wow - it's been awhile

Like the title says, it's been awhile.  Things really got busy back in March, nothing in particular just life.  Then comes May and we found a house that is just perfect for our family.

In order for us to leave our beautiful house both Mike and I had some stipulations.  It must have a three car garage, 5 bedrooms, an adequate sized living area, a kitchen that is comparable to mine already, a bigger laundry room, and most importantly it had to be in the same neighborhood as I was not going to make Lauren change schools.  Then blamo - there was a house that came on the market that I just happened to see on Zillow.com.  Come to find out it is a house of a family that we had known a few years earlier.  I knew they moved out of the area but had no idea that they kept the house.  They also had triplets plus two other kids.  They built this house to accommodate their family of 7.

So long story short, we close on the house on the 14th of June.  Our house is already sold too and if we can pan out a couple of issues this week then we will close on this house on the 25th of June.

In May my sister and I concocted a plan to have me fly home for the weekend to surprise my Dad for his 75th birthday.  I had previously thought about it when she had mentioned the dinner plans, but after looking at the prices of the flights I quickly talked myself out of it.  But when she called and she brought it up (20 minutes after we offered to buy the house) I thought I better give it another thought.  By that time the price had jumped $400.  Luckily Mike had plenty of frequent flyer miles for me to use.  The week of the trip was so busy that I had to keep a list of all the things that I had to do that day - each day was a whole page worth of things.  It was such a crazy week.  But I'm so glad that I went for the weekend.  It was so wonderful to spend some time with the family and have no responsibility for anyone but myself.

Of course, we had to stop at Rockford for some dogs and a beer.

Surprise!!

This is what's called a wet burrito - Yup I ate the entire thing!

Dad and Bob doing a karaoke duet!

It was so good to surprise Dad and to see everyone.  I actually surprised everyone - no one other than Brenda knew I was coming in for a quick visit.

Ever since Mom passed away Brenda has taken over the duties of cleaning up the grave sites of our grandparents, great grandparents and aunts and uncles.  I was able to help out that weekend, but we got a late start and was only able to make it to one cemetery but it was the important one; where mom is buried.

Dad supervising the work!

As since I'm really into the genealogy of the family Brenda suggested that we stop and take pictures of my great grandparents farm, which is right around the corner from the house where I grew up.  It was pretty cool to walk around the property and listen to Brenda tell me what she remembered when our great uncle lived in that house.  I've always heard the stories from Dad, but Brenda had some great ones as well.

Then we headed to the house where Dad grew up; again right up the road.  We stopped and talked to the owners of the house and they were very excited to show us the work that they did on the inside of the house and allowed us to take pics of the farm.  They even came across an aerial picture of the farm but didn't know when it was taken.  As soon as I got home and showed Dad the picture he was able to guesstimate that it was taken in the late 60's early 70's.

Whew - another post done.  I promise not to take so long to update next time.