House Updates, etc

Without cable, Justin has been very anxious after school and on the weekends. He said he needed a project because he couldn't do art until the sun room was all finished being set up (his art table is in the sun room). So, this weekend we decided to take down the drop ceiling in the sub room. Here are some pictures...

This is what the dogs do when we work inside. Normal dogs would be running in the yard, or even laying in the sun since it was 70 degrees. No, our dogs stare in through the door very creepily.

J taking down some of the panels.

More removing.

Ceiling with joint compound in the seams and all over. We weren't going to do a textured look, but when we removed the drop ceiling, there were all these spots of old glue (the dark spots), so we sanded as much as we could and added the compound to the whole ceiling.

J loading up.
See the video at the bottom for J in action. He just finished putting up the compound, so check back for pics of the primed and painted ceiling!

Rootstand!
Jen got word that the band Rootstand from Alpena was touring the country, stopping in CO! J, Jen and I went to high school with three of the five members, so it was pretty cool to see them doing their thing in Colorado. They were actually downtown this Wednesday, but we went to see them at a bar by Erica's house on Saturday night. Here are some pics of the very very fun evening!

We sat at the bar; Tim, Erica, Jen, J and I went. Krista was sick at home, and Carter was traveling with family.They are very excited in this picture.

I told them Irish car bombs with the bartenders was a bad idea!


Typical J and Tim.

I joined the band towards the end of the night. They couldn't have done it without their lead air-banjo player.



Our Realtor stopped by during the week and took pics of us with the sold sign. So exciting!

House Tour!

After a few days off from work, and a long weekend unpacking boxes, we finally got all moved in! We are still lacking pictures on the walls, a have a few loose ends to tie up, but we are pretty much good to go. We did laundry for the first time in the house, and went grocery shopping as well. Below you find out official house tour in two parts. Hope you enjoy, we will follow up with more stories and pics. Thanks for checking it out!

Part 1

Part 2

First post from our new house!

hello all! I know you are all wanting pictures, but we can't find our camera cord :(. So we will have to update with pictures soon. If you haven't already, you can check out my sister's blog to hold you over for now.

Well, first about the house. We had a ton of help from Tim, Erica, Carter and Jen moving in on Tuesday night. We took one big load over with the U-Haul and all of our cars, unloaded and ate pizza, and did another load with Erica, Carter and Jen. By that time it was about 10pm, and we didn't have to give the U-Haul back until 7am so J and I did another load by ourselves. We finished and took the U-Haul back, and we were in bed in our new house by 1am. We got up at 6:30am to finish packing and ridding up the old place. I actually slept for the first Jeep load (see below about why I slept) and joined Justin for the last two loads. We didn't finish until 1pm, and we were supposed to be out by noon, but our landlord was very understanding. Besides, our last loads were recycling (because ours at the apt was full) and plants, which were already outside waiting on the grass.

So now we are almost fully moved in, with only some boxes for the pantry, books, and guest blankets and sheets to unload (getting ready for lost of guests!! :) ). We are getting internet and phone services put in on Tuesday (no cable! yeah!!), so for no we have been trying to borrow internet from a neighbor, and it doesn't always work so well. We have

Now for the not-so-fun-part; I have been very very very sick since Sunday. It stared with head/body aches and a sore throat, and quickly moved to rampid coughing, running nose, inability to breath, and loss of voice. I have been voice-less since Wed morning, which as been fun trying to meet new neighbors and keep the dogs under control when they are meeting new dogs. I went to the doctor on Tuesday because I would often be unable to breath because of coughing fits. They wouldn't test for H1N1 because the flu is so widespread in Colorado and the test costs like $300, but my Dr. said that she is 90% sure I have H1N1. So, I have to stay away from school until my fever is gone for at least 24 hours. I have been out all week, and it is killing me to be away! But I am so tired and I can't talk, so I guess I wouldn't be any good as a teacher right now.

Oh, I almost forgot - the dogs love the new house! They get really confused with the yard though - they love it when we are back there with them. They run and play and sniff all over, but when we go inside, they whine and wait by the door until we let them in. And when we are in the house, they don't really know where to lay down when we are up and working. Sam likes to be in the sun, so he is usually laying in the sun room. Sophie likes to be somewhere where she can see both of us, so she is usually laying on the dog bed in the living room so she can see exactly where we are. Right now they are on the couch in the sun room with me because the blanket Mrs. Krafft knit for our wedding is here, and they love it because it has their smells on it (we are selling the green couch to Jen becsuse there is not a very good spot for it in our new house).

Hope to update soon, we will probably finish unpacking this weekend, they we will take lots of good pictures without boxes.

We got it!

We officially are closing at 3pm tomorrow! We did our final walk-through today, and the only thing we saw was one small thing with the new roof, which we will check on tomorrow and try to get it fixed.
We did have a little issue with our loan; our broker put in the wrong loan amount, which we noticed when we were signing the papers but he said it would be fine. Now, they need to draw up the papers with the correct amount, which they claim can still get done by tomorrow at 3, so everything should be fine. I was not exactly happy to hear about this, since we caught this mistake before and he claimed that there was nothing wrong. Oh, well, there is nothing we can do about it now!

We will send our new address in an email. We are so excited!

House Updates

Hi all - no new house news, which makes me very scared because we are supposed to close on the 29th!!!!!!!!! AHH! We drove by yesterday and the roof still wasn't finished or even started. It has been very nasty weather here, so that is what they are saying, but I am from Michigan, we work in all weather! Oh well, we will let you know as soon as we know.

Great News

Good news not related to the house --- we got our state test results from last year and my students did really well (this is Mary btw)! We actually got the individual student results back last week, but today we got to compare our results with the rest of the 6th grade math teachers. It was great to get a perspective on my results, since the first thing I did is focus on the kids that didn't grow as much as I would have liked. Today I was able to compare my results to other teachers.
Here is the breakdown - Colorado is now focusing on the percent of student growth, which is similar to the growth percents used for babies' and tolders' height and weight. So, typical growth is between 35-65%, with low growth 0-34% and exceptional growth being 66-100%. Overall, putting all my classes together, about 85% of my students made exceptional or typical growth, with 60% of my students making exceptional growth! Out of all subjects tested in the school, in all grades, I had the highest growth percentile median, at 77% (meaning half of my students had larger than 77% growth percentage). I had 12 students with growth of 90% and above, with two students score 99%!!! That means they scored higher than 99% of the students in Colorado who scored their same score in 5th grade. Such great news!!!! Now I can't wait to find them in the hallways and tell them the good news!

We will be sure to update about our loan and closing info as soon as we know.

We should be good!

Hi all, I know some are wondering - we talked to our Bank of America guy today, and he said we should have nothing to worry about with the loan. They average the last 36 months of paychecks, so we should be all set!!! We are having the subleasers sign the official papers today! Woo hoo!!