Pretty Exciting Weekend

We just got back from spending a long weekend with Morning Glory and her hubby in Northern Retirement State!! Boy! Did we have a fun time! We always enjoy staying with them and as usual had a great time! We even actually let the guys win at Canasta one night! One of the other reasons for going was to meet with our contractor about our remodel and they will actually be starting within a month!! He is getting bids from his subs and he is finishing up the changes on the plans,then he'll get the permits, and get started on it!! We went and picked out carpeting, wood floors and counter tops - - and we even ordered my new car!! We got so much done in a short period of time!!

Our renters have been smoking in there and the place REEKS!! They are leaving it clean other than that though, so once we tear up the old carpet the nasty smell will be gone. We chose a really neat carpet - it is a little bit shaggy, but not too long and has a few specks of a deep red, navy, green and gold - but it is basically a dark tan that will not show tracked in dirt. We also chose wood to replace the ceramic tile in there now - it's pretty - but we are not tile floor fans and since we are doubling the size of the kitchen we will need to re-do the floors. It's oak and has a "hand planed" finish so dents and wear won't show. In real life it looks really good with the carpet and with the cabinets in the kitchen - which we are keeping and adding more of!

We have granite counter tops now, and they are pretty - but they won't work for the new shape of the counters so we picked out a surface that looks similar in color, but isn't nearly as busy or expensive! I've always had laminates and I've had no issues with them - so since we have in the neighborhood of 90 sq ft of counter tops we went with that as a more affordable alternative! It's one of the new types, and it is beautiful!! We are doing the backsplash in tumbled travertine - with a pieced border - I'm sooooo excited to see all this come together!

We also went out to meet the Saturn dealer in town. I had been emailing him and told him I wanted to buy a car from him. I thought it would be a good idea for him to actually meet us to see that we were serious buyers. We looked at the cars with MG & hub and met with the salesman and ended up ordering my car!! Yippee!! It's a red Saturn Outlook and it will take 10 - 12 weeks to come in. That will be perfect for our move date!! It's all a bit scary - we got all this stuff arranged and ordered in just a couple of days!! It's really happening!! Wahoo!!

It's been sort of amazing how everything has been working out. We have really put a lot of prayer all along into this move and we've made our plans - then given God full "veto power"! So far the doors have opened and we just keep moving through them! One of the things that hadn't dropped into place yet was jobs. I had been given the go-ahead to reduce my hours and work from home and stay with my company. That is a real blessing because of the insurance. But there was the concern about what hubby would be doing, because we really don't want to start taking his social security this early. Last week, just before we left on the trip, his boss talked to him and wants him to also stay with his company - and work from home!! Wow - we stand in amazement at how God works!!! So we will both have 30-hour a week jobs, computers and phone lines from our respective companies and insurance!! That will give us the freedom do work in a bit of gardening during the summer and a ski day every so often in the winter and still get the work done so we have salaries!! Perfect!

I just looked at this whole thing on line! What is with the spacing??? I really do have paragraphs with spaces in between on this composing screen! Oh well!!