Merry Christmas!

Wow, it has been awhile since I have updated (Sorry Nana!). Lots has happened in the past 2 1/2 months, so I will try to do a quick recap!

• Hans and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary by going on a cruise while Jacob spent the week with Hans' parents in Colorado.
• Hans surprised me with a trip to North Dakota to go and visit Megan and Mike while they were in Bismark! 
• November brought the start of the busy holiday season, and with that visitors! My mom and youngest sister (Sara) came to visit us for Thanksgiving.
• December came and I went to Minnesota for Megan's baby shower on the 10th. We had a great girls weekend, and I can't wait for baby blueberry to come into the world sometime in late February or early March
• The following weekend, Hans had a "boys" weekend in Minneapolis with some friends. They went to the NHL game on Saturday night, and the NFL game on Sunday. This was his first time seeing a NFL gave live, and it was is favorite team playing as visitors (The New Orleans Saints) 
• This bring us up to Christmas! 

Jacob enjoyed coming downstairs this morning to find the family room full of new presents! He has enjoyed playing all day with all his new stuff!

 Stockings before Santa came

 The tree before Santa arrived

 The tree after Santa visited!

 Jacob's new train table and play kitchen

 Stockings after Santa visited!

 My new toy! Thanks hubby!

 The aftermath

 

I promise we are alive!

We have been busy! After closing we jumped into some home projects and are still trying to finish some up. Hans' parents came to visit on Friday the 15th and stayed until the following Thursday! They helped us complete so many projects, and we are forever grateful for that!

The projects started with a work bench for Hans' in the 3rd garage space. They were able to complete that in an afternoon and Hans enjoys having an area to keep all his tools.

The next project was to put together Jacob's new playset for the back yard that my mom bought for him when she was here. The directions said that it should take 2 people 4 to 6 hours.....but they lied. With no real issues it took Hans and his dad 16ish hours over 2 days to get it all done! And to make matters worse, they were working outside when we were having record high temps of 100+! But thankfully they got it all together and Jacob LOVES it!

The next project that we tackled was painting the upstairs of the house. When we had made out large trek to Menards to get the wood for Hans' work bench, I checked out the paint they had and we found colors that we liked better than the other stores we had already been checking out. So we decided to go ahead and pick up the paint and supplies so that I could get started with the help of Diane. So over the course of 2 days while Jacob was at daycare, we painted the formal living room, dining room and kitchen! It looks so good, and I am loving the color! I will get some pictures sometime next week once we have all the new curtain rods hung up and maybe even some art! Diane also tackled hemming some of the curtains for the bedrooms that I had bought at Kohls when I was in Colorado.

This week has been a little hectic because Hans' best friend Richard mom passed away last week Friday. He drove down to Omaha, NE on Monday night and then flew down to Dallas, TX and then drove over to West Monroe, LA for the funeral that was today. He was also one of the pallbearers as a request of Richard. He will be flying back on Friday, but this weekend is when we were going to head to Iowa so that I can go to a scrapbooking mini convention. So when he lands in Omaha, he will be driving over to Des Moines, IA and Jacob and I will drive down to meet up with him. We are going to be able to meet up with a friend that Hans' used to work with as she lives in Des Moines now! Then on Saturday, Jacob and Hans will hang out for a bit and then head back towards home while I finish up at the scrapbooking event.

Family Fun Weekend!

We had a great weekend! On Saturday, we got up and packed up the van to head to Brookings (about 1hr 40 min drive) to go and check out the Brooking's Art Festival! It was AWESOME! I had been told about it by one of the moms in my Mops group, and then read about it online. Over the 2 days that it is set up for, they expect 75 to 80 THOUSAND people! Let me tell you, with the amount of people that were there on Saturday, I am sure they hit that estimated number and maybe even went over it! We had a good time walking around checking out all the booths and only bought a few things. We also ate some really yummy food! At one point Jacob was pretty tired as it was past his nap time, so I put him in the Ergo and he fell right to sleep on my back. That made for a very hot walk as it was in the mid 90's, but when a toddler needs to sleep, I will do what it takes!

One thing that we have started to wonder is come Christmas, where would we hang our stocking from since our new house doesn't have a mantle or fireplace. Well while we were at the arts festival I found a booth that sold Christmas related decor and stumbled upon this...

This sign usually is mounted to a really cute snowman, but it wasn't very tall and Hans was worried that Jacob would just take everything out of the stockings before it was time to do so. So I asked the booth owners if they possibly had any of the signs by themselves and they did!! They even added some hooks to the back so it can be hung on the wall! I am so excited for Christmas now!

Another one of our finds was this sign.....

I just loved it since it is just so true! Even with only one kid for now, he can sure make quite a mess of the house pretty quickly! 

After the Arts festival, we made a trip to Home Depot as it is in Brookings and I bought a couple of sample cans of paint to see if I really like the colors for some of the house!

On Sunday, we went to Church and then came home to do house stuff. :) Hans installed a curtain rod in the laundry room so that clothes that need hung up can be right out of the dryer. He also took down the cabinet above our fridge to trim the edge of it so that our new fridge that comes this week will fit! I painted some sample squares on poster board to take around the house to different area to see if we liked the samples that we picked up at Lowe's on Saturday. We decided that the tan color we picked out will be good for the upstairs, but is to dark for the downstairs walls. I picked out a dark red to use as as a focus wall and we are still trying to decide if we like it or not.

Today is going to be a very busy day! We close on the house starting at 3:30! Then at 5:05pm, Jacob starts his swim lessons that are every night this week. :) Each lesson lasts until 5:55pm. It is a tot and parent class, so I get to go with him and be in the water as well. Then after swim lessons we have a newcomer orientation class at our church! So needless to say, today is going to be very busy! On Friday, Hans parents arrive and we are really excited about that!

I will leave you with a picture of Jacob.....I gave him some fruit snacks to try and get him to not walk on the kitchen floor as I was trying to mop it.

2 years 2 months 1 week and 1 day

Is how long Jacob nursed for! I have been so ready for him to be done for a while now, but he just wasn't ready to stop. Well last week we finally hit a wall with his sleeping issues and we had to start some sleep training. Thankfully that has been going very well! And with him sleeping in his own bed every night all night he doesn't ask to nurse! He will now fall asleep on his own after being tucked in and given a good night kiss and hug and a story read to him. I am so proud of the improvements that we have all made in the past couple of days!

On another note, I started my 90 day challenge at Curves today! I am really excited about this challenge and am looking forward to the results.

We are going to have quite the busy house this coming weekend! Megan and Mike are coming for the holiday weekend and so are my mom and sister Kim! Then on the 15Th of July, Mark and Diane are coming for a while! And of course on the 11th we close on our house!!