SNOW!!

It's snowing! The trees look so pretty now! I always take it as a good sign when there is snow on the ground before my birthday!

I have Chickadees!!

After almost a week of an epic battle between me and Rupert (the gray squirrel) I finally have Chickadees and some finches coming to my feeders!

Rupert is a wily sort of squirrel! He can climb up our wrought iron shepherds pole hanger and nibble away on my suet. Memphis and I use our ninja skills to sneak out the door and unleash all that is Memphis upon him. I swear that when Memphis comes running back to me he has a big smile on his face. Rupert just sits in the crook of the tree staring at us. Silly squirrel, you think he'd learn.

I put Crisco on the feeder yesterday, but then had to leave before Rupert came back. I wanted to see him slide down the pole. Shucks. I'll try to get pictures of Rupert and my chickadees soon!

Monarchs!

I've been working on taking pictures of all things nature so when I do PowerPoints or have other needs for pictures, I don't have to care about copyright infringement.

ON THAT NOTE... All photos copyrighted by me. IF you want to use them... ASK FIRST!

Back to the topic at hand. This was the first summer I raised monarchs from egg to butterfly. I tried to get pictures of each stage. Enjoy!


Egg


1 Day old


Major stages - the largest was 2 days away from pupating


Chrysalis


Ready to emerge


This happened in August when I was still at Sibley, but I am just getting around to posting it now. One of my goals on my Bucket List was to see a Monarch come out of it's chrysalis. I did one better!! I got it on film!!

Meet our Plants and Pets

This is Carl our Lemon Tree



This is Tom... our palm type tree?



This is Calvin our Christmas Cactus. We moved him to the new house and he decided to bloom. Is that a sign he likes his new digs?? :)




Meet Raj and Howard - our Tiger Salamanders. This pic was taken during feeding time so they have worms hanging out of their mouths. They were collected in their larval stage from one of the fisheries rearing ponds that had been drained earlier that day. I watched as they took their first steps from water onto land. I felt like I was witnessing evolution first hand! Since they have pretty much only known captivity, I decided it was better to keep them and take them with me than to turn them loose.

New Bird feeders at the new house!

I finally got new bird feeders for the house. It's only been a day - but no birds yet. :(


Memphis is waiting for the birds to visit.



Once again it has been a very long time since I have written! I do have good reasons though! Since I have last posted, I have gotten engaged, kept it a secret from my family for 2 weeks, moved into our house, and since have been setting up our new home.

So here's the news.
In the first month of officially owning our first home we have
1) moved in! I think that is a pretty big undertaking!
2) re-shingled our roof thanks to the help of our friends and family we got it done in 2 weekends - not bad for moving in at the same time. It really needed it.


Before



After


3) painted the spare room to a more pleasant shade of green


Here you can see our new green and the horrid bright green that it used to be.

4) got the first few coats of paint on in the room we are turning into our office.


This is a slow process. Red takes awhile.

5) And our next major undertaking is the garage. The walls were already finished and we (meaning Drew) are working on the roof. Drywall is frickin heavy and my small hands had a tough time holding on.


Drew has most of the vapor barrier up and soon will be adding the drywall. It will be so nice to have a warm garage for my poor car!

Every weekend since we moved in has been hard on the checkbook. Luckily we have been saving up for all these big expenses.

Some things I have learned over the last month: Not spending money on gas is a wonderful thing; shopping for a new comforter for a bed SUCKS!; Home Depot is far superior to Menards; We should hug all professional roofers!; Having your own house is MAGICAL.


Oh yeah did I mention we got engaged? Drew and I went geocaching in Redwood Falls on Sept 26th. Little did I know that the day before, while I was at work, he had gone there and hid a "fake" geocache down by the falls. Boy was I surprised when I opened the paper to sign the log - and written on it was "Emily Lorenzen, Will you marry me?" I turned in confusion and there he was holding out a ring!! PERFECT!


The Ring!

Boxes and Totes

So here I am... a mere two days before we close on the house. I need to pack yet again and I am so sick of boxes and totes. I only unpacked a few things after I moved from the Audubon Center, yet some how over the summer my collection of books has puked out of the boxes and spread throughout the basement. The 6 shirts and 3 pairs of pants that I had unpacked turned into a closet full of clothes... and here I am 2 days away. I feel like I have so much crap and need to purge some of the excess out of my life, but I know when we finally get all unpacked, the both of us will not have enough stuff to fill half the house haha.

Also, I think my body is sensing the end of a long and VERY stressful few months; the past few days I have been fighting off allergies and all I want to do is sleep. I also found out a few of my co-workers have colds. That's all I need is to get sick during our move-in weekend.

Maybe I'll finish the packing tomorrow and go to bed soon...

It's been awhile...

That's because everything that I've had to talk about - I didn't want to jinx by telling everyone.

We are buying a house in Hutch. We close on the 8th of October!! For the most part - everything has gone okay. We have been watching ads and spending A LOT of time walking around Home Depot! We did luck out and got 30% off a brand new washer and dryer - plus when I signed up for the Sears card - we got an additional 5% off and no interest for 12 months! Can't complain! I realize how much I am growing up when I realized how excited I got that we bought a fridge! Since we don't know how long we are staying at this house, we decided to go with a simple very energy efficient fridge. Drew will have to live without his in door water and ice dispenser. We even got the fridge for less than the advertised sale price - plus 12 months no interest! Energy Star appliances amaze me. With average use and cost of electricity - the fridge we bought is estimated to cost $35 a year!! Granted I never really checked into things like that but to me it seems like a fridge should cost a whole lot more to run for a year! I also decided that I really like the 12 months no interest thing. We have the funds to pay off all of the appliances, but since starting a new house has a lot of hidden costs, it's nice to save some of the liquid funds as a just in case. As soon as we're settled we're gonna pay those puppies off!

We are getting ready to say good-bye to cable. Oh DVR - how I will miss you. On the other hand, we will be attempting the Netflix/internet tv route. Most of the shows that we like to watch are available free online so we'll be hooking my computer up to the TV and we'll see how that goes. We've (me especially) been watching a lot of HGTV in the last month. If you have the ability to watch HGTV you need to check out Holmes on Homes. I have learned so much about houses and building codes from watching his show. I consider watching it research :) It doesn't hurt that I have gotten some great ideas for shower tile remodels and other fun projects.

Keep your fingers crossed that these last few days will continue to go well! I can't wait to get into my house! Pictures to come!