...It's been a while...

I have been a total blog slacker. The upside is that no-one is reading this blog anymore, so I can say whatever the heck I want! :-)

We've been in our house almost nine months, and things are going great with it. We did tons of landscaping work over the summer months. We also did quite a bit of painting inside the house in the months immediately after buying it. There are lots of things we still want to do, both inside and out, but we've taken care of a lot of the things that we wanted to do pretty quickly. Like painting over the bright purple room.

This was definitely the semester from hell; I am SO glad that it's over. I was getting ready to start my tree farm a few years earlier than planned. Things are looking much rosier, though, now that we're done with classes here. Aaron's had some stressful months, too. He's been flying back and forth to Denver, CO every week for three or four days in the middle of the week. That has sucked a lot, but we're pretty sure that's coming to an end.

We're flying home for Christmas this Friday, and we're looking forward to being home for a few days. We didn't go back for Thanksgiving because of all the Denver craziness, so it's been a while. Plus, I don't think that we've been back to Kinsman since last Christmas, which is just weird!

OK, well that's all for now. I'll try to write again before next Christtmas. ;-)

Settling In

We're starting to settle in. The move went pretty well, thanks to a lot of help from Aaron's Burns and Mac friends. We managed to get a fair amount of painting done before moving in, but we are still working on it, and I have a feeling that we will start new rooms in the summertime, too... :-)

Aaron's parents visited two weekends ago, and that was a lot of fun. It's amazing what we were able to get done with four people working! We had a garage sale, Aaron and Jerry got a utility tub spliced into the copper plumbing, a new hose faucet installed, a refrigerator down the basement, the outside fountain to work, the dryer to vent outside rather than in the basement... on and on and on. They were crazy productive. Nora and I played in the gardens, and got a bunch of flowers and herbs planted. We filled up the windowbox on the front of the house with flowers, too, and everything looks so pretty! It's been raining for about a week now, so the gardens are looking pretty happy. All the herbs and flowers are really looking good.

So far we've gotten the dining room and our bedroom painted. We're currently working on one of the guest rooms, and it's starting to come together. They're all taking forever because the original colors were dark mauve and purple. Yikes! It takes a lot of primer to cover that!

Springtime in Kansas

Well, springtime has made it to Lawrence. Everything is turning green outside, and I am so glad. It's spring break at KU, and I am enjoying the temporary repreive. We've been packing stuff up at home and getting things ready for the move in a couple of weeks. We close on the house next Friday!!! Just a week from today! Our townhouse lease will be good until mid-April, so we'll have two weeks of overlap to do a lot of moving in. It's going to be nice to have the extra time so we don't have to move everything at once.

HOUSE!!!

Last night, Aaron and I signed a contract for our first house!!!!!!!!!!! We are pretty excited, as you can imagine. The house is on the very east side of Lawrence, so Aaron's commute will be considerably shortened. It was built in 1916, has a BASEMENT, 2-car detached garage, hardwood floors everywhere, 4 BR, 1.75 baths, and is pretty awesome. The sellers had completely remodeled the kitchen and the main bath, and they did a really nice job of it. For being almost 100 years old, the house seems like it has been well-maintained and is in pretty good shape. We are EXCITED!!!!

We've been pretty stressed out for the last few weeks with this house-hunting business, and I am so glad to have found something that we like this much, this quickly.