A New Friend…

    We have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of a few of our friends’ babies. We have been joking that we have entered “Babyland“. While we were gone on our spring break trip to North Carolina, Tyler Daniel Hagen was born. We flew into the Twin Cities around 4 pm and drove to meet him after dinner.

    Tyler is now a part of Carl and Kristi’s family. Carl, Kristi, and Jesse were all freshmen at UW-Eau Claire in 2001. Jesse and Carl became close friends. In fact, they were roommates when Jesse and I started dating. Jesse was in Carl and Kristi’s wedding, and I was Kristi’s personal attendant. Carl was in our wedding, and Kristi was my personal attendant (see Kristi, I remember).

    We now extend our friendship to their son who we were so excited to meet!

      This Time We Flew…

      Last spring break we spent in South Carolina visiting my aunt, uncle, and cousin. We drove all the way there with my parents. This year we headed to North Carolina to visit our friends Ross and Megan. To save time and allow us to use spring break to also remodel our guest room, this time we flew.

      Thankfully, with a little driving, we were still able to see my aunt, uncle, and cousin as well as my cousin’s daughter, Karina.

      We loved meeting you!

      The rest of our time in North Carolina was spent hanging out with our friends. They moved to North Carolina last summer in order for Ross to attend Duke University. Read about them moving here. We toured the Duke campus as well as the Duke Gardens. We also tried a few unique restaurants. Mostly we just talked and laughed and enjoyed being with great friends. Thanks, Ross and Megan! We miss you…

      Megan and I
      Ross and Jesse

        Tornado…

        Jesse likens me getting ready in the morning to a tornado. I wake up at the last possible minute and get ready as fast as I can. Tonight I feel like a tornado went through my house and turned it upside down.

        My spring break began on Friday. Jesse and I decided to spend the first half of spring break painting our guest room and the second half in Durham, North Carolina visiting our friends Ross and Megan. Little did we know that painting our guest room would involve buying new bedroom furniture and replacing almost all of the light fixtures in our house.

        Our plan has always been to buy new bedroom furniture for our bedroom and put my childhood furniture in our guest room. My recent business (teaching kindergarten library, tutoring my homebound student, and teaching an after school class) has allowed me to save some extra pennies. On Friday we decided to buy the new furniture now, so we could paint and update the guest room. On Saturday we looked at furniture stores, Sunday we bought furniture, and today (Tuesday) it was delivered. Below is the transformation to our bedroom over the years.

        Our Original Bedroom
        Spring Break 2008 (Painting our bedroom and office)
        New Bedroom Furniture
        More Drawers...YEAH!

        After purchasing new furniture, we began priming and painting the guest room. Today we finished the last coat of paint, replaced the light fixture, and put in the “new” furniture. We are ready for guests!

        Original Guest Room
        Lamp and Pillows from HomeGoods
        Updated Guest Room (Smokey Slate Wall Color)

        Now we are headed on our next adventure…North Carolina! Good-bye snow!

          Beep Beep

          Last week I awoke in the middle of the night to an annoying beep. I listened quietly and silence filled the air. I promptly forgot it and fell back to sleep.

          The next night the annoying beep woke Jesse and I. Jesse replies, “We need to change the batteries in the smoke detector,” and we fell back to sleep.

          The next day neither of us buys batteries…and the beeping becomes more frequent. We finally buy new batteries only to find that the beeping continues. It is now happening every two hours throughout the entire night. In the middle of the night, Jesse pulls the smoke detector off of the ceiling…and the beeping continues. It has now been many days without a good night’s sleep.

          In replacing the batteries, we found that our smoke detectors were installed in 1991. We decided to replace them completely. In the process we determine that we need a carbon monoxide detector downstairs and wait to exchange and reinstall that smoke detector until the next evening…the beeping continues. It has now been almost a week of being awakened by the crazy beep in the middle of the night. We have all new batteries AND all new smoke detectors.

          We are exasperated. Early in the process, I pulled out our carbon monoxide detector manual because I was concerned that we possibly had carbon monoxide in the house. The manual explains that a red light will blink with carbon monoxide and when the batteries need changed…only the green light was blinking. Without any other course of action, we finally changed the batteries in the carbon monoxide detector. The manual lied; the beeping stopped, and silence reigned in my home.

            Date Night

            As summer draws nearer, I am slowly regaining my life. At the start of the New Year I resolved to do less, and I am slowly working toward that goal. This past month I ended a research study I had been a part of for the past six months. I also finished doing four-six hours a week of homebound teaching for one of my students. I have finished all of the requirements for my Library Media license, and at the end of this month, I will be finished with all extra after school commitments.

            Part of my resolve to do less is the ability to be a better wife for Jesse. In the past year I have relied on him heavily to help in the running of our household. I have also had far less energy to invest in our relationship. Friday night a coupon compelled me to plan a date night.

            Jesse and I dated in college. During that time, we often set aside at least one evening of each week as a date night. As often happens in life, we had not been out on a date in a long time. When you are married without children, in some ways everything you do together feels like a date. In truth, our time together is always more meaningful if we set aside planned time as a date.

