Wood floor is done!

Yay! The wood floor is done! It looks so nice! (no pictures yet of the completed floor..I'm always lagging a day or 3 on pictures). Its smoothness and has already been tested by some twirling ballerina-like swirls, and spinning breakdance- like moves by little Tyler Ennist, and Alex and I. We couldn't have done it (so fast) without all our friends who have been helping! One of them, the wood-floor laying expert, as a surprise, actually broke into our house one afternoon and worked on our floor for us while we were still at work! You could image the look on our faces to come home to such a surprise! Painting is also almost done. We've had one tiny hickup there in that one tub of paint was tinted wrong, so I have to go back, and convince ACE to mix me a free new one. We're saving the rest of painting till after the weekend though, because this weekend we will be moving in (into the garage and living room that is)! The plan for tonight is to pack up our appartment (thanks to an awesome "treasure cove of moving boxes" experience (*))!

(*) ask me if you're confused/interested :)

More pics from wedding

Some more pictures shot at the wedding...

- Grandma Bryan looking out from the balcony

- Tyler, Leanne (and baby!!), and Isaiah

- a few of Ben and I

- Ben and his cousins (???...yeah)

- cousin Emily and I

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson!

What a STUNNING bride!!! Such a beautiful wedding! (Sorry, no pics yet of the groom, or of bride and groom together.)

The bride Jennifer and her brother Tyler

Work over the weekend

See our nice garage-used-as kitchen/dining/storage/living - room? Over the weekend I (with help from Debbie!) finished painting the living room and kitchen, and the first coat of paint in all the rooms upstairs. Ben got started on the hardwood floor sunday afternoon with help from a whole bunch of guys! Thanks so much everyone! And thanks Debbie and Kristen for cooking all of us such a fabulous dinner sunday evening!! What a treat!

Quick pic of the crime scene

Even the doctor was impressed by the hole in Ben's finger. It's healing pretty well though now :)

Roarrr

For two reasons:
1) Ben and I killed another bear last night - Ben finished texturing the ceilings upstairs, and we finished painting the ceilings in the living room and family room downstairs. I love how our new ceilings look! Nice and smoothly textured, with no popcorn (and blue sparklies) in sight. Yay!
2) If you live anywhere in the vicinity of Laramie you know what I'm talking about: we had the most awesome lightshow last night - a HUGE thunderstorm! After we finished working on the house for the evening we took our camping chairs, opened the garage door, turned off all the lights and watched how the thundering bolts shook the ground. It was fantastic.

(P.S. Crazy thought: last year Today I left for Antarctica....couldn't imagine doing that again without Ben going with me!)

Some more pictures

Here's a few quick pictures of the before, and progress we've made so far. In the week and a half since we got the house we have successfully: taken out all the old ugly (red, blue, gray, yellow) carpet in the house, taken down ugly wood panelling, scraped the floors (since for some reason the carpet was glued down), scraped all popcorn off of EVERY ceiling in the house (got muscles?), primed these ceilings, built parts of a wall (who likes a "drive through" window in the middle of their family room?), primed these walls, primed all doors, and textured the ceilings and new walls. As you can tell, this has been taking up every bit of spare time we have...we've been working away every evening after work, and during the weekends. It's coming together though! Last night was eventful, as we FINALLY got to the painting stage...I started paiting the trim! Also, we got the floors in for the living room, so as soon as all painting is done there, Ben can get started on installing the hardwood floors!! However, all of this has not happened without an accident...late saturday night Ben drilled a hole through his left index finger (and for your information: it was faulty equipment (not a clumsy Ben)...the drill bit actually broke off!)...the whole bit went straight through his finger...LOTS of pain, and LOTS of blood :( ... All I've got is legs in about 12 shades of blue...I have so many bruises haha!

Here they are!

Here they are!
Some pictures of our new abode!
The color? Ben affectionately calls it "needs-to-be-painted".
Some updates on all the work we've been doing on the inside will follow soon.

(P.S. see the pretty flowers growing by the driveway?)

New Home, New Blog!

Hello All!

Ben and I bought our first home! Good time to start a new(*) blog, so everyone can see how much progress we're making :)

(*) The Antarctica adventure has been over for a while, time for a new one!.