A few more photos of the new house, these provided by the current owners (and much clearer than the harried snapshots I took when we first looked at it).

1. We bought a house. We’ll be moving out the end of January, which we’re quite thrilled about — the sooner the better, we say. We’re convinced that one of our neighbors is a drug dealer (Paula has suggested that our newspaper has gone missing since the drug dealers had to wrap their crack in something!) and even more recently, we’re convinced that the other other neighbor is running a brothel.

2. I went to Chicago for five days. I bought only one thing on Michigan Ave — the $10 bag of truffles from Harry and David was about all I could afford! The CASE Five conference went incredibly smoothly. This year I was in charge of food and beverage — next year, I think they’re putting me in charge of the web site, which is more up my alley. But we’ll see. The best part of the conference was hanging out wih all the conference committee (hi Tricia! hi Sarah!).

3. Roger and I finished all our Christmas shopping at the last minute and headed out to Belgrade for a few days. There was no “Good Will” Christmas this year — I mean, who has room for all that stuff? We came back to Burnsville on Christmas night, enjoyed a nice dinner and a bottle of wine, and exchanged our gifts. Once again, I’m overwhelmed by everyone’s generosity. (Good thing I got that wish list online!) Thanks to all.

I’m back at work today … it’s so quiet around the office, which makes it a good few days for organizing files and deep thinking, but at the same time, I wonder if my time would be better spent at home baking cookies and watching Maury Povich. Oh yeah. That was yesterday.

Our New Year’s plans include hosting an “intimate” party (we call it intimate since not a whole lot of people are showing up) on the 31st, then welcoming in 2002!

So, the technical pro (uh, yeah, that’s me) is back in town after five enjoyable but long days in Chicago. And, she’s providing the link to the photos of the new house. Nothing fancy, just a list of ten shots or so. Really, you must all come visit when we move in at the end of January. The photos don’t do this little gem in Bloomington justice.

As you�ve probably figured out by now, the pictures don’t exactly work like they are supposed to. I found out from the technical pro of Struthers.org last night via a conference call that I need to upload them to the site. Whatever the hell that means. Well, I know what it means, but I just don’t know how to do it. At least I’m blogging on a regular basis again.

It’s not enough to go through the whole process of looking at houses and buying a house. But now we have to think about what interest rates are going to do over the next 30 days when we have to lock in our rate. I guess there really are no free lessons in life, since one really doesn’t truly learn about something until you’ve experienced it once or twice or in some peoples case many times. Overall, the whole house buying process has been pretty smooth. But then again we’ve got a ton of papers yet to read and sign at closing.

It’s been interesting having Lynsey gone to Chicago for so many days. As it turns out, I’m the one that is left at home by myself for once. And it’s the longest we’ve been apart since I did my Annual Training back in April. But I seem to be doing just fine by myself. It’s given me a chance to go to the office and catch up on some work and stay later today. Oh yeah, I get to get some Christmas Shopping done too. The only real drawback, besides her being gone of course, is that I’ve kept these really weird hours. Almost like being back in college again. Staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning, falling asleep on the couch with the lights and TV on, sleeping in late. Thank goodness I’ve got a flexible job and didn’t have to be to work at 8 am this morning. But then again I stayed until after 7 p.m. tonight. Well, I better end here before I continue with the late hours again.

This is our new house! This is our new kitchen, family room and living room! Yes, you read it right…we’ve bought a house. I hope the pictures work (the technical pro is in Chicago at conference that she’s helping with). Total number of days from applying for a home loan to having a signed purchase agreement…14 days! Number of days until we close on January 25th…40 days! We would have never thought it could be this easy.

Needless to say we are pretty excited about finding a new home. As luck would have it, it was the last home we were going to look at in Bloomington before we started looking South of the River. I’m sure we looked at over 20 houses in Bloomington before we came across this little gem located in a nice residential area in East Bloomington. We walked in and it was one of the few places that we both really liked when we first saw it. The current owners have put a lot of sweat equity into the house and have really updated it. Lynsey really liked all the detail and hard wood floors and a space for her baby grand piano. I liked the fact that it had a new roof, all new windows, new siding, and a finished and insulated garage. We both liked the big deck in the back yard, the nice office in the basement, and the spacious new kitchen.

The bonus is that we have already met some of the neighbors since the current owners, John and Lisa along with there adorable son Logan, are moving across the street and two house to the south. We figure that must be a testament of the neighborhood if they are willing to stay. John is a fireman for West St. Paul and a Bloomington Volunteer Fireman and quite the Handyman from what we can tell. He was finishing the backyard fence when we were leaving after the inspection on Thursday. Lisa seems nice as well, but we’ve only met her for just a couple of minutes. Overall, we’re really excited, but I don’t think it has all sunk in yet. We’ve got a busy six weeks ahead of us with the holidays and everything else going on. I actually have to go to a 3 day planning conference in the days preceding our closing. Then I leave for a two week training course the weekend after we move in. But we’ll get through it all I’m sure.

