The Weekend at a Glance...

Hello everyone!

We had a very productive weekend---lots of housework accomplished!

Friday night, we met with our financial planner to go over a few retirement things. Very thrilling. Afterward, we went to DSW and Steve found a pair of great shoes for him for the wedding at 50% off! I found a pair of blue suede loafers on 80% off. It was quite a steal.

We came home, ate dinner and watched the movie 'Primer.' This is an independent movie that was really well done for a crew of 6 people. However, we were both super incredibly totally confused. It was very intriguing, but had to do with time travel and toward the end, you just sit and watch it with a furrowed brow with a big question mark looming over your head. hmmmm...

Saturday, got up in the a.m. and went to Weight Watchers. Afterward, we went for a brunch and then came home and got to work. The harddrive crashed on our computer this past week, so Steve went to work on trying to recover all of the stuff that was on that harddrive. I cleaned the house in a major way and then got to work on organizing the spare bedroom. This room had quickly become the 'crap room,' catching all the boxes and bags we didn't want to deal with. Being anal retentive as I am, I could no longer stand it. So, I moved stuff and organized stuff and was able to put the bed down and get it looking like a real guest room. We then worked on the loft, getting the entertainment center placed and unpacking hundreds and hundreds of cds. We are missing real chairs...ran out of money before we got around to completley outfitting this room. We plan on getting some recliners sometime next year. But, we have some comfy lawn chairs that are doing the trick. I really love our house and feel so grateful that we are able to live in such a great home.

Sunday has been a thrilling day of laundry, football watching and grocery shopping. Unfourtnatley, we waited too long to book our frequent flyer flights home for Thanksgiving and are unable to get award travel and unwilling to pay the $800+ dollars to fly home. So, we've decided to drive to St. Louis instead of fly. Last year, we got caught in a white out driving home from Thanksgiving, but hopefully that won't happen again. Steve has no time off at work (in debt on vacation time due to taking a week off to build the deck with his pa) so it will be a whirlwind trip. No time for stopping--we'll leave for MO around noon on Wednesday and drive for 10-14 hours, depending on where we stop for the night. Then, we'll head to St. Louis, hang with the fam (and meet my nephew Charlie---FINALLY!) and then head back early Sunday morning. We learned our lesson and will always take care of our holiday travel much much earlier from now on.

Wedding planning is going quite well. We have a photographer, wedding coordinator, location, dress, party favors, some decorations. I have inquires out to a couple of caterers and next weekend we'll go reserve blocks of hotel rooms for our guests. I'm having fun searching on-line for bargain prices so we can adhere to our budget. It's a challenge that I am ready to tackle!

Steve is recovering from an incident between his thumb and a razor blade two weeks ago. He was opening some packages with a razor blade (installing new towel bars) and sliced a deep gash into his thumb with the razor. He came downstairs for me to help and I got super duper woozy at the sight of all the blood. We came back upstairs to bandage him, and I proceeded to pass out and hit my head on the nightstand. Luckily, I sustained no injury and we are both okay. It was a fun night though! Wee hee.

Last Sunday & Monday, we got nailed with a snowstorm that left us with approximatley 14 inches of snow. Up where I work, they had almost no snow, maybe 1/2 inch. The conditions were just right over our house---they actually closed down I-70 all the way to Kansas right after our exit off the highway--it was a white-out. Steve and I spent an hour shoveling the driveway. Ahh the joys of home ownership. Of course, we had just had our backyard landscaped the Friday before. Luckily, all of our shrubbery and trees appear to be okay.

Oh--thanks for voting on the pictures. The winner in the popular vote was #4. Thanks again Randy for being our own personal paparattzi!

Well, that's all the news that is fit to print. Hope everyone is doing well!

Much Love,
Hannah