Mike and Sarah

It's hard to believe our house hunting adventure happened just a few months ago... it feels like we've been in our house for much longer. Our days living in our downtown apartment also feel like forever ago. All that being said, combined with the fact that our kitchen is done, I think it's safe to say we're settling in quite nicely. Speaking of settling in, here are a few of my favorite things... Although I loved the open concept in our apartment, now that we have a great kitchen with an area to eat we actually both sit down for dinners most nights of the week. I'm enjoying this shift. It was never on either of our initial "what we want in our first home" list, but we're both loving our private backyard. I do realize I may be whistling a different tune in a few weeks when I can't move my arms from all the raking we'll have to do... oh well. One item that was on our list was having two full bathrooms and ...

Mike and I had a three day weekend this weekend and a very special three days it was. Mike's oldest friend got married on Saturday. We had so much fun and but the best part was catching up with great friends who now live far away. We're so very lucky to have the friends we do. Here's the same group of handsome young men at our wedding... awww.... cute , right?! I sadly do not have many pictures but I actually have a good excuse this time... I was asked to handle the FlipCam the lovely bridge and groom purchased just for the occasion. Don't worry, I made sure to capture the speeches, the first dance, and of course... marriage advice from people who aren't married (truth be told, they were the only people around me at the time I thought it'd be nice to add marriage advice, turns out, when you combine a lot of wine with video camera-ing... that's what you get... tehe) 

That's right folks, I haven't completed one book... I've completed two in the course of four months . I have finally finished The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo trilogy and oh.my.gosh. These books are amazing but are also, surprisingly, hard to discuss. I shall do my best... I'm sure those of you who have finished these books can agree, you can't really talk about the second without talking about the third. If you remember, way back when, I discussed the first book in this series and really had a hard time getting into it. The first book is pretty slow but it is absolutely essential for the books that follow. In the first book we meet Lisbeth Salander and Michael Blomkvist and learn bits and pieces of their past and how they come to know one another. The second and third books pick up right where the last left off. In the second book you learn everything  about Lisbeth which helps answer many questions about her character. Lisbeth is a young woman who doesn...

Allow me to introduce... our new, finished kitchen. As for the acte final ... there are cookies in the cookie jar.

Want to know a secret? Mike and I are secretly training for the Des Moines 1/2 marathon. Why secretly? Because neither of us is actually certain we're going to make it all the way. We've both attempted this before and failed, miserably . Therefore we decided to try it again, together, and not really tell anyone we were training except for anyone reading this now... but I know you'll keep our secret safe because you're awesome like that. Anyways, so far so good. Compared to the last time we trained, we're both doing considerably better hmmm, marriage must be good for your health, ha! . We ran 8 miles today and, although our legs are wondering what the heck we're doing, the run went really well. This, however, is the tricky thing about training for marathons... you have times where you're totally confident and then boom you head out for a short run and feel as though you're a 30 year closet smoker whose lungs are about to collapse ( am I right, or am...

you've got some 'splainin to do! You know you're a homeowner when your conversations revolve around dishwasher drama . It sounds sad but I'll tell you something... this bad boy pictured below has been a complicated and very expensive mess for us to figure out. The positive in this situation is that we got a freakin steal of a deal on this baby. We keep reminding ourselves of this as we realize the first time we may get to use it is when we're preparing to sell this house! (i kid, i kid) The first issue we ran into was the lack of electrical wiring for a dishwasher. This was remedied yesterday (as mentioned in my previous kitchen update post). While it was an easy fix, it was not inexpensive... but it was fixed nonetheless. With Mike and I on the verge of a huge sigh of relief , we turned on our newly installed dishwasher and... it.doesn't.work. grrrrrr After about an hour on the phone with the geek squad, they were able to send someone ...

This is my stab at a new weekly staple, whatya think? =) This weekend Mike and I... headed north and spent much needed time in the Dean abode. A great family friend was in town for the weekend too so there was a lot of catching up and laughs. What fun. Saturday night we celebrated a wonderful couple in a wonderful ballroom in St. Paul... actually, I'll let her tell you all about it here . But the snapshot for the weekend most definitely goes to... the Cyclones beating the Hawkeyes in triple overtime! hells yes!!

They have arrived!! The counter top installation was smooth sailin and we now have a working sink as well. Here are some pics... We went with a Corian solid surface (its actually the Samsung Staron line from Home Depot). While we are loving them, they don't photograph well so the pictures don't really do them justice. They're a taupe-mauve-grey color with specs in the red, tan, pink color scheme. It's so hard to choose a counter from the tiny 1x1 square samples they give you but Mike and I are pleased with our decision.  Perhaps you've noticed our dishwasher isn't quite installed all the way yet. The counter tops were a breeze to install but, unfortunately the dishwasher was not (of course, why on earth would two kitchen related items go smoothly in one day... unheard of!). We apparently do not have the electrical needs for running a dishwasher right now! You would think we'd have thought about this before we scheduled the pluber to install thi...

Is the best offense really a good defense? Allow me to set the scene: Last weekend we were all hanging around the Pentek pool. It was the usual crowd, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends. Mike's cousins are actually all a little bit older than us and some already have children of their own. Kids and pool parties are super fun so we were thoroughly enjoying the giggles and excitement. Mike was sitting on a lounge chair and I had one leg dipped in the pool when a sad little two year old walked our way. Mike and I spent the next few minutes trying to cheer the little guy up (he was sad because his mom ran inside the house for a bit). We did the usual, acted really excited about everything, peek-a-boo, patty-cake, and then Mike's mom thought to offer him some food. She brought a plate of veggie pizza over and offered the little guy a slice and he was about to happily take a piece when, out of no where we hear, " ewwwwwww, you don't want that ," from none...

... or total fail, you be the judge. I am of course referring to my summer reading list. Hmmm, let's revisit that 'ol list shall we? (full post located here ) Grown Up Books: Jane Eyre Shopaholic and Sister (pool read for Vegas) Little Bee The Art of Racing in the Rain The Girl Who Played with Fire Shanghai Girls Kids Books: Chains and Forge both by Laurie Anderson Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry Exhibit A: You see here a list of ten books titles, of which I have only read two in their entirety. That my friends is a whopping 20%, (I'll go ahead and say I received full credit on the ones I did manage to finish because, who are we kidding, I'm an excellent reader), or in the mind of a classroom teacher... not even worth the effort, sheesh Exhibit B: The side note next to the second title on the list (Shopaholic...) shows the utter naivete of my own pre-Vegas-with-my-crazy-a...

I have realized September is a sneaky little fella who takes most people by surprise. I heard so many people today say, "I can't believe it's September already!" I, however, always look forward to this calendar switch because it means the end is in sight for this hot-hot-hot weather (and we all know this girl can only take so much of the heat). While I do welcome fall with open arms, it is always hard to come to grips with summer officially ending. It always seems to fly by and yet, when I think back to our Las Vegas trip in June it feels as if it were years ago! All in all, we feel 100% satisfied with Summer 2011 and are looking forward to the return of routine and the comforts of colder weather. Our fall schedule is pretty wide open at this point which is a nice change from previous years. We hope to make it up to Ames to tailgate like we're in college again cheer on the Cyclones! I'm also wondering if this fall will include any at-home-diy-projects? .....