Anniversary and other happenings...

It's currently 8:30 on a Sunday morning, and Kyle and I are sitting in silence. It is so strange!! Our two kiddos, Micah and Brutus are still slumbering. We had full intentions of going to 9:00 church this morning, but instead we will shoot for the 10:45 service. Micah must be catching up from his exciting night of playing with Grandpa Jim and "Gram C".

This past Thursday was our 4-year anniversary. The weather on Thursday during the day was beautiful, reminiscent of the weather on March 29, 2008. These past 4 years (or 14 years since we began dating) have gone by so quickly. It's been a wonderful adventure growing as a person, couple, and family. I'm so thankful to have such a good husband by my side. We have a solid relationship, and I look forward to celebrating many, many, many more years together.

We both worked on Thursday, but we still enjoyed the evening with a yummy crockpot supper and some backyard playing with Micah and Brutus. Kyle bought me some pretty tulips, making me even more anxious to get out in our yard and do some work. Last evening my parents came down to watch Micah while Kyle and I had a night out in LaCrosse. We had reservations at one of our favorite restaurants, Kate's on State at 7:30, but we ended up going down to LaCrosse a little early. We debated about going shopping before dinner, but in the end we decided to stop in at the Starlight Lounge, a fun martini bar, before dinner. It was so nice to just sit down and talk - not about work, nor Micah, but about us, future plans, and yes - houses. More on that below. Dinner at Kate's was amazing! Kate's on State is a small, upscale Italian restaurant. It's one of those places that we can only afford to go to on special occasions, because we can easily drop over $100 on dinner and drinks. We've only been there twice, but everything that we've had there has been fabulous, and last night was no exception. The Filet Mignon that I had was the best steak that I've ever had, and usually I'm not a huge red-meat eater.

4-year anniversary pictures

This weekend has also been the 1-year anniversary of our house-hunting. We've been casually looking for a new house in the Winona area over the past year. The reason that we are wanting to move is solely based on size. We love so much about our current house. We love our porches, our fenced-in backyard, and our garage. We love our landscaping. We love the charm that our house has with its wide woodwork and hardwood floors, tall ceilings, and built-in cabinets. We love our updated kitchen, our big windows, and our low maintenance siding. But, we don't love is the lack of cupboard space, our non-functional basement space and our child-sized bathtub. We've considered adding on to our house, because we love our neighborhood, but we would lose our yard space and out price our neighborhood. We have a lot of specific wants in our next house, as we fully intend to stay in the house for several years, similar to the houses that our parents live in. We've probably looked at 20-25 houses within the Winona area, but have not yet found anything in our price range that fulfills our wants. At this point, we are in no hurry, so we'll continue to patiently wait until the 'right' place comes on the market.