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.