Tuesday we did BW3s and haircuts after work. The kids and I were overdue. We’ve been going to SportClips and while they aren’t the best in the world it’s quick and not too expensive. We still are having trouble finding someone to cut Isaac’s hair well. This lady does better than anyone has to date, but there’s still room for improvement.

On Wednesday, we surprised Aaron with a new bike. He’s needed one for awhile now, and we’ve been holding off. With his most recent growth spurt it was unavoidable. Aaron now has a new Schwinn that he’s absolutely in love with. Convenient for us, because we recently told him he would have to curb his video game playing. Not because he’s been playing too much, but because he’s been asking to play too much. Anyway, immediately following our trip to Toys-R-Us, we met Jeff and Melissa at Chuck E. Cheese. Both of the boys played until well past their bed time and were still awake by the time we got home. It made for an interesting evening, but once they calmed down the

Thursday we put together the bike and played outside. We took pictures with Candice’s new camera to share with everyone.

Friday was fun for us boys, Candice was at a jewelry party so we ate pizza with Poppa and then played golf in the front yard. They have a toy set, and I got out my 60° wedge. We played until the sun started to set and called it a night.

Saturday was also quite the experience. Our neighbors have two little boys, and invited our kids to the oldest boy’s (Vincent) birthday party at the bowling alley. Aaron really tried to bowl like a big boy, and Isaac was just excited to see his ball make it down the lane. Come back in a day or so and I’ll have pictures from that event uploaded too. All of the kids had a lot of fun, and I think it might be fun for a birthday party for one of the boys in the future.

Sunday we went to Hope Lutheran in West Des Moines. We stopped by last weekend for Easter Sunday and really liked the pastor there. We wanted to see what a regular service was like since we’ve really not found a church that works for us since Cornerstone in Ames. Everyone seemed to enjoy the church. Isaac is in the nursery and has no trouble at all with leaving us behind for a room full of toys and babies. Aaron liked his class and even got to sing (that would be awesome to see). Candice and I enjoyed the service. The church is a little bigger than we are used to, but that’s not a big deal… as far as the rest goes, Candice loves the praise and worship (big deal to her) and I love the sermon (big deal to me). To top it off, it turns out they post their sermons on iTunes for download, these are my kind of people.    Time will only tell, but sounds like we may have a winner.

Anyway, this is probably a little wordy for an update of one week’s activities. It just seemed like so much happened this week that needed to be shared!

Lisa and Chris at their wedding in Aug. 2007

Here’s a link to Lisa’s journal:

http://www.caringbridge.org/cb/viewJournal.do?method=executeInit

And another to some of the back story:
http://www.caringbridge.org/cb/viewMyStory.do?method=executeInit

There will be two benefits in January.  One on the 9th and one on the 25th.  More information can be found here.
http://www.myspace.com/holterbenefit

So others could follow along, I created a map showing all of the houses we’ve looked at.  Each house should have a picture of the home, a brief description (as written by the realtor), and a link to the listing.

The each color represents a different trip out to look at houses and the pins with a dot on them indicate homes we liked during the initial viewing of it.  Click here for a bigger map.

The summer went really fast.  Living in Des Moines has been a great experience, but a huge burden in it’s own right.  There is so much to do here, and so many people to spend time with that juggling our nights and weekends has been a challenge.  This summer we really tried to see everyone and do all of those things that you HAVE to do each summer.  We really enjoyed hanging out with everyone and having our friends (Jeff and Melissa) move back has been awesome.

From a housing perspective, we lived with my parents all summer long.  A couple of weeks ago, I talked to our Realtor and discussed the likelihood of our house selling.  The situation in Fort Dodge looked grim so I did some research and learned we could rent our house even though we got an FHA loan.  So, with the plan to rent in mind, and the understanding that we’d need a few months to get the house ready to rent, I leased an apartment for 6 months.

We have moved.  We’re living in an apartment on Park Ave, west of Fluer drive.  We’ve got everything but the back room and garage cleared out from our house in FD.  Once we get those things and the storage unit emptied, we’re ready to go.  The last piece of the puzzle is to get things situated in the new apartment, and start living with the space we’ve got.

On that note, last night we got an offer for the house.  Great timing right?  Well, it’s not all peaches and cream… what they offered would leave us with a short sale (meaning we’d lose money).  Gotta love the economy.  We buy a nice house in a great neighborhood in FD, live there for 5 years, pay our mortgage every month, and end up having to pay someone to take it…  The upside is we’ll be able to get out of the monthly payments and can eventually buy the house.  The downside is the short sale will require we use the little money we’ve saved up for a down payment.

Considering all of that, I’m very thankful we’re doing as well as we are.  Not everyone is fairing as well as we are in this current crisis.  I know we’re in God’s hands with this one, and I trust he’ll lead us in the right direction when the time is right.

I, on the other hand, was still stuck on getting the iPhone.   It’s a technical marvel that I never thought I’d get to use.  I’m really grateful that we were able to get it.  The phone is really easy to setup.  Connect to iTunes and away you go.  The phone is really intuitive as well.  Once I figured out where the “on” button was, the rest was just a matter of finding my way around.  Nothing was overly difficult or painful.   I am considering adding a whole review section on my techy purchases for people to see, but for now I’ll keep the review-ish talk to a minimum.  Just know after a week of owning the phone… iLove my iPhone.

Our adventure there was quite an experience. Think along the lines of blizzard conditions, driving under 25mph on the interstate, and short trip up to the cities that took us over 5 hours to make! Once we actually made it to the hotel the rest of our trip was a dream. We shopped at the Mall of America before our flight in the afternoon and casually got to the airport. Our flight was on time, the kids had a nap, and things went really well. There was a spill on the plane (I got soaked in Coca-Cola), but really everything else about the trip was great.

We arrived on Christmas Eve and turned in early. When we woke, Santa had visited, and the kids were pretty riled up! Aaron was a real sport and took the time to hand out all the present. Then both boys tore through present after present. We spent the rest of the day in the house, leisurely enjoying our gifts, playing games, and ended it all with a fantastic Christmas feast.

The rest of the week, we had a casual agenda. We shopped in Augusta, went to a famous horse stable in Aiken, ate out a few times, cooked and played at home more, enjoyed a Russian or two, and just hung out together. Our time was up much sooner than anyone wanted, but we had to return.

Our trip back was a bit more dramatic. Isaac wouldn’t relax enough to sleep until about an hour after we were on the plane. Aaron was also tired and cranky… Candice and I vowed to never make the kids ride hours in a car AND hours on a plane again. The money we saved we paid for in tears and screams… the kids that is… not us.

We arrived back in Minneapolis with snow on the car and a long road ahead of us. About 4 hours later, we arrived at home. Glad to be there, but already missing Grandma and Poppa Rosenow.