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!

going, going...gone!

We sold our house! We are so excited! We had a family come and look at our house over Christmas break and we got an official offer a week or so later. We went through the nerve wracking process of negotiating all on our own without a realtor and came out with a deal that we all could agree to. The final paperwork and closing is still to come in a week or two, but we're moving today!

Matt and our parents and some awesome friends from our small group helped move all of our stuff today(I was at class all day, actually I am still in class right now, don't worry we're only learning about philosophers, nothing I won't be fine without=). We have signed a month by month lease at an apartment complex in Cedar Falls, while we start the house hunting process over again. The apartment is only... FIFTY EIGHT SECONDS from my school, and significantly cheaper than our house payment was. Yippee!!!

We have began our house hunt with our realtor in Cedar Falls but unfortunately, or fortunately maybe, there are VERY few houses for sale in Cedar Falls right now. So for now we're living the newlywed dream at the thunder down under (Thunder Ridge Apartments that is)! We are glad to have a place to stay and we'll now be able to take our time looking for our next house. We're hoping to be pretty picky about what we're looking for, so we may be at the thunder for a month or maybe 6 months. With the housing market projected to continue to fall for the next 9-12 months in Iowa we are excited about the possibility of getting a great house at a discounted price! =)

Once I get a chance to jazz up the place a little bit I'll get some pictures on here. Gotta run... Earl is giving me "the eye".

what would you write?

The weekend before Christmas I had one of my grad classes, it's a class that is about teaching writing, but also centers a lot around us as writers ourselves. One of our teachers told us to get out our paper, and then to listen as she read our writing assignment aloud to us. The basic assignment revolved around us writing a letter to someone that was on our "top people in our lives that have influenced us" list that we had made back in August, except... there was a catch! We had to write something in the letter (which, by the way, we were told that we never had to send it if we didn't want to) telling the person something that we had never told them before.


I immediately knew who I wanted/needed to write to. I had been feeling guilty since I started this writing class in August for not having written about this person yet. I got out my favorite bright pink pen and began...with tears streaming down my face here is my letter, to the woman I miss almost every day still.

Dear Grandma,
I think about you often. I miss you. I miss hearing you call me "Bail." I miss everything about you. Your beautiful wrinkly hands, the rollers in your beautiful silver and white hair. I mostly just miss you.

I wish you would have known that you mean the world to me. I wish I would have said more to you at Mayo. I wish I could have hugged you on my wedding day and danced at our reception.

I wish you could see how happy I am now. I wish you could see how much I love being a wife... just like you told me in your last breath "I know you'll be a good wife."

I know you know these things now, because I know you're still around me, but I still wish I could see you and talk to you.

You were the most amazing Grandma that I'll ever know.

I loved "baking" no-bake chocolate oatmeal drop cookies with you. I haven't made them since you've been gone.

I loved taking lunch out to Dad and Grandpa in the field with you. My favorite lunch to take was beef stew, I loved finding the bone and feeding it to the dog.

I'll never forget the last month or so with you. You were so scared and lonely, I could see it in your eyes. It was so scary being by your side, but I knew you needed it, and so did I. Remember when I gave you a facial in the hospital bed? You felt so much better, and so did I.

Or how about the final ice cream party that you wanted in your hospital room. I'll never forget the plot to give you some ice cream as the nurses turned their backs, like we were really going to deny you some ice cream at your ice cream party?!

You couldn't speak, and could hardly write, but yet I knew you loved me and were quietly saying goodbye.

I love you Grandma.

Love,

Bail

Who will you write to? What will you write that you have never said before?

Happy Birthday My Love!!!

Well the day is finally here….I am writing a blog. As you will soon find by the quality of this blog, this is not Bailey. It is Matt. Writing is not my forte so I hope misspellings and miss punctuations don’t bother you.

In case you don’t know, today is Bailey’s birthday!

If you ask her she is practically 30 now. I will not tell you how old she is because females don’t divulge that information very often, but I will give you 25 reasons why I love her so much (not in any particular order).

