We Love Minnesota!

Well, I'm going to try to finally get to some blogging here as I know it has been quite some time. What better way to get started then to share some photos and stories about our recent trip to up to Birch Lake. As some of you know, this is annual trip for our family and I have been going there ever since I was born. Lucky for me my wonderful wife and children love the resort just as much I do! As alwasy we greatly enjoyed the wonderful week and were grateful to be able to spend it with my parents and sister's family. Many thanks to my parents for making this vacation possible once again!!!

As is now tradition we stop in the Twin Cities on the way up and stay near the Mall of America. The kids (and adults as you will see) enjoy spending time at what was once Camp Snoopy but is now Nickelodeon Universe. Though we were disappointed to hear it is no longer Camp Snoopy, we were soon reminded that sometimes change is good as they added a couple of new rides for the adults that we really enjoyed.

There are many activities that we all enjoy doing at Hyde-A-Way Bay. Some of these include swimming, biking, fishing, boating, and just playing around the resort.

Of course, you can't be out in nature at night without a campfire. And you can't have a campfire without smores. And you can't have smores without closeup messy face pictures!

Finally, I leave you with our annual family pictures in front of the Lucette (Paul Bunyon's girlfriend) statue in "downtown" Hackensack, as well as a picture of sunrise on the lake as Dad and I go out for some early fishing.

Moving

As always, moving was an adventure. Many, many special thanks to the following people for helping us last weekend:

• Vineyard (church) friends - Bill and Katie Iverson, Ty Coleman, Bryan HR
• Parents - Both Amy and my parents
• Knutson Construction - Casey and others for loading and unloading the container (pod)
• Jeff Koenig - Our builder who also helped with unloading the Knutson truck
• Culvers Landscaping - Helped with moving wood play equipment from a house down the street.

Without your help we could have never made this happen so quickly and smoothly!

There were a few funny stories along the way, but all in all things went much quicker than expected and fairly smoothly. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm still a bit sore and recovering slowly. You can see a couple pictures below of our Beverly Hillbillies style moving. This is a long and funny story that you'll have to ask us about sometime.

Another highlight would be part of the "moving team" getting to ride in the cargo area of the U-haul to try to go fetch some playground equipment. Shhh, don't tell U-haul as I later spotted a sticker on the front dash restricting use of the cargo area to passengers such as this.

Grading and Landscaping

Culver's has completed a couple of large retaining walls and they did a fabulous job. Not only do they look great and structurally are what we needed, their staff came in full force and completed this work in a short amount of time which was much appreciated.

Following the completion of the retaining walls, Big Timber came in and did a wonderful job with grading out our lot (which was a bit of a challenge).

Near Completion!

Well, I know it has been a long time since posting so where do we even begin.......Let's start with the fact that we are moved into our new home!!!!! I apologize for the lack of postings and any recent pictures of the house or kids but it has been beyond hectic here with the floods, finishing the house, moving, etc. However, we are so excited as Amy and I spent our first night together in the new house this past Saturday and all of us as a family Sunday night. The house is wonderful as are our peaceful and beautiful surroundings. I plan to make additional posts in the near future with regards to the kids, the flood, and moving; but I'll start with some overall pictures of the exterior of the house. I do not have any finished pictures of the back but will get those soon and add them to the post.

Behind Door #1.....

New laminate hardwood floor. Much thanks to my buddies and co-workers Dave and Rob for assisting me with installing the laminate hardwood floor in our office Tuesday night. We will also be installing the same floor in the front entry of the house, most likely next week.

The doors and trim work have also started and the doors look fabulous.

213 Pheasant Run

They are almost complete with all of the masonry and stone work. As a nice added touch, our house number was engraved into a stone near the front corner of the garage.

Stone on face of kitchen island

Started stone on front porch pillars

Chimney is complete and looks wonderful!

Cabinets and Tile and Stone Oh My!

We now have stone on the inside of the house as well as the exterior and it looks great. Most of the tile has been installed on the main floor and almost all of the lower cabinets are in. Things are really looking nice as it all comes together. Can lights are being installed and light fixtures will be going in this weekend.