oh, what a trip!

Last weekend Matt and I headed to Minneapolis with the Austerman's. Jackee and Shane are in our small group, and needless to say we had a TON of fun (I even caught myself snorting because I was laughing so hard at one point)! We took off Sunday morning and head up to IKEA, the megastore of all megastores! It is a 3 level, amazingly phenomenal store that has everything related to home decorating possible for sale, and at a darn good price. We borrowed a suburban from Jackee's family with the idea that we would need as much space as possible to bring our goods home in. Shane and Jackee hadn't planned on buying too much. Matt and I, on the other hand, had a huge list of things that we had picked out in the catalog to get for our house. We haven't done very much decorating up to this point because we knew we were waiting to get quite a few things at IKEA.

As it turned out there were huge sales for the 3-day weekend, and Shane and Jackee ended up getting 4 large bookcases, and we did too. We also got a few huge canvas pictures, a ginormous wardrobe organizer thing for our closet, some curtains, decorative pillows, and a few other random things. So.... when we met up at the car to pack, this is what we had:

4 carts of stuff to fit into one car! (and 4 more book cases were not even in this picture)



The guys began to pack and plan on how were were going to get this all to fit in the car.


Here is a picture of them part way done, with several more cart loads to fit in. I believe it was at this point that almost everything was in, EXCEPT our luggage and cooler, oops!


And it was about this time that Matt was eyeing the spool of rope that they have outside for people like us that might have to attempt to tie things to the roof.


And the final picture, EVERYTHING magically fit! Although Matt and I had to share a seat and a half, I had a cooler at my head, Matt had some shelves in the back of his head, and poor Shane could only really see out of the front window. But we did have an amazing time.



After IKEA we checked into our hotel downtown Minnneapolis and headed out to dinner.

This is the view from our room:



We went to a fun restaurant that brews it's own beer. On the walk to the restaurant we saw the coolest thing! This trolly was pedal powered, which is cool to start. BUT, it is also a bar on wheels! The people are sitting on stools, pedaling, having a beer. A very cool invention for sure!



At the restaurant the 3 non-pregnant ones (Matt, Shane, and I) all ordered their famous sampler of beers. It came in this cool stacked thing, but here are all of the different types.



After dinner we crashed back at the hotel. In the morning we headed to Hell's Kitchen for breakfast, which was very fun! Then we made one last stop back at IKEA, NOT for us. =) Shane and Jackee needed one more curtain hanging contraption. On the way home we stopped at the outlets so that we could add a few more bags and packages to our already stuffed car.

We are almost done getting all of our stuff put together and in order..UNTIL WE REALIZED THAT WE HAD THE WRONG SIZE ORGANIZERS FOR THE WARDROBE!!!! So, Matt and I are headed BACK to Minneapolis tomorrow for a quick exchange and then home, yes, we are that crazy!


Hopefully by next week we'll have everything hung up, organized, and ready for some final before and after pictures of our house, yeah!!! ;-)

june bug

I know it's been FOREVER since we've updated, but... our lives have been crazy! With moving, finishing up my grad class and taking my comprehensive exams, and end of the year testing with my students I've been swamped.

We have done hours upon hours of remodeling and demo work, but it's not quite ready for pictures. I'm hoping after this coming weekend's trip to IKEA I'll be able to properly decorate and take pictures.

So for the time being I'll shower you all with tons of pictures of Junie, my little princess. =) And while you look at the pictures you can get a sneak peek of what we've been doing in our house.