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This year marked the fifth year that Kirsten and I traveled with her imediate family to spend Thanksgiving plus a few days in Chicago with her aunt and uncle.  We had a great time as we always do.  This year was different in that we brought Mattie with us.  We felt she was still too little to let her stay in a kennel.  Kirsten’s aunt and uncle were gracious enough to allow us to bring Mattie.  I’m happy to report that she couldn’t have been a better little doggy!  She only had one indoor accident and it was on the bathroom tile!  The best part about having Mattie along was the fenced-in backyard and the leaves that it was full of.  Our neighborhood is pretty new with no established trees, thus no real leaves in our yard.  Mattie had a blast running through the piles of leaves in Chicago.  We got some great pictures which we hope to share soon!

We had a fantastic Thanksgiving meal, wonderful time visiting with that side of her family, and a great trip to downtown Chicago on Friday.  We did some shopping at Macy’s, mostly came away with Frango mints, and then headed over to the Christkindlmarket to shop and see the Daley Plaza Christmas tree.  Unfortunately, they weren’t holding the ceremonial lighting that evening, but the lights were still on and it was beautiful.

We made it home from our trip around 5:30pm on Saturday evening.  It was just starting to snow.  We noticed we had new neighbors across the street from us.  I learned today that they just moved in on Saturday morning.  We woke up today with snow all around us!  I got to shovel the driveway for the second time this season and also took Mattie for a quick walk.  SHE LOVES THE SNOW!  She burries her snout in it and then comes blasting up through the snow banks with a whole new level of energy.  The only issue is here, that each time we come in from a potty break, she has to be dried off with a towel.  The wet snow sticks to her fur in clumps.

Kirsten and I took Mattie along with us today to the Christmas tree farm north of town.  We got out and treked through the snow with her on leash until we found the perfect Christmas tree.  We cut it down and had them put a net around it and strap it to the top of our Camry.  It was a fun time and it was great to see Mattie in the snow for an extended period of time.  After about a half hour she started to get pretty cold so Kirsten held her under her coat for a while to warm her up.  The tree is now resting in our garage, thawing and drying.  We hope to put it up tomorrow evening.  I’m also borrowing a boom lift (cherry picker-type thing) from a neighbor tomorrow morning to put up our outdoor Christmas lights.  That should be an adventure!

Tags:   Holidays 2008 · Home · Mattie · SnowNo Comments.

It seems so much has happened this fall that it is hard to keep everything straight in my head.  The biggest thing, obviously, was Kirsten and I purchasing our first house.  The next biggest thing was the addition of Mattie, our lovable Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier, to our family.  We’ve been dealing with all kinds of change, some of it exciting and fun and other change not so much.  I’d say an example of something that falls into the latter category would be me learning to be a handy man, because let us just get this out there now, I’m not!

The house is coming along.  We get more stuff done each and every week.  We have started to feel pretty settled, actually.  We have a few big projects remaining, one being finishing putting cabinet hardware on all our kitchen and bathroom cabinets (thanks to my dad and his company, Hampton Products, for the cabinet hardware!).  A few of our rooms still have stuff that needs to be organized.  More seasonally, I still need to get our Christmas lights up on the house.  This has proven to be a problem, the roof scares me!

Mattie is thriving.  Some of you may know that a few weeks ago, Kirsten and Mattie took a tumble down the ten steps of our back-yard deck to the ground below.  We had gotten icy rain that night and she had just lost her footing.  Both wife and doggy were bruised, but by the grace of God, neither were seriously hurt.  Kirsten’s bruises have gotten better and she’s no longer sore.  Mattie is finished with her pain/anti-inflamatory meds and is her playful self again.  She is growing so much!  Over a week’s time she grew a full pound.  Then, from Tuesday to Friday, she grew another 3/4 of a pound.  Her fur is already lightening quite a bit too.  On the house training front, we’re doing…OK.  I’ve read that Wheatens are sometimes harder-than-average to house train.  Mostly, it doesn’t bother Kirsten and I because we just love our puppy and playing with her is a treat.

We are, in fact, gearing up for the holiday season.  We will head in to Chicago tomorrow evening after work to spend Thanksgiving with Kirsten’s aunt and uncle.  This will be our fith year, it’s becoming quite the tradition.  We head downtown on Friday to check out the Daley Plaza tree lighting and shop at the Christmas Bazaar there.  Then, Christmas is only four weeks behind.  Last year we had most of our shopping already done by this point, I’m not sure that we’ve even started this time around (never fear!  Amazon Prime is here!).

