Second Annual Winter Game Night

Back on February 8th, John and I hosted our annual winter game night.  Last Year we had our first game night and we thought it was a blast.  One of my favorite get togethers ever!  This year was just as fun although, we did miss some of those that came the year before.

This year we ended up with 7 couples total with some that came last year (John and Tanya, Marc and Amber, Nick and Hillary, Jeff and Robbie) and a few new faces too (Kedra and Mathew, Heidi and Jason, Shanna and Mike).  It was fun.  For food I served shrimp cocktail, a taco dip, jalapeno popper dip and baguettes, meat and cheese, pickle wraps, and bacon wrapped smokies.  Some of the guests brought yummy food to share as well :)  We had more than enough food to go around.

I also decided to change up the way I did prizes this year.  Last year if you won, you got a prize right away-and I had more variety of prizes.  This year, if you won a game you got a scratch off and then your name went in a drawing for the prizes which were drawn at the end of the night.  The bigger prizes were a $25 BWW gift card (which was won by Shanna), a $15 iTunes gift card (won by Amber), a $10 Subway gift card (also won by Amber) and a $5 Starbucks gift card (won by Hillary).  I think I will probably do the prizes this way again next year.

For games, after reading back from last years were actually the exact same games and the same order as we played last year:  Left, Center Right, Crap on Your Neighbor, Spoons, and then Pictionary.  After pictionary all but Marc, Amber, Jeff and Robbie left and the guys played cribbage and Amber and I taught Robbie how to play PNA-oh does that game bring back memories from high school haha!

Here are some photos from the night!

Thanks again everyone for a wonderful night!  

Unpacking

Friday night, after we moved in, it was time to keep cleaning and unpack.  We had so much help throughout this whole process and would be nowhere as far along unpacking as we are with out everyone's help.  One of the first tasks was to get Elsie's room set up.  She LOVED helping John put her crib together (yes she is still in her crib and seems happy to be there so why rock the boat right?) Then we ordered pizza for dinner and had a "Pizza Picnic" on the floor of our family room.

Elsie helping Daddy put together her bed

 Elsie discovered this mirror that was left behind in my closet.  She spent quite a bit of time keeping herself busy making faces at herself :)

That night, Amber also came to help clean.  Amber and Bev kept working on the kitchen (there was a lot of work to be done in this one room alone).  It seemed like it took forever.  So those two worked on the kitchen while I worked on cleaning the upstairs bathroom.  I wanted to get one bathroom completely clean first so we could shower, brush teeth, etc.  Around 11:00 Amber (The night owl) was still going strong but I was exhausted so we called in a night.

Amber snapped this pic on Friday evening as it was snowing.
We got quite a few inches of snow over the weekend.

The next morning we were up and at it again.  My parents were coming down to help (They had planned to come on Friday evening but the snow delayed their plans).  They left bright and early and arrived safely by 10:00.  Bev and Dale came to help and Amber came again in the afternoon.  We got so much done but I was so overwhelmed.  I had so many people asking where this went, or where I wanted that and I had hardly had enough time to think about it.  I will be the first to admit the stress was getting to me.  I am SO thankful though we had so much help!!!!  Both parents prepared food for meals (which was awesome because it lasted into the early part of the week) and we could not have done it without them!

One of our new neighbors, Nanette brought over some delicious muffins on Saturday morning which was perfect because we could not find the box with the cereal/bread/toasted ya know...the important things.  The were soooo good!

On Sunday morning, John and my dad ripped out the carpet in the upstairs bathroom (this was at the top of our Priority List) and installed some new peel and stick tile for the time being.  All the bathrooms have carpet in them which I find is really gross!  We went with inexpensive peel and stick vinyl planks because at some point in the next couple of years we want to gut it and remodel and thought they would be a good temporary option.  My parents left late morning and we kind of chilled (as best we could) the rest of the day.  I think I rearranged the kitchen cupboards a few times.  Sunday evening we headed over to Lowes to get Rev-A-Shelf for our trash and recycling containers and smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors for all of our sleeping areas (I am paranoid about carbon monoxide).  We also checked out some closet options because most of the closets in the house (there are a lot of them-9 upstairs and 5 on the main level) just have a shelf and a hanging bar.  We also checked out thermostats but wanted to do some more research before buying one.  We were debating over just a plain old programmable one vs. a wifi enabled one that can be adjusted from a smartphone.

