in. Of course a lot of the cleaning has been done by my aunt, even during the day when we are at work... :)

As I warned you before, it needs quite a bit of updating. All these pictures were taken last week before we started working on the house. We started this week by ripping off the lovely flowered wallpaper in the bathroom. Hopefully soon we can start painting and replacing the flooring.

New House!

Some of you have probably already heard, but we are buying a house!! The house is in Morton and is located behind my aunt and uncle's house. We weren't really looking for a house yet, but it is a family friend that is selling it so it just kind of worked out.

The house is older and needs quite a bit of updating, but that's what we wanted. Mike is really excited about the two car garage and I'm excited to decorate my own house! I will post some pictures before we start to work on it. There is some lovely hot pink carpet, purple carpet, shiny floral wallpaper, and much more to be excited about! Thank goodness I have a husband and dad that are so good at fixing things! So if anyone wants to rip some wallpaper off, give me a call! We are closing on it in the middle of September!

Mountains..

In case you haven't noticed, I absolutely love the mountains! Every time I visit them, I can't wait to go back again! Even though we visited the Smokies this summer, it's not quite the same as going to the Rockies.

As I have mentioned before, I love to check out the webcams from Glacier National Park in Montana. Throughout the day, you can see the drastic weather changes that take place there. So here are some webcam images that I have captured recently. If you click on the photos, you can see a larger version.

Family and Friends

We went to Mark Twain Lake, which is outside of Hannibal, Missouri, this past weekend for a family reunion. It was Aberle reunion, which is my dad's side of the family. Many of them live in Kansas so the last two reunions we have met in Missouri. It was nice to see everyone again and there's always interesting stories to be heard when we all get together.

Sunday morning we left early and came back home to go to my friend's wedding in Morton. After the wedding we got to see our newest niece, which is Mike's sister's little girl. They live in Kentucky but his sister came up for a couple weeks to visit since her husband is going to be gone for work (he's in the army).

That's it for now....

4th of July

We had a good 4th of July weekend, despite the rain. Saturday night we went to my sister's house for my niece's birthday party and then to the Peoria fireworks. Since my office is right on the Riverfront, we have our own fenced in spot on the deck. They were pretty impressive and the crowds and traffic weren't too bad. Sunday was the Hopedale tractor pulls, and it was a beautiful day to sit outside.

Tractor Pulls

We went to the first tractor pull of the summer yesterday just outside of Mackinaw. It was a such beautiful day! There were 107 antique tractors there; the most I've ever seen at a pull before. The looked so neat all lined up so of course I had to take pictures.

A little behind in blogging...

So it's been over 2 weeks since my last post. I wish I had something more exciting to report, but sadly I do not.

I'm excited that summer has finally arrived, although I don't enjoy the humidity that has come with it! I was threatening the other day to move to Montana where the humidity is nice and low! It can be 90 degrees there and it isn't bad at all. The plus side of the heat is that it makes the water in Phil & Jessica's pool perfect! I went swimming for the first time this year on Saturday. It was most enjoyable, although I did manage to slightly burn myself. Hopefully I'll get to go swimming more this year than last year.

Oh and we had quite an entertaining family picnic a few weeks ago when we caught a snapping turtle at our lake! Mike was fishing when he saw the turtle just off the shore. So naturally we put a piece of hotdog on a big hook which was attached to a roll of string and threw it in the water. We tried this a few times, but he swallowed one hook and got away with the hotdog several other times. So we decided that just a shovel might be more effective and finally got him out of the water. My dad was happy that we caught him because they can really clean the fish out of a lake.

I'm also really excited about the all the fairs and tractor pulls coming soon! Of course we will be going to the Hopedale pulls since that's where we met each other 3 years ago. :) That's it for now, try to keep from melting in this heat!

2 Years!

Today's our two-year wedding anniversary! I can't believe how fast the two years have flown! To celebrate we went out to dinner and mini-golfing last Friday night. There was a driving range at the mini-golf place so Mike had fun with that. I tried it a few times; wow I have a lot to learn! I felt so dumb and of course there are people there watching..maybe I'll practice my swing at home before I go again.

Some couples I know get big gifts for each other for such occasions. Since neither of us are too big into gifts, I usually get flowers and Mike gets cookies or a pie. This time I made him a strawberry pie, yum!

Happenings

As seems to be the trend lately, nothing too exciting has been happening with us. Our Memorial Day weekend was rather boring with the most exciting thing being our family picnic at the lake. Last week I continued to keep busy by planting flowers and putting mulch down at my parents' house.

This past weekend it was so beautiful outside! Saturday I was spent half the day at my sister's house in Eureka since she had a garage sale and the other half working in my parents' gardens. Mike and I also went to the golf course, which is a first for me. Mike golfed 9 holes, and I watched and enjoyed the weather. He even let me drive the golf cart! After seeing how difficult it is, I'm pretty sure it's not for me. I might try going to the driving range sometime just to satisfy Mike and to say that I tried.

Since this isn't a very exciting post, here are some cute pictures I took at the family picnic.

Another week goes by...

Does time seem to fly by faster in the spring for anyone else? I absolutely love spring and it's already the second to last week in May! Last week I was busy buying and planting flowers for my parents' house and my house. Mike and I had a relaxing weekend; basically the only thing we did was go to Gridley for a family thing on Saturday night. It was nice to see some of our family from Indiana and catch up.

It was a lovely Monday morning because over the weekend the Peoria riverfront flooded...again. It's starting to get a little old walking on scaffolding to get to work! The flooding isn't quite as bad this time, but still very inconvenient. Oh the joys of walking past the Asian Carp and ducks on your way to the office!

I'm looking forward to the long weekend coming up! Mike and I are hoping to go camping one or two nights so hopefully the weather cooperates! We've been saying ever since we got married that we were going to camp so hopefully it actually happens this time!

I've attached a couple more pictures from our trip. I have more of them up on my Facebook page, but since some of you can't see that I decided to post some more here.

Our Tennessee Vacation

Mike and I got back from Tennessee yesterday afternoon. It was an enjoyable trip despite the rain. The first part of our trip consisted of going to Ohio for a wedding. We stayed with Mike's sister Jen and her husband Jeff on Friday and Saturday night. It was nice to see their house and spend a little time with them. On Sunday morning we left for Tennessee and arrived at our cabin around 5:30.

Our cabin was very cute, although Mike wasn't happy with the steep road that we had to drive every day to get there. My poor car!! So much mountain driving!

Anyway, we spent most of our time hiking and driving places. We saw a lot of beautiful waterfalls and streams even though sometimes we had to hike in the rain. Two days we spent in town and at our cabin because they were calling for thunderstorms, and it's not fun being on a mountain when it's thundering and lightning. We ended up hiking about 21 miles in the 4 days that we were able to hike.

The highlight of our trip was definitely the bears that we saw. It's a good thing I don't use film anymore because I would have wasted a whole roll on just the bears! We saw them in Cade's Cove, which is an 11 mile loop that you can drive or walk. There are a lot of old buildings in this area and there's a good chance you'll see wildlife too. Here's just a few pictures that we took.