Off the Face of the Earth!

Wow! It's been a year since I created this blog - - and no update! How embarassing!!

When my daughter, Erin, was hospitalized in 2005, we started a blog for her on Caringbridge, and I really found it to be a huge comfort during those days. Now that she has recovered and we really don't utilize her blog much, I decided it might be cool to create a "neutral" blog to just talk about life. No medical crisis, no spiritual crisis. Just life! So here we go.

In the last year, the girls have grown, we got another dog and we finally got a beautiful deck put on the house. We built the house in 2004, and moved in briefly before we had to leave for Minneapolis so Erin could undergo her bone marrow transplant. During the subsequent summers, we have tweaked the yard a bit and Kevin has worked really hard on the landscaping (no small feat considering our property was a corn field before we built our house there!). The yard is coming along nicely, so we decided that last summer would be the "summer of the deck." We started the project in May, and wrapped it up in October. We really didn't get to use the space much at all last year, so we're hoping to use it a LOT this summer (... anybody want to come over for a bar-b-que??). It really turned out beautiful. Kevin outdid himself on this project, and even though it took the entire summer to complete -- I think it was worth it!

We live in a pretty rural area. The lots are each 5+ acres, and it is really peaceful and beautiful on our street. Right now, we have one neighbor directly across the street, and that's it. However, that will all be changing soon. We are adding another family to our "ranks" as I type this. They broke ground on their home yesterday, so I figure they should be moving in toward the end of summer. It will actually be a bit weird having another neighbor back our road! We're used to having the run of the place, so now we'll have to be extra courteous and mind our manners. No more pulling weeds in my super-scroungie shorts in the summer time, and no more "quick dashes" outside to grab the newspaper in my pajamas. Dang.

I guess that's it from this end. I'm taking a vacation day from work to stay home with the kids tomorrow. It's their last day of spring break, and the only day this week that looks to be fair from a weather perspective!

Have a great weekend peeps! Hopefully, it won't take me a year to update again. Stay tuned...