Step 2 Completed

The windows are in!

It was too late, too cold, and kind of icy when they finished up, but we will try to take pictures tomorrow. But they do look incredible...

The front of the house looks a bit strange because they had to take the shutters down to finish them up, and we told them not to put them back up because we were going to get new ones when we paint later this spring/summer.

We can already feel a complete temperature difference in the house. I am kind of glad that it is supposed to be colder this weekend, we can really give them a test run to see how they work!!!

Update

So, we totally realize we haven't posted to the blog in ages. It doesn't mean that we haven't been really busy though! Right now we are in the middle of 3 different projects...(and Bryon is wondering what the heck he got himself into when we got married!)

Anyway, we have a lot of before pictures...

Before #1 - the basement
We started this over Christmas break and we are about 75% done. We won't have "after" pictures until after our big trash day in March and after a garage sale in June-ish. (although we will at least update after big trash day. This is what we were getting into when we started cleaning... (and sadly this was after about a day and a half of work...)








We are going to be getting new windows here soon...Here are a few pictures of the old windows...








And lastly, we are planning on painting this summer. Notice the picture above...Below are the paint colors we have picked. (the main color would be the main color of the house, the off white will be the trim and the green will be an accent)

Christmas #1

Tonight we celebrated Christmas #1 with Maggie's father's side of the family. We hosted it here at our house. Here are a few pictures...

All of the presents before we opened them (although, we have to note that some of them are *actually* for Bryon's family or the other side of Maggie's family...


My sister Molly and her husband Curtis


Molly, Curtis, and our cousin (Molly and Maggie's cousin) Laura


Laura opening the first gift (which was that her brother stole her bear while she was at a K-State football game and took it ALL over the KSU campus and took pictures of it all over campus. He even took the bear to Aggieville)


Bryon opening a gift (I have no idea who it was from or what it was)


Mom watching presents being opened...


Larry watching gifts being opened


Dad talks with his hands (although so does his sister Nancy, it must run in the family)


Nancy after taking a picture (I told you talking with the hands ran in the family)


Well...off to bed. More pictures of the week to follow...

Good News

We passed!!!!!

Bryon took part one of his Chiropractic boards in September. It was a six part test, that took over a day and a half. He found out on Friday that he passed all six parts!

And Maggie had two tests that she had to complete for her training program at work. The first part she took about 6 months after starting there. Now, 4 years later, she took the second part on Thursday (covering all of the stuff she learned...plus a lot of stuff she had to learn the week before the test). And she got to find out right away that she passed!!!!

So it was a good weekend for both of us!

Washington DC

So, where did I leave off? Home Improvement projects? Oh yeah....

Wow...that seems like forever ago. Since that time, Bryon took part one of his boards. He will find out the results here in just a few weeks. And I (Maggie) am starting to study for my proficiency test for work. What is my proficiency test? Well, at the beginning of my time at my job, I had to take a test to make sure I understood the "basics" of banking. Now, nearly 4 years later, I have completed their training program, and they want to make sure that I really know what they want me to know. So I have to take a huge test to verify that. We will update the blog here once we both know our results (well...if they are both positive results)

The last two weeks, I was in Washington DC for my last training class in the program. Talk about an interesting time to be in DC in classes about banking. With all that has happened with Congress and the bailout, and the bank mergers, there were new things to talk about every day. Bryon came up to visit for the weekend, and we had a nice relaxing time. We have both spent enough time in DC recently that we didn't feel the need to do TOO many touristy things...but we did spend some time wandering around and taking some pictures...Here are a few highlights...

The night before I left, Roxie stole my shoes...


On Friday night, Bryon and I wandered around and went to the WW2 monument. It is so amazing at night, although the pictures that my camera is capable of just don't seem to do it justice...




And the flags around the Washington Monument


Saturday morning, we went to the Newseum. Neither of us had been there before and we both loved it.

Here is a piece of the Berlin Wall


And us on their deck that overlooks the Capital building...


The view from the deck


This is a picture of a picture that we found at the Newseum...we were both laughing for a long time at this one...


Then we wandered down to what is left of Chinatown in DC.








All in all, a fun trip...but way too short for the part that Bryon was there...

Finished!!!!!!

okay...so almost finished. We ended up about 10 bags short on the mulch and decided to add two more stepping stones, but good enough for tonight...

We are both exhausted...we just finished this around 8:20 pm, so therefore, I am not going to be very wordy on this post. Enjoy, we love the way it has come together!!!!!

early in the day before we put down mulch






oops...a little short on the mulch

Yard Update Day 2

We started this morning around 9:30 and made some really good progress. Today our main goal was to fix the grading, install the trim, and pretty much have things ready to go so tomorrow all we need to do is put in the weed guard and the mulch...




Landscaping is tiring...




"Stop messing up my yard. I had it the way I wanted it..."