1. She actually married me! 6 months 3 days of awesomeness so far!!
2. I don’t need a planner anymore.
3. She can put up with enough sports to get me through most weekends.
4. Deb and Rusty (Her parents)
5. All of her family.
6. She is very intelligent.
7. She doesn’t make me write on this blog!
8. She loves me even when I am being stupid…so she loves me all the time.
9. She is strong in her beliefs.
10. She can handle any situation.
11. I have never seen anybody more organized.
12. She knows how to laugh and have a good time.
13. She knows how to cook very well.
14. She is B-E-A-Utiful!!
15. Extremely beautiful!
16. She sleeps on my arm on long car rides (longer than 10 minutes).
17. She respects me and my family.
18. She is going to make the perfect mother someday.
19. She is very adventurous.
20. She can speak fluent French.
21. She has wonderful friends that like me…I think.
22. She is successful!
23. She encourages me to do things I didn’t think were possible.
24. She makes random noises, and I mean random.
25. She is the best thing to ever happen to me!

Make sure you send her an email, give her a call, or message her on facebook to tell her happy birthday because this is the only time this year you will be able to do that! Now that I have lowered your IQ by approximately 10 points with my blogging abilities, I will stop.

I love you Bailey and I hope you enjoy your birthday! We have special plans for supper tonight that you will enjoy! I can’t wait to celebrate many many more of your birthdays with you! Happy Birthday to my wife!

oh, how i hate you mr. dentist

Ok, so that might have been an exaggeration, but I really do dislike the dentist. Last week I had the grand opportunity of having to visit the dentist for a filling. My aunt Tammy works at the dentist's office and had the pleasure of having me as a patient. Here is the not so hilarious account of my time at the dentist:

Matt picked me up from school (since we are doing the fabulous car-pooling thing now! =) and we headed up to Waverly to the dentist's office. On the way there I only thought I was going to throw up two times...not too bad for a 20 minute drive. Once we were there I slouched down into the waiting room chair and prayed that they would forget I was there...to no avail. Tammy soon came out and got me, and we headed back to the dungeon together. For some reason I ended up in the back far corner, hmm... maybe they know I need to be secluded? =)

Soon after I sat down I was given the gas...laughing gas that is. Ahh... the stuff of miracles. Many deep breaths later and my legs finally quit shaking and my hands went from white knuckles to bright pink knuckles. After anxiously awaiting the dentist he finally arrived. Mr. Dentist is a large man, he played football at Iowa many years ago, and for some reason his kindness won me over. Tammy asked him if I needed "the needle" and he said he probably would recommend it. I panicked for a moment, but as he undoubtedly saw the fear in my eyes, he quickly reminded me that I would first get the numbing cream for my gums. Now we were talking! Gas, numbing cream, and novocaine. If I still felt pain after all three things, we may have had something to really worry about.

The numbing cream did wonders. I closed my eyes (God forbid I would see the needle, I most certainly would have been on the floor!) and stiffened up as he gave me the novocaine. A few short stories later about Germany and how I know Mr. Dentist's wife and it was time for....... THE DRILL. Ugh, how I hate the sound of the drill. I wish you were never created stinking drill. It was over pretty quickly, the filling was pushed in, and I was outta there!

Ok... you can laugh now, but at least now you know why the dentist is such an ordeal for me.

Christmas at the Kings

We've had a very productive weekend at our house. Not only did I get the first 3 chapters of my research paper completed, but we also completed our Christmas decorations!! Yeah!!! I LOVE CHRISTMAS! I love it for many reasons. I love Christmas because it's a week after my birthday, because I love snow, because Christmas trees are amazing, because I love presents, and because it's Jesus' B-day!

Matt reluctantly (ok, not reluctantly, frankly he was a bit pissed to help me decorate, well at first at least) decorated with me. We headed outside, and I knew it was meant to be when we saw this:

Before pic of our house:

SNOW! (I know it's not much, but I love it!)

