we finally found her!

Her, being our new house, that is! She's a real bute! We put an offer in on a house that has been empty for 2 years and has gone into a foreclosure situation, and we got it! We are so excited, here she is:


The day that it went on the market the realtor had 30-something calls, there were 24 different showings in 5 days! We put in an offer sort of on a hope and a prayer thinking that we didn't have much of a chance, but I guess we did, because we got her!

She was definitely beat up but we love her! Here are the stats: 5 bedrooms (4 upstairs and one downstairs, however the sump pump has been broken for who knows how long and water seeped into the 5th bedroom downstairs which caused mold to grow all over the room, see picture below, so we will be gutting the 5th bedroom down the the studs and spraying to kill the mold and then leaving it empty until we really need to have a 5th bedroom... hopefully not for a long, long time)

3 stall garage, that Matt is in love with! 4 bedrooms up on the "cat walk" thing as I call it. A big open stair case from the downstairs "man" room up to the top where the bedrooms are. An open, pretty large kitchen. And one amazingly ugly, paneled "man room". All of this and a half acre of land, AND we can see my dad's silo from the top bedroom, so we're sorta border line in the country, but we do have about 25-30 houses in the little development that we're in. The house is in the school zone that I work at so I'll be surrounded by lots of the kids I teach!

We close on the house April 1st. This is definitely a project to take on, but we're very excited to be able to make it our own. We're planning on taking each room one step at a time, and just doing some cosmetic work for now before we take on any huge projects. The carpet is pretty...umm red. And there is wall paper...um, everywhere! Some of the wall paper was even half way ripped down for us, lovely I know. Either way we're very excited and tons of plans are already starting to form in our little heads. Like the fact that we need a mailbox because our current one is laying in the drive way, and we need a new front storm door because somehow there is no glass in the door.

So I'll leave you with more pictures and more info to come as we get closer to being able to get started on the house. I can't wait to get some "after" pictures up in the next 4-5 months.
Entry Way


"Cat Walky Thing"- Bedrooms


Living Room


Kitchen


"Man Room"



Bathroom


One of the extra bedrooms (they all have this lovely blue carpet except the master)

Master Bedroom, the only room without wallpaper!

did you know?

We watched this video in my philosophy class and I thought it was too cool not to share. Some of the information is amazing! China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world!!! Today's children will have 10-14 jobs by the time they are 38! You'll have to watch the video find out the rest of the info.

25 random things about me

(this is from an online response thing, you were supposed to list 25 random things about yourself)

1. i thank god each day for bringing matt into my life and am surprised daily at how much i really do love being married
2. i have traveled to france, mexico, canada, jamaica, bahamas, germany, italy, the netherlands (holland), mallorca (island off of spain), ireland, spain, czech republic, and hungary. i am so thankful for being able to travel to each of those places. i have a huge desire to visit africa, i had a trip planned when i lived in germany but none of my roommates would go with me and i didn’t think it was smart to go alone
3. i am very excited to have both of my best friends back in iowa VERY SOON (and i sercretly always knew they would be back) ;-)
4. i love my family. my sister and i don’t always see eye to eye but we really do love each other. my dad and i had our years of battling and now we talk every single morning and see each other 2 or 3 times a week. my mom and i have always been great friends and are scary-honest with each other.
5. i can speak fluent french
6. i can’t wait to be a mom and know that matt will be a phenomenal dad
7. i was diagnosed with crohn’s disease in high school (it’s an immune deficiency disease that messes up your intestines) but luckily i have only had one surgery for it and have had no problems since and have been in remission for almost 8 years)
8. i truly believe that everything happens for a reason (i told matt that same thing a few years ago when i was leaving for germany and thought we weren’t meant for each other, ha, i guess god had other plans for us! and believe me when i say that matt does not let me live that one sentence down!)
9. i love traveling and can’t wait to get back to europe sometime in the near future
10. i am a total list freak! i have a need to have a list around me at all times of everything that i need to get done (for home or work) and i will do everything possible to get my list finished as fast as possible so that i don’t have the anxiety of things left on my list hanging over my head (i have even been known to write something on my list just so i could cross it off)
11. matt and i are in a fantastic small group with some church friends and we are excited to grow old with them for the next 50 years!
12. i will be graduating with my masters in elementary education in july in wisconsin and will have completed it in ten months total!
13. i was involved in 4-h in elementary school and loved almost every moment of it (except for the fact that it was always 110 degrees the week of the fair and we had to sit in the barns with our sheep, which of course had no air conditioning)
14. i secretly would love to be a wedding planner (in fact i just signed up to be a volunteer wedding coordinator at our church!) our wedding day was such an amazing day and i would do anything to be able to do it again, or once a year would be even better!
15. i talk to junie (our cat) like she is a person, and i know deep down she understands me =)
16. i have a weird fascination with mormons and military guys and love tv shows and books about either
17. i love to be spontaneous, yet i also am a huge planner (i have an 18 month planner that has things filled throughout the entire next 18 months)
18. i love school, and learning has always come very easily for me (but i now love working with kids that learning doesn’t come so easy for)
19. i am addicted to dateline and 20/20 type shows and i swear by whatever i learn on them
20. i am almost certain that we will have twins (long story, but i really am almost certain)
21. i LOVE white trim and accents in houses and hope that in our next house i can paint all of the trim white!
22. i am deathly afraid of needles. i have passed out more than once when getting blood drawn and getting shot, and have even turned blue when my tongue blocked my airway one time. it is now written on my chart at the dr’s office that i have to lay down. 99% of the time i make my mom go with me so that she can talk to me and distract me while they do it.
23. i love love love christmas! i decorate our house the weekend after halloween. i have 7-8 blowup yard decorations that i’ve been dying to put up for two years now, the first year i was living at home and didn’t want to deal with it, and this past year we were selling our house and matt forbid me from putting them up. so this year, no matter what, my amazing christmas display will go up!
24. matt asked me to be his girlfriend at the top of the eiffel tour and it was super beautiful
25. growing up on a farm was fabulous and i can’t wait for my kids to have the same experiences on grandpas’ (both of you!) farms!

Our other full time job…

Sorry it has been so long without an update. Matt and I have both taken on another job.

Matt and I have been searching and searching for a new house, so much searching in fact that it seems like our second job! We have looked at somewhere around 40 houses and still no luck. Well sorta… no luck. We actually did find one that we loved. It was a 4 bedroom house in a woodsy area that was up over a ravine. It had a wide open kitchen and living room, each bedroom had sliding glass doors out to the wrap around deck, it was outdated, but fabulous. We put in an offer, and we were outbid with 30 minutes left for a counter from the seller. So my little heart was broken and so our search continues. Although the housing market nationally may be in the dumps, it certainly is NOT in the dumps in Cedar Falls! According to our realtor there are fewer houses for sale in our price range in Cedar Falls right now than there has been in a long time. We’ve looked at a few houses in the afternoon that came on the market that morning and by night they were gone!!

So we continue to do the “apartment thing” and live that dream out while we search for a house. So far the apartment thing isn’t all bad…except for the lack of extra space for anything. Junie is ready to leave I’m pretty sure. She has now started to dart out of the door when we open it. I have also found her lying in front of the door with her paw sneaking under the door several times.

We’ll keep everyone updated if we actually do ever find and get a house. Until then we’ll just keep living the dream, thunder ridge style!