Bob Villa doesn't stand a chance against us!

It's been about three weeks since my last post - woops. Time does slip away from you when you are busy out of your mind. This of course begs the question - what have we been up to?

Well - We are completely moved in and almost finished organizing. We live with my brother-in-law Nathan - (I don’t really care for the term in-law - Nathan is like a sibling). Consolidating two households into one is a lot of work - but we managed. Along the way Aaron and I (mostly me, Marissa) discovered that I have a lot of extra JUNK. This means we're going to attempt to have our first garage sale next weekend. Whatever we don't sell Friday and Saturday will be given to charity - I'm actually pretty excited to see how this works out. Some of my friends also want to simplify their lives and are going to join me. Lets hope it’s a success!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in pervious post or now, but Aarons parents own this house and we kids are the renters. Except - this house is in need of some updating and fixing, so for now we're working on the house as workers of course most of which we give right back as rent. It's a good little summer gig but working on a new house that needs a lot of help is a lot of work!!! So far we have spent a lot of time working in the horrible awful overgrown yard - which had mountains of poison ivy. It's now finished (if you could ever call a yard finished) and we've planted a garden full of mammoth sunflowers, pumpkins, watermelons, squash, decorative corn, tomatoes, peppers and herbs! Things are already sprouting and I’m so excited for the fall when its time to harvest all of these things. For those of you who know Missouri - we really REALLY got lucky with our garden dirt. Because all of that overgrown brush and ivy in our back yard, there was a lot of decomp underneath it and as a result our earth is fertile! We suspect there may have been a garden here previously because there was no clay when we tilled it. How lucky is that?

The same cannot be said for the privacy fence we built with the neighbors. Last weekend we built a privacy fence that separated our property from the neighbors. Good fences make good neighbors I believe the saying goes. Since we've built it we haven't seen them at all! For the record they were nice before hand and the fences were for their dogs who can climb chain linked fences. Anyhow - I have yet to experience any work that is harder than digging post holes. Whew - its tiring! The fence was built to perfection due to Robs (Aarons father) expert skills. The fence looks great!

We're also taking the paint off of the house in preparation for new paint! Taking paint off of windows is less than fan but its brainless work that matches easily with an iPod.

A new stove has been installed, new shelves built in the garage, air ducts were added to the bedroom, and we have a new toilet seat that doesn’t go *WOOSH* when you sit on it!

Things are lookin' up!

Love,

Marissa