In the New House

So you get two posts this year!  In as little as three months! What is happening here?

Well we are in our new house and it is just as awesome as we hoped it would be.  The neighborhood is great.  There are a lot of kids Keegan's age and a few hockey coaches nearby that Lyle coaches with.  It's got that whole good ole' neighborhood vibe going on.  Kids are in the streets playing hockey or basketball.  Kids are in and out of each others houses making mischief.  Everyone is very friendly and easy to get along with.  This is truly a house and neighborhood where we feel like we belong and will be able to spend many long years.

Beginning of September was insane.  The closing on the old house went fine (2nd time we sold it).  The closing on the new house was almost delayed because of some issues with getting the appraisal of the new house done on time; but rather than being delayed until the Monday after the weekend it just got pushed back to Friday afternoon.

In addition to all that my sister had her baby.  An adorable little boy named Jorden; he had some complications early and ended up in NICU; but he is now doing well as is his mom.

And Keegan started at his new school.  Yep all the above happened in about three days in September and it was absolutely stressful.  But we got through it all.

I took the week off after we moved in and unpacked everything.  We got all our rock delivered and spent 3 weeks shoveling rock around the house and now that is done.  We also bought some new furniture and got everything all decorated to my liking.  So we are pretty set.  Which is good because we are having the whole extended family over for a baby reception for Jordan in a couple weeks.

Keegan loves his new school.  He's made a number of new friends and is participating in chess club there.  He'll be doing a chess tournament in early December.  He did crazy good on his MAP testing again this year (was over 95th percentile for Math and Reading) so that is good.

Keegan is still doing karate.  He's probably going to be a brown belt for awhile; this level is a lot more challenging for him.  Hockey season has also started.  Keegan moved up to B Mites, so he was very excited about that.  Lyle is assistant coaching this year (we are both releved he doesn't have to be a head coach this time around).

We made it through Halloween which was low key but a lot of fun.  We had my parents and some friends over and went trick-or-treating.  Keegan knew a lot of the kids in the neighborhood and it was fun to walk around and see everyone having so much fun.

Now we are getting geared up for the holiday season...hoping to get our Christmas lights put up this weekend and do exciting things like cut up some more wood from the downed trees in our backyard (they are down from when they did construction).

Anyway, we are loving the new house.  It's amazing how nice it is to have certain things fixed that bothered us in our old house.  For example we have a spacious mudroom now and so there is room for coats and shoes and we aren't all tripping over each other in there like in our old house.  The walk-in pantry is amazing and has made it so easy to organize food.

Having the washer/dryer upstairs has been awesome and made it so easy and convenient to do the laundry.  I am also enjoying having an office of my own where I can have a table set up for recording videos and space for all my books.  The master bathroom is also very spacious so we aren't bumping into each other when we are getting ready in the morning.

It's just amazing how having some of these space issues fixed reduces day to day stress.  Anyway, I will leave you all with the below video links to youtube videos giving a tour of our new house.  Enjoy!

Time for my yearly personal blog post...

Again it's been a really really long time since I wrote on this blog.  As per the norm now I spend most of my "free time" either reading or writing book reviews for my Hidden In Pages blog.

It's been a truly hectic year and an even worse summer.  We are building a new house in Ham Lake.  It is a beautiful two story house on a 1 acre wooded lot with an awesome outbuilding for our camper and toys.  The neighborhood is lovely and we already know some of the families that live out there so we are super excited.  The house is supposed to be done early September.

Of course with the excitement comes all the other bad stuff...well not as much bad as just stressful and annoying.  We've been living with my parents since May...mostly because we have 4 cats and needed them out of our current house to sell it.  Mostly it's been fine and working out great.  However it is hard not being in your own house and it is hard having to keep the cats in the basement where they can't interact with us.  It's hard not knowing where things are and trying to cram a house worth of stuff into a couple of spare bedrooms and a bathroom..it's just hard.  We are lucky that I have such wonderful parents that are willing to let us squat here...but it's still a bit stressful and...well...hard.

The worse part is the selling the old house.  It sold two days after we listed it.  The buyer wanted some of our furniture which was okay.  However, he also delayed the closing three times because of lender issues and in the end (7 weeks after we sold it) the whole thing fell through.  So we were looking forward to a stress-free summer without house payments and instead ended up putting the house back up for sale the end of July.

This meant the 2K we spent to stage it was down the drain.  We had to move furniture back in and restage it.  It was a huge pain.  The good news was it sold again in 6 days.  The bad news is that we aren't supposed to close until the end of August now and the new buyers have a bunch of professional cleaning (ducts, windows, etc) that they expect us to do.  Not a huge deal but difficult given we don't live there now.  Basically the selling our current house thing has become a full summer event.  We have moved furniture out of that house twice now and are praying and hoping that this time we actually close.  It's been incredibly stressful and soul-suckingly depressing.  There are a lot of times when I think it's not worth it..but then...

I go and visit our new house on this beautiful quiet wooded lot.  It's in a neighborhood where the kids are all near my son's age and he is already making friends.  It's a neighborhood where we know people and in a school district that is awesome.  Then I take a deep breath and close my eyes and repeat over and over "Yes it will all be worth it!"

As for other news...

Keegan has stopped piano lessons (he actually told me he had tried it for 2 years and hates it and I said he only had to give it a couple years...apparently he was keeping track).  It makes me a little sad, but I am also glad to have an activity go away.

Keegan got his brown belt a couple weeks ago; we are super proud of him.  It was a lot of work and was very challenging for him.  Now he is working his way to black strip and then to black belt.  He's learning tornado kicks and learning to use kamas and a bokken and of course keeping up his bo work.

Keegan is thinking about stopping swimming lessons.  He is all the way up to the where he can join the junior swim team and we are discussing whether he wants to do that or not.  He's leaning towards not right now but we are going to take the fall off and reconvene in the winter.

Keegan is also still doing hockey year round.  He is hoping to move up to B squad this year.  His skating has improved a lot over the year so we will see what try-outs bring.

He is also starting 3rd grade in a month...at his new elementary school...so hopefully that will go well for him.  He did an outstanding job on his MAP testing last year.  He was 95% for math and 99.9% for reading (tenth grade reading level).  Pretty awesome scores so we are proud of him.  However, he needs to work a bit more on focusing in class and showing his teacher how smart he is by really pushing to do more and better on his homework.  He's getting average grades in class, but he could do so much more.

As for the rest of us.  I am still at 3M, I got a promotion this spring so that was exciting.  It came with a big raise in pay which was welcome.  I am making now working at 80% time what I was making working 100% time before...so yay for that.

Lyle is working at IDeas as a contractor where he commands a bill rate that still stuns me a bit.  We still have our LLC and he contracts to IDeas through our company.  I am always nervous about him contracting but somehow he always makes things work out (knock on wood).

My sister, Kimmie, is due to have her baby any day now too...so that is exciting.

We took a very fun trip out to Northern California/Southern Oregon this spring with some friends.  We saw lots of wonderful things like Lava Beds National Park, Oregon National Caves, the Redwoods, Crater Lake, Crescent Beach, and the Table Rocks.  It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it.

We haven't been doing much else this year.  I guess we went up to the North Shore camping over the 4th.  We also went camping outside of Chicago to visit my sister in early  June.  However...mostly we are just building this house.

I hate to wish my summer away...but I will be soooo relieved when we have closed on our old house and are in our new house.

Hopefully I will update more in the future but I am not going to promise anything.  Take Care.