Our new house is coming along!

Our new house is coming along nicely. We have put about $9200 into it as improvements but since it is an investment I guess that means it's okay.  We ripped out all the carpet and the kids ripped out the carpet pad. Duane came over on a Saturday and helped us fix it up too. They are buying their own rental so Erik will repay him with a day of work as well. 

putting those kids to work

Matthew actually ripped carpet pad out of an entire room himself!

Some of our expenses are:

• New Garage door $940
• New Sliding glass door $1400
• New water heater $995
• Paint indoors $2286
• New dishwasher $275
• New carpet $2438
• New vinyl flooring in 2 baths and kitchen $720
• Locks rekeyed $160

More expenses will come up but these are the bigger items. The house looks incredible. Honestly I would move in there now. Not kidding! There is only one full bath upstairs. Erik is thinking about putting in another full bath in the master. We got an estimate of $7500. Yikes! So we may do this later but it would really be great for the house.

While Erik was gone for 2 weeks in Boston Matthew lost his first tooth. He was unbelievably excited! He got to pick any treat he wanted and choose these artificially colored cookies from giant eagle. This is what he chose over ice cream, candy, etc. Whose kid is he anyway? The tooth fairy brought him bubble tape and a $5 bill. Only for the first tooth - the rest of the teeth are only worth 50 cents. amiright?

bottom tooth gone!

?????

 The kids have gotten a lot better at board games. Jenna is actually really good at pretty much all games. She beat Erik at Lords of Waterdeep! I won and Jenna came in second place. Normally Erik wins every game so this is rather exciting. Lords of Waterdeep is a good game because Matthew can play too. I help him with his actions and he really loves the little blocks.

Lords of Waterdeep

 On Sunday Erik and I did an indoor triathlon at lifetime. I was pumped because I have done this twice before and was hoping to beat Erik. Wrong :(. 10 minutes swimming: I beat him at swimming - I had 14 laps and he had 13. But he beat me considerably at biking. 30 minutes biking - he rode 9.4 miles while I only rode 8 miles. So we split the swimming/biking. I was ready to win at running. 20 minutes running - when we got on the treadmill I kept bumping up my speed. But then he kept bumping up his speed. We kept doing this until my legs felt like jelly. So I backed off and ran at 6.3 most of the way. He was up at 6.5 then up at 7.3 for the end. I couldn't keep up. Grrrrrrr. Well I need to train harder next time.

Post-tri selfie

 I am a sucker for all new marketed sweets. I saw these three new types of M&Ms. Coffee nut, chili nut, and honey nut. So we all tried them and picked our favorites. Mine was coffee nut. Yum!!

New candy? Of course I'll buy it!

Getting a new house while everything breaks in our old house!

Erik was gone last week in Boston for training so naturally everything broke. We closed on our new rental house - which I'm so excited about! And Erik had to get a power of attorney so I could close without him. It was a pain but we were able to close. Then my washer and dryer broke. Actually our dryer has been broken for awhile but now that the washer broke - it was a mess. The water didn't drain and our house started smelling awful!  Luckily we got it repaired!

One thing that didn't break but was unfortunate was that Panda started peeing on the carpet in the kids room. Cat urine is particularly difficult to get out of carpet. We tried many things and finally Erik had to pergo the two front rooms in our house because we never did get the smell out. Yikes!

Matthew and Panda

 While Panda was marking all of his territory Twinkles decided her new favorite spot is on top of our refrigerator. She loves this spot.  Poor Panda is very old. He hobbles around and really doesn't look that great but he absolutely loves the kids!

Twinkles on top of the fridge - please ignore all the papers on our refrigerator!

Even though last week was busy with the stinky washer, stinky carpet, and closing on the house (not stinky), my parents kept the kids for 2 days. Erik was gone, the kids were gone so I was home alone. It was spectacular! I worked the entire time on my new Android class and went to zumba - Yay. I only have 2 more labs to design for my class so I've made quite a bit of progress.

One game everyone loves in our family is carcassone. Even though Jenna is not making a weird face, she still likes the game!

Playing carcassone

 I made this lemon meringue pie for Easter. It turned out pretty good and I was happy with it. Looks are everything you know.

Lemon meringue pie

 We love to play April fools jokes around here. I got a leek and put it in our sink. When we skyped Erik the kids showed the leek to him. He thought it was hilarious. Well - he thought it was hilarious when I showed it to him. He can't really look at the screen when he skypes with the kids since they move the phone around so much - it gives him motion sickness!

A leek in the sink.

 We have been working nonstop since we got the house. Erik and I spent all day at the house tearing out carpet, cleaning, mowing, and getting it ready for our tenant. The basement was "finished" however the person who finished it must not have owned a level since everything was crooked. Erik is tearing it all out. We had a good day but my back was so sore at the end of the day. Back again tomorrow though! We have a lot to do. Here is a link to our new rental house. It has a lot of potential especially once we get it painted, new carpet, and all the other upgrades we are doing!

Erik ripping out the basement. 

Our new house