I also want to mention how well Elsie and Tally are adjusting to the new house.  First of all, Tally LOVES the fenced in back yard.  Elsie is also doing WONDERFUL!  I was shocked at how well she took to the new house.  She has been sleeping normally from night one and she loves all the extra room to run around in, the full flight of stairs to slide down, and the fact that her toys are all right there to play with thanks to the extra space in the family room.  I would say there was very little adjusting for this little girl.

Moving Day

Well we finally moved (over a week ago already).  The main move took place over two days-Feb 27th and the 28th.  However, the weekend before we were able to move some things into the attached garage which was wonderful.  John, Dale, Brandi and I unloaded the small enclosed trailer that was full of stuff we took out of the house when we put the house on the market, we loaded the trailer up with all the stuff from our garage, and then unloaded that into the new garage.  Then, we filled the trailer up with boxes and furniture and would wait to unload that until we got the keys the following Friday.  We picked up the Uhaul truck on Wednesday night and was ready to start loading it up on Thursday morning.  John and Ross spent the morning loading up the truck and Jeff came to help out with some the larger, heavier items that would require a little more manpower.  By 11:00 AM the majority of the house was cleared out and I was feel pretty good about our situation.  The new buyers scheduled the walk through for 7:00PM that night so I had a deadline but with John and I and an empty house I figured we would fly through the cleaning part of it all.

Elsie packing up her books:  She LOVED helping to pack
and wanted to be there right along with us to do everything. 

Boy was I wrong!  It was cold that day-temps were close to zero.  This became a problem when some of John's cows decided it would be a good day to have a calf.  With it being so cold, those poor little calves froze-almost to death.  So John was gone most of the afternoon dealing with that.  One calf ended up going to Iowa State University for 5 days because it's body temperature was so low (thankfully, that calf is doing well now).  So that threw a little kink in the plans.  Bev came over and helped cleaned which we wouldn't been ready for the walk through without her.  We worked hard until Elsie had to be picked up from daycare at 4:30 PM.  When we left we had the whole house clean-thoroughly cleaned.  I felt good at how we left the house.  The main thing that was left was to finish up with the garage and a few little things I was waiting on John to do inside the house.  Marc (our Realtor) told the buyer's Realtor about our situation and they were understanding about it all.  So after the walk through we headed back over to sweep out the garage and the last few items on our list.  Finally, we headed back to John's parents around 9:00 PM.  Just a little time to relax ;)  I must admit that when I walked through one last time I was a bit sad.  We had so many wonderful memories in this house and it was our first home.  The home we brought our sweet little Elsie home to.  But I know the new house would be a place to make new memories and hopefully we will someday be bringing a new baby or two home to this house.

2.26.14-The last night sleeping in our first home. 

On Friday morning, we had a few errands to do before heading over to our closing at 11:00 AM.  We had to drop Elsie off at JoJo's, get the cashier's check from our bank, do our final walk through at the new house and sign and fax some papers for our insurance company.  We got all this done with time to spare so we stopped at Panera for bagels and coffee.  At 10:15 John turned to me and said "Well let's go" and I said back "ummm we have 45 minutes still and it only takes 10 to get there." His response "Well we have so much to do I don't think I can just sit here anymore".  Typical John ;).  So we left and stopped at the store for a few more cleaning supplies and arrived the the bank early.  Which worked out because we got done with the closing early.  When we got there Marc made a comment that we were homeless.  Ha, which was true.  The new buyers closed on our old house at 9:00 AM so for two hours we were technically homeless.  Closing went smoothly and it wasn't long before we were off to our new home!

Jeff helping us with the heavy stuff

I got there first and while I wanted to wait for John so we could enter our new home together I knew we didn't have much time before the movers were to arrive at 1:00 PM.  So I got to work cleaning.  And boy was there a lot to do!  Let's just say that I feel REALLY good with how clean we left our house.  I snapped a few pics before any of our stuff was brought in and before I knew it the movers were there (along with John and Ross).  In two hours both the truck and trailer were unloaded and much of the stuff we had put in the garage was moved into the house!  I was AMAZED with how fast it all happened!  And I was still cleaning the kitchen.   I felt defeated because I hadn't even made it out of the one room I had started in.

The guys all left around 3:00.  At 4:00 I knew I had to go and get Elsie from JoJo's and when I went to pick her up I decided to stay and visit for a while with all the moms.  Every once in awhile the moms stay on Fridays to visit and hang out (FAD-Friday after Daycare).  Unfortunately, we had done such a wonderful job of getting Elsie excited about the new house that she was crying and whining about wanting to leave and go to the new house.  So around 5:00 we took off to our new home.