Tomorrow I will be a civilian for the first time in 12 years since first joining the National Guard in 1989. It’s hard to believe how fast the last twelve years have flown bye and all the great friends I’ve made and experiences I’ve had. Besides the life changing events of going through Basic Training at Fort Benning, GA I’ve been to four leadership courses that have helped me both in my military and civilian careers. Yes, I would have to say that the National Guard has been one of the best things to happen to me. Probably right behind getting married to Lynsey. But the time has come to take a break from the National Guard for a while.

All my military friends have been telling me that you’re over half way to getting your 20 years in so you can retire. Although I can see there point and my last drill a couple of weeks ago was a little tough saying goodbye, it’s for the best right now. There have been many changes in the last year. Drill weekends have become more demanding in the past year and I’ve come home exhausted most weekends. I’ve started a new job that requires longer hours, as well as working a couple of nights a week and also on several weekends. I’ve gotten married and we’ve been looking for a house.

Basically the last twelve months everything has been changing for the better. For now I’m looking at it as a much needed break after drilling every weekend for the last twelve years with the exception of about 3 or 4 weekends that I’ve had to miss for other conflicts. I will surely miss putting on my uniform every month with pride. And telling people that I’ve been in the National Guard for twelve years and seeing the looks on their faces when the say “how old are you?” Then I tell them, “I’m old twenty-nine” and they look even more shocked.

Thank you to Don and Carol Blacker (the Viking Council Scout Executive and his wife) for hosting the BSA Holiday Celebration last night at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater. The food was great and the show was excellent. We saw Forbidden Broadway, which was a four person rendition of spoofs on about 20 different musicals. If you’ve seen lots of musicals, you’ll love this show.

Our house hunting went well this weekend. Although we didn’t find our absolute dream home on Saturday, we saw a couple of promising ones yesterday as we visited a couple of open houses. Most notably one in Bloomington that has quite a bit of character. Our biggest problem right now is deciding how long do we keep looking before we buy something and are we getting a good value for the money. Everything that we seem to like is a little bit more than we originally had planned to spend. But we figure we’re going to live there for a long time so we should try and buy right the first time. Especially since we aren’t big fans of moving all the time. So, we are meeting with Scott again tomorrow and our saga continues…

Today begins our very first day of looking at houses. We’re going to spend about three hours looking at places in East Bloomington and Prestigious West Bloomington as people like to call it. Maybe we’ll find something that we like right away. I asked Lynsey how long we should look before deciding. She said, “We’ll know when we see it, just like when I first saw you.” I think she’s pretty smart

The rest of the weekend we’re just going to hang out. We have to pay back our debt of rides to the Airport for Buzzy (my brother Mark) on Sunday. He’s going to Seattle and Portland for a few days for work. BTW, congratulations on your latest promotion at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. Pretty soon you’ll be running the place.

“You are Edgar Degas’ Dance Class. You appear soft and gentle, but hide a core of rigid structure and discipline. You work hard and follow orders, because you are determined to succeed, but remain attached to displays of frivolity and maintaining your appearance.”

What kind of art are you?

Happy Holidays everyone! I know that it’s been a really long time since I’ve had a chance to blog. But this morning I’m not going to work late since I had a meeting last night and put in twelve hours yesterday. My job with the Boy Scouts has been going pretty good so far. But it’s quite different from the past jobs that I’ve had. The biggest difference is that there is always something that needs to be done. Actually there is always lots of stuff to be done and I’m realizing that I’ll always have stuff left on my desk to do the next day. It’s just the nature of the job and everyone tells me that it gets better after the first year once you’ve seen all the activities once. The other thing that’s been tough to get to is having to work nights and weekends. I had always vowed never to get a night and weekend job, but when the Boy Scouts came along, I couldn’t resist. But the best part about the job is the flexibility of making my own schedule. I sure can’t beat the ability to go in late if I’ve got a night meeting or to take off in the afternoon to take Lynsey to the airport or to just run errands.

On Monday we bought our very first Christmas tree together. I wanted to buy from the Boy Scouts so we ended up driving all the way to Eden Prairie to get it. I figured that we might as well get it from one of the Troops in my district. Then on Tuesday we made a nice dinner, opened a bottle of wine and decorated our new tree with all of the ornaments that we had gathered as kids. Unfortunately we had to buy a small tree because of the size of our apartment and not all the ornaments would fit. I guess next year we’ll have to make sure that we have a bigger place.

Which brings us to Wednesday night when we met with our photographer to order wedding pictures. After spending about a half an hour getting the order all together we decided it was time to meet with our new real estate agent. Well, as luck would have it, our photographer also happens to be a real estate agent for Edina Realty. And since we liked him so much when he did our pictures we figured, “Why not go with Scott!” After getting through the formalities and signing a few papers, we started to talk about what we wanted in a house and where. The best part about our meeting is that we looked at about 50 listings at the office and Scott is going to check into the ones we like the best. We are trying to find a time that will work for all of us to get together and start looking at the homes. Needless to say we are pretty excited about the idea of finding a new home and having more space for all of our stuff.