Matt putting up the lights

We decided to keep the decorations simple this year, because, we are trying to sell our house after all. For those of you who know me well know that I have an obsession with outdoor decorations. And, I'm not ashamed to admit that I have several blowup yard decorations (ok, so like 6 or 7). =) After many discussions we decided to keep the blowups in the garage for the year, but I did get to do icicle lights and one other decoration... a miniature ski lift that connects to the roof and takes characters up and down the lift, it's way cute, trust me! =)

Here is the final look of our house:

And here is the ski lift:

Before:

And our Christmas tree:

(which caused a few curse words from Mr. King because it is a pre-lit tree and several sections would not light up this year, and it's maybe just a bit crooked, but I still love it!)

Our living room:

And MY VILLAGE! My friends say I'm 70 for having a village but I think it's amazing. So far I have the church, with a couple outside on the steps in their wedding attire, a house with a family outside unloading the Christmas tree off of the top of the car, a tree that has carolers all around it, an ice skating rink that lights up has six moving ice skaters!!! A ski lodge that lights up and has a man and woman walking up the steps, and my favorite... a ski slope that has people skiing up and down the slope. And I know I have a few more coming this year from my mom, yes.. she's really not good about keeping secrets.

And a final note to my husband: (that's still weird to see, ha!)

Thank you for making our house a Christmas Wonderland, I love it!!! And thanks for climbing up the shaky ladder and freezing your hands to get the icicles perfectly straight. And thank you also for helping me rearrange the village 7 times before I decided it was perfect. =)

And the last picture... Junie being stinking cute!

painting and magic!

Keri was back for the week and you know what that means... quality time with the fam! We went to Picasso's on Main Street to paint some pottery for my dad. Keri had given him a bowl a few years ago that she had painted and he had also seen all of the awesome cups that everyone painted for my bachelorette party in March, so he decided that he wanted a whole set of painted dishes!

So on Friday when I had the day off of school we headed downtown to start our painting fiasco, with the plan of finishing the rest of the dishes over Christmas break when Keri is home again. Dad decided that he wanted big plates, little plates, and bowls. The funny part of this whole story is that Dad really thought that it would take ten minutes to paint each piece. So when he showed up to start helping us and 30 minutes later he was STILL working on this fine plate :

I didn't feel bad, because now he will actually appreciate all of our hard work!

Here is Dad and Keri working:

Matt & I working hard:

Some of our final pieces!

A plate that Matt painted, if you look close it spells out I- O- W- A in a very artistic way!



My last and favorite plate! (In honor of Wilson, Dad's awesome dog that Grandpa & I picked out when he was out of town a few years ago!)

After painting on Friday it was time to gear up for the Hawks game on Saturday. It was the only game of the season that we went to and, if you have seen any highlights on ESPN, it was the BEST game of the year!!!! However, it was absolutely freezing! We had hand warmers, blankets, long underwear, sweatshirts, coats, hats, and gloves! We had assumed the game would be a blowout so I had mentally prepared myself to only have to sit though half or MAYBE 3/4 of the game. I was wrong, but that's ok because the game was awesome!

Here is a section from The Des Moines Register:

No way, said Iowa's Daniel Murray, 45 minutes after making the biggest field goal of his life.

"I knew I was going to make it," he said after his 31-yard kick with 1 second to play resulted in Saturday's 24-23 upset of third-ranked Penn State and turned Kinnick Stadium into a mosh pit - twice.

Fans stormed the field immediately after the game-winner, and then were shooed away as Iowa still had to kick off. They came out again, this time for the real post game party, after Hawkeye Bruce Davis recovered the short boot.

"Biggest win in Hawkeye history? Who knows," said defensive tackle Mitch King, on the field for nearly 36 minutes of the 60-minute game. "Let's just say this is something I'll remember as long as I'm alive."

This is believed to have at least equaled the biggest upset in Iowa football history, according to the rankings.

And for the record, yes, the Leymaster family did join in for the rushing of the field! (Ha, sort of that is. We went out about 5 minutes after the real surge of people... but we were still out there.)

Here are some pictures from the game.

Evan (Keri's best friend) & Keri

Keri & Dad

Mom & I

Matt & I

The winning field goal kick!!!

After the game, see the scoreboard?!? Way cool!