Home Sweet Rental

Looks like this will be our residence for the next 5 months or so! We're grateful to have found a place that will allow a short lease. To be honest, it's hard to remember a lot about the house, since we saw 16 the day we were looking :). But I'm sure it will be a step up from our 700 sq ft. of married student housing. I'm excited about having a washer and dryer. And a garage. And a dishwasher. And an extra bedroom :) I'm not as thrilled about living right in the heart of cookie-cutter suburbia, but I'm getting over that. And really, for so short a time, I'd be willing to live most anywhere.

I'm very behind in my posts....still haven't put up pictures from our Boundary Waters trip in late May...but it's been a bit difficult to be motivated to blog when there are so many boxes needing to be packed. We've been busy, though! With so many wonderful friends wanting to have us over before we leave, I haven't been cooking very much (only about twice a week), and we've been having lots of fun seeing everyone.

This weekend Vance and I took a belated 5th anniversary trip to Red Wing, which was so relaxing. I feel spoiled to have two weekends in a row alone with my husband, but this one was definitely the most enjoyable of the two. We had nothing on the agenda except eating, sleeping, and enjoying one another's company. I know we're not going to have a lot of free time while Vance is getting acclimated to his new responsibilities, so it was an especially sweet weekend.

Yesterday Vance's advisor hosted a goodbye cookout on Pleasant Lake. The kids (as per their usual) enjoyed scavenging off the buffet table, but the highlight of the evening was Isaac's first canoe ride. Stan let the boys use his canoe, and Isaac had a complete blast! He even paddled pretty well, which surprised me. It was pretty cute to watch them paddling around, since the front third of the canoe was out of the water most of the time. When Vance got him out from shore, Isaac said, "We're not going back to the beach, are we, Daddy?" He got two trips, and would have loved a third.

I'll post more soon, but right now I've got an ear infection, so I think I need to lay low for a bit--experiencing this makes me glad that neither of my children have ever had ear infections!