            As a teacher, I received a coupon for free admission to the Omnitheater and Science Museum special exhibit for King Tut. It expired on Friday. On Thursday I called ahead for a reservation. Since we were headed to St. Paul, we decided to plan dinner at Cosetta’s. I love their pizza! After enjoying a quick dinner, we saw Mummies at the Omnitheater. We then spent the next couple of hours enjoying the artifacts from King Tut’s tomb and the rest of the science museum. At museum closing time, we decided to head to Cafe Latte in St. Paul for coffee and dessert.

            It was a fabulous evening explore St. Paul and a wonderful time together.

              Blizzards…

              In December I felt fortunate to survive the first blizzard of my lifetime. You may also remember my post from the other day entitled “Spring Will Spring“. Today I am less hopeful about the end of winter.

              The snow began falling yesterday morning around 9:30 am. We left at 10:30 for church and already a few inches were on the ground. I was extremely nervous about whiteout conditions after my graduation experience, but we made it safely to church and back. We decided to stay home the rest of the day.

              We woke up Monday morning, and it had stopped snowing. We made plans to meet some friends to sled. While Jesse was shoveling the 12″ on the ground, he talked to a few neighbors and realized no one had been able to get out of our neighborhood. The street had only been plowed once around 3 pm the day before. After shoveling half of the driveway, Jesse was ready for breakfast and a break. Around this time, the snow began falling again.

              Jesse's Hard Work

              We live at the bottom of a U. To leave the U, you must travel uphill in each direction. We called our friends and rescheduled sledding until after the plow came. At about noon, the plow came and got stuck in one corner of the U. It took about an hour with an entire team of neighbors to get the plow back up the hill, but the bottom of the U (us) had still not been plowed. He promised someone else would come through later. At 3 pm, 24 hours after the first plow truck plowed the road, another plow finally showed up…we never did get to go sledding and it has been snowing ever since.

              PS The plow guy remembered me from when he helped me back in November. Read about it here!

                Our Refrigerator is Running…Sadly!

                We bought our house in the summer of 2007. We LOVE owning a home. We have found, though, that families always have to choose how to spend their money. As you can tell from our blog, we love to travel. We also love furnishing and redecorating our home. It is hard to do both!

                Right now, we are planning a spring break trip to visit some dear friends in North Carolina. We are also saving to get new bedroom furniture. This will allow us to move our bedroom furniture into our guest room, and then we will repaint and redecorate. In the meantime, our refrigerator is leaking water inside. On numerous occasions, we have found puddles of water inside the fridge sometimes ruining food. We have done our own research and attempted to fix it ourselves, but on Monday a handyman will pay us a visit to determine the damages. Sigh. Please do not call me and ask, “Is your refrigerator running?” I might not want to chase it!

                  Spring Will Spring

                  We still have probably a month of winter left in Minnesota, but after an entire week of inside recess last week because of the below zero temperatures, we rejoiced to see 48 degrees on our car display yesterday. We finally felt the hope that comes with the end of wearing a coat, running from the car to your destination, and shoveling…

                  I would be remiss to move into spring without showing the true impact of this winter. After unusual snowfalls and one blizzard, our snow piles have reached excessive heights. The award-winning Snow-thrower Extraordinaire is…Jesse Sutherland!

                  Almost to the Roof!
                  Accepting Donations Today for a Snowblower!

                    Apple Nerds

                    Jesse’s first Apple purchase was an iPod. Jesse bought the original iPod even though his parents didn’t even know what an mp3 was. His next Apple purchase was the hotly contested Mac mini (hotly contested by me because I wanted him to be saving for something shiny instead of buying a second computer). Since being married, we have bought a new iPod (with more space for Jesse’s impressive music collection), Jesse’s MacBook Pro, and my MacBook Pro. I have realized the need for a technology line item in our budget. On a side note, my husband has saved for months and sometimes even years for some of these purchases. For Christmas from Jesse’s company (www.morsekode.com), we got an iPad.

                    Our Apple hearts were very content…but then Jesse’s dreams finally came true. Jesse has ALWAYS wanted an iPhone…ALWAYS. Since January 9, 2007, Jesse has followed all of the news about the iPhone, developed apps for the iPhone, and watched as friend after friend purchased iPhones. He and I always teased about the iPhone, but we never wanted to switch over to AT&T when both of our families use Verizon. On January 11 Verizon announced the coming of the iPhone and on February 7, 2011 Jesse’s iPhone arrived.

                    Sent from my iPhone

                      Thankful…

                      At 4:30 am on Tuesday morning, Jesse woke me up with a start, “Do you smell smoke?” I did as Jesse hopped out of bed to investigate. He immediately ran downstairs to check on the furnace. From our bedroom, I heard a strange sound coming from the office. I ran into the office to find smoke billowing out of our fish tank. I quickly pulled the electrical plug to all parts of the tank.

                      Jesse looked at the tank and thought it was probably our filter. He carried it downstairs, and we tried to go back to sleep. It was difficult as our adrenaline was pumping, and our whole house smelled like smoke. Upon further investigation, we realized the smoke was actually coming from the fish tank heater. We are still working on contacting the company to alert them to the malfunction.

                      The next day I felt extremely tired, but I mostly felt grateful. We quickly realized that we had just had a close encounter with a dangerous situation. Our smoke detector never went off, but we were able to recognize the danger and take care of it before our home was damaged. Thank you, Lord, for protecting our home and both of us!