Makin' it Real

Last week we came home to this:

Yes, snow in April, but what I am referring to is the sign.

It is odd to see the sign in the yard, every day I do a double take when I see it because it is hard to believe we will be moving. 

No bites on the house yet, but with the snow and icky weather, no one is looking at houses. So, we continue to adjust to very few family dinners during the week and not seeing dad as much as we'd like due to his long commute.  

On the bright side, the house is usually always picked up - nothin like coming home to a clean house every day! 

We continue to keep the faith that the right person/family will want our cute little house that we poured so many loving hours into to make it ours. 

Big Changes Ahead

New developments have recently come up which has taken whatever little time I had away - hence the even fewer posts on the blog. Not only am I finishing up my additional licensure (1/2 a class left, i.e. 2 nasty projects due by May) we are busy selling the house so we can move. Needless to say, my plate has been overflowing for some time now. 

Adam was approached to take a job with the MN Corn Growers and it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up. The only problem - it is in Shokapee, making his commute 1.5 hours from Z-town. With him excited to take the job, we were both very sad (and still are) to be moving but know it is best for our family. The house has been on the market for 2 weeks now and we've had 3 showings so things look promising. Looking online at houses has not been exciting for me - living in suburbia in a 'newer' house has never really excited me. But, I'm trying to stay positive and am excited to have level floors, more closets, and a kitchen for entertaining, plus  Oma and Opa have requested their own bedroom. Still hard to get over the lack of charm newer houses bring and lack of hardwood floors (Adam tells me he'll work on putting in hard wood floors in the future in necessary). So....Friday we head to the cities for our first official look at houses in person. 

While it will not be easy to be away from our Zumbrota 'family' we will just be in the 'northern suburbs' of Zumbrota (as a friend once put it). So that is how we are looking at it - we make the drive to the cities every day, why not make the drive to Z-town on a regular basis? 

Our plan is to sell our house before we buy and hope to have everything done this summer. We cannot move 'officially' before I am done with school because we don't have childcare, nor do we want to pull Gerrit out of school at this point. We shall see how the timing works! It is out of our hands now and we wait. 

A storage unit has saved us a lot! With finishing random projects on the house that we've been meaning to do and never did, we can concentrate on packing. A good portion of the house is in boxes and out of site which makes maintaining a 'showable' house easier. I will be thankful when showings are done but at the same time, coming home to a house that is always picked up has been nice. 

The move has not hit the boys in a positive or negative way. Emmit won't quite understand and Gerrit will realize what's happening on the first day of school, or when he asks to go to Dahlen's house after dinner. It has hit me harder than I thought. This big city girl who didn't want to move to a small town took some serious convincing to move back to the city! Holy cow, what happened??? Anyways, with each day comes a bit more ease and understanding - especially when Adam has not been home before 6:30 yet due to the commute. 

Stay tuned. Until the move, we will live it up in Z-town by celebrating Easter with friends and enjoy the warmer days of spring!

Ice Castles

When Oma and Opa came for a winter visit, we had some fun on President's day visiting the ice castles at the MOA (and going to the Lego store).

Gerrit and I - self portrait with my phone:

Opa and Gerrit at the beginning...

A view from the parking lot:

Not my best face but the only other picture of Gerrit and I that I got!

A view looking up:

Gerrit with very cold Oma and Opa:

Hearts:

Another group shot:

Gerrit loved the little areas he could explore:

and sit and take a break:

Cheese:

A tunnel!

Peek

A different view up:

It was a cold day (for Oma and Opa - they didn't like the wind so much) but well worth the trip 'north'. It was a pleasant change from the paint touch ups and packing I had them doing the rest of the time - oh, and babysitting!

Inside this Winter

When the boys are not outside, this is what they spent a lot of their time doing:

Emmit practicing his dunks:

 Gerrit taught Emmit how to 'stand' during a free throw. (Yes, that is an old school Jordan jersey that was Logan's -- who is now a senior in college!).

Gerrit begged me to bring home my white board and play book. Gerrit and Emmit are planning their next move....

Usually one is dressed as a gopher:

The other a Spartan:

It is fun watching them 'play' their own game. We have to announce them as they run out of the locker room (aka bathroom), throw the jump ball up at the beginning of the game and sometimes keep score and always play the ref. Its great calling 'fouls' as they work just like timeouts! 

I think the boys will be bummed when the basketball season comes to an end in a few weeks. Luckily the weather usually turns nice so they can be outside even more!

A Glimpse at our Winter

I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted! Wowza!

Here are a few pictures of what our winter has been like so far:

A football player:

Cyclists - Adam snow blowed a path through the yard so they could ride their bikes:

Sledding (Emmit claimed I pushed too fast so he opted to pushing Gerrit down instead of sledding himself):

A golfer (yes, he did keep track of the WHITE ball):

And sniper (trying out the marshmallow shooters Emmit got for his birthday):

Still Updating...

I know it has been way too long since I updated the blog. I didn't even have class to blame it on either! Christmas has been updated so you might want to scroll down and find that post and read up from there.

We have been plagued with the flu again around here. Emmit had croup last weekend so I stayed home with him on Monday, Tuesday I stayed home thanks to the flu hitting me and headed back to work on Wednesday feeling fine. We were bracing ourselves for the rest of the family to get it and sure enough, Wednesday night, Gerrit got sick. Adam stayed home with him on Thursday but I came home from work with the flu again! So Adam left Gerrit and I at home, went back to work, hoping to stay away from the flu! We were all back to school on Friday and so far so good!

Here's hoping this is the end of the illnesses for us this winter. Luckily all of this happened while I was on 'break' from class. I start back up this week but am ready to finish it all up. It should be an easier semester because we are 'student teaching' which doesn't really apply to me because I'm already teaching health.

No guarantees but, hoping to keep the blog updated on a more regular basis. I don't really feel like updating when all I have to say is we are sick! Here's looking for fun to return and good stories worthy to be posted!

The Big E is 3!

We had our own family birthday celebration for Emmit.
He wore his '3' shirt to daycare and spilled on it. I forced it back on him for the evenings festivities and you can guess which picture was taken right after I won…

 I think Gerrit enjoyed the Gopher football outfit more than Emmit, but now we have 2 college teams. You know, you can't have a college team vs a professional team.



Emmit was excited about his work bench and loves the sounds the tools make. A few other small gifts rounded out the gifts. Poor kid, I think he gets the shaft having his birthday so close to Christmas.

We headed to friends for a Christmas/New Year's party and celebrating Emmit's birthday again. We had cake and sang to him before ringing in the new year at 10:16 (random time but we were all starting to get tired so pretended it was midnight and then all went home to bed!). Gerrit asked why we did all that 'celebrating' so obviously the fact that it was not midnight did not phase him!

It was great to bring in the new year with all the cycling friends and be home without any illness!