Hopefully, I’ll figure out how to get the pictures to show up on this blog better than that past few posts where we’ve tried.  For now, though, you can head over to our Flickr site to see pics of Mattie, and soon-to-be pics of the house.

Tags:   Holidays 2008 · House Family · MattieNo Comments.

On Saturday, we went and picked up our newest family member:  Matilda “Mattie” Arnold. She is our 9 week old soft-coated wheaten terrier!  You may have read our earlier post from when we picked her out. Well, she is home with us now, and we couldn’t be happier!

She’s doing really well so far. Potty training is going better than we’d anticipated; she has only had a few accidents in the house. She’s getting much more used to “telling us” when she needs to go (and we’re getting better at seeing the signs); she’s also getting better about going right away when she gets outside.  She is sleeping well too; she gets up lately around 3:00 and 6:00 needing to go out. Unfortunately, she’s not really interested in going back to sleep at 6… so Daddy and Mommy are going to have to get up a little earlier now (which we needed to get in the habit of doing anyway!).

She met Tiki (Kirsten’s mom’s dog) and Tootsie (Kirsten’s sister-in-law’s Mom’s dog) yesterday, and there was soooo much playing. It was exhausting but wonderful! When Mattie runs, she kind of bounces. I’d say there’s as much vertical movement as horizontal.

She’s with Daddy at her first Vet appointment as I type, so I hope she’s doing okay.  More info to come!

Here are some pictures on Flickr, and here are some more. :)  We’ll post lots more pictures in the future, I’m sure!

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That’s right folks, last Friday we closed on the house and moved all our stuff in.  Most of it is still piled in the garage as we organize and slowly move stuff inside to their destinations.  Today, our new Samsung LCD TV was delivered!  It looks amazing!

I want to post pictures of the move in and the house, but that would require me to get my desktop computer hooked up at home.  Once I do that, pictures will follow!

Tags:   House · House Hunt 2008 · MovingNo Comments.

It sounds like the title of an ominous book. When in reality, it’s something that Kirsten and I couldn’t be happier and more excited for! We close on our house this Friday! The last few weeks have gone by extremely fast. We’ve been all over the place from southern Iowa, picking out our puppy, to Minneapolis last weekend to grab some furniture at IKEA.

By now my mother-in-law’s house is stuffed to the brim with boxed furniture from IKEA, a leather chair we purchased, and various other things that belong to us. I’m guessing that she’s excited to get her space back when we move everything out on Friday!

Tomorrow, Thursday, I have to run down to Des Moines in the morning to pick up some furniture that we ordered from Homemakers. Then, Thursday evening, we have a walk-through of the house with the builder and we have to get our U-Haul truck and load up our storage unit.

Our actual closing is on Friday morning in Waterloo at the attorney’s office. We’re very fortunate to have a family member there who will be performing our closing for us! We sign a lot of documents at the closing, get the keys, then bust out of there to start the move in!

Friday we have furniture being delivered from a place in Waterloo, the utilities guys coming to drop off garbage and yard waste receptacles, and workers coming to install cable and internet service. We have to pick up a bed that we bought, and move our storage unit AND mother-in-law’s house worth of stuff in all on that day.

We’ve got a lot going on, but we’re pretty excited for it all.

Tags:   House · House Hunt 2008No Comments.

This past weekend, Ben and I went and picked out the newest member of our family!  She is a soft coated wheaten terrier we’ve named Matilda (”Mattie”).  Early last Saturday morning, Ben and I went to Starbucks and got our decaf americanos, and then we were off to Mediapolis, Iowa.  We went to see Connie at Eagles Roost kennel.

We were so impressed with the kennel where Mattie was born and has lived these first few weeks of her life!  It’s a beautiful, open area, with lots of room to run around and a big pond. Connie clearly handles the puppies often and is so good to them. They had a nice-sized fenced in area where Mattie and her 4 brothers and sisters hung out.

We knew we wanted a female dog, and we had three to choose from.  We decided to go with the one who was the middle temperment of the three–not too wild, but some spunk. :)  Connie microchipped her right then so that we were sure we’d get the right puppy when we come to pick up Mattie and take her home!

Mattie just turned 5 weeks old on Monday, so we have to wait several more weeks to bring her home with us. We move into our house on October 17, and we potentially could have gotten Mattie as early as the following weekend (October 25). But my grandparents will be visiting then, and we probably won’t be very settled into the house at that point. So we’ve decided that we’ll plan to pick her up and bring her home with us on November 1. We can hardly wait!!

Tags:   Mattie3 Comments