Photos

So the downstairs is in good enough shape to take some pictures, and now that we have grass and some shrubbery (Monty Python flashback), we thought we'd show you an outside shot too.  We've had glorious blue skies for over a week, but today is kinda grey (but not lonely! Annie flashback).  Still, you can see the green green grass and the new front doors and the purplishness--about which I'm still not quite sure--of the shake shingles.

It is hard to know just by looking how much work went into laying the sprinkler pipe over which this green green grass was laid, but the work?  There was a lot of it.  None of it done by me.  Thanks hon.  And we have a few bushes and some grasses and bought a "Showy Mountain Ash" tree to go along with the two maples in the front yard.  Here's a picture of what the tree WILL look like.  When it's not fall, and when it's not little. So, let's say, early summer of 2015:

And now, the main floor!:

This is my favorite view, looking into the kitchen from the mudroom.  And I'm so glad that our dining room table matches everything so well--exact same colors as the house.  It's like it had been sitting in the formal dining room in our old house for five years, unused, just waiting for its chance!  And you can't tell from this picture, but the fridge in this house is exactly the same as the one in our old house.  This amuses me.  And one of our new purchases were the barstools you see to your left.  They could be a tad shorter, but I like them so much better than the honey oak barstools we bought back in 1999 for $15 at Target that have been slowly shellacked with thousands of childhood lunches since then.

Another view of the kitchen, this time from the family room.  The day I chose the vertical blinds at Home Depot was a very stressful day--height of the moving-induced-anxiety-carnival--and I kinda felt like the blind lady talked me into them.  (And who's going to trust a blind lady when it comes to picking out vertical window coverings?  Well, this one was quite adept at her job despite her disability.  Mark.) So when the blind installer (who was also quite adept at his profession despite his disability) came over and pulled them out of the package I got a touch stressed out because they looked a little 1987 to me.  But you know what? I like them just fine.  I might make a new valance one of these days, but they work.

Speaking of window coverings, we decided to go with curtains instead of blinds in the family room, and I'm so glad!  We toiled over these bad boys yesterday and finally got them up.  Forrest had to figure out an ingenious way to turn three curtain rods into one in order to have one that extended the length of the windows, but he figured it out.  The solution involved dowels.  I never would have thought of it.  Hooray for handiness!  I picked out the curtains at Ikea, and Ethan wasn't sure about the motif (birds, Mom?) but once he saw them hanging up he decided that they were, in fact, nice looking.  I agree.  And yes, it's dark outside.  These pictures were taken last night at about 10 p.m.  But I wanted you all to see the curtains hanging separately, cause it's cuter like that.

The mud room, walking in from the garage (the kitchen is to the right).  I'm going to try and enforce the "backpacks on one set of hooks, jackets on the other" rule.  We'll see how long that lasts.  The half bath is to the left, then a big main closet is straight ahead.

The new front doors.  I like them so much better than the wrong ones.  Not only do they have the pretty cherry wood finish, but the windows aren't quite as far down.  The other doors were half glass and it made me feel like everyone was watching me watch TV, a sensation that makes me feel both nervous and lazy.

 Living room, to the left as soon as you walk in the front door.  The furniture fits well.  My only hesitation is putting the mirror above the love seat.  I think it's too small.  Hmmm.

My office!  This time the office is blue instead of green, and I really like it.  Tony's boat picture looks nice, don't you think?  It was hard to get a good shot of the office as a whole, and I'm not done putting books away or hanging the curtains. (Mom, I'm going to use those sheer green panels you gave me before we found out about this whole moving thing!)  But I really like the feel of the office and that I can look outside to the front yard when I'm at my computer.

And that, folks, is where we're at.  Now we've got to work on the upstairs.  I was proud of myself because I put together a 29-step bathroom wall unit for Elise bathroom, using power tools and everything.  (Her bathroom is nice, but it just has this tiny vanity with no drawer or anything, so a wall cabinet was a MUST. )  Poor Wyatt's room has been a shambles pretty much since we moved in, and many of our toiletries are still on top of the dresser in my bedroom where I put them a week ago after determining that I would put them away immediately.  Oops.  Hopefully by next Sunday that space will be picture-ready too.

I have a bit of a cold--stuffy nose, kinda achy--and I think that I'm in the same place I hit about a week and a half after having a baby: the adrenaline has worn off and I find myself looking around and thinking, "Oh wow.  What have I gotten myself into again?"  But I've had four babies and moved into, now, five houses, so at least I can try and tell myself that this too shall pass and normalcy will once again be restored.  I love normalcy.  Except when it's boring.  Which is the paradox of all of this, right?  The cure for boredom is doing stuff, but doing stuff is a lot of work.

Maybe I should get somebody to make that last sentence into a vinyl wall decal and I can put it over the door in the kitchen?  It's either than or "Return With Honor!"  (I always want the "Return With Honor" decals to have this tacked on to the end: " . . . Or Else!"

Kay, better go now.   I'm getting rambly and just a hair too snarky.  Two reliable signs that I've blogged too long.  G'night!

In Sum

(Photo taken after upacking kitchen boxes.  Taken with my cell phone camera because the regular camera had yet to be located.)

So the kitchen looks lots better now, but I'm going to wait until the blinds are up before I take some real "after" shots.  And the blind installer guy comes tomorrow, hallelujah!

But we've been busy over at Casa de Hallstrom, that's for darn sure.  In the last week and a couple of days we've:

-Painted the garage and put a nice speckly epoxy on the garage floor
-Painted Elise's room and my office
-Moved in
-Moved out (I don't know if I've been as bone tired in a while as I was last Wednesday night at midnight when I finally decided it was time to stop cleaning and packing up the apartment and get some sleep).
-Installed a sprinkling system (Forrest did this all by himself, trenching and everything).
-Selected and planted bushes and shrubs
-Selected a new washer and dryer (hooray!), waited around for the delivery people, then installed the gas line (okay, yeah, Forrest is doing a lot of this).
-Waited around for the cable guy.  Had the phone go out the next day so waited for him again.  Then the day after that, had a nice discussion with the shovel-wielding cable burying guy who'd cut the main sprinkler line Forrest had installed the day before.
-Waited around for the door installer guy.  LOVE the front doors.  The originally-installed doors were incorrect, and I'm so much happier w/ the new ones.  Pics to come soon.
-Waited around for the tub installer guys.  Our old tub was also incorrect.  New tub arrived two days ago and--surprise surprise--it has a "chromatherapy" feature, which basically means that there are a series of LED lights in the bottom of the tub that turn the water a delightful array of calmness-inducing colors.  It's hilarious.  And also cool.
-Waited around for the sod installer guys.  At least the sod came with the house!  And they had this really cool sod-rolling machine that laid the sod down on the dirt like toilet paper off a roll.  I left to go to the grocery store and they were almost done by the time I came home.
-Bought a bunch of stuff: hooks for the mudroom, bathroom shelves, mats, desks for the kids' loft, rug for the kitchen, bar stools, wireless router, wireless router receiver, laundry sorter for upstairs laundry room, etc. etc. Even when you don't have to buy a lot of furniture or anything, moving into a new house is so terribly expensive.
-Hooked up a bunch of stuff: TVs, computers, printers.  Cords, cords, cords.  Oh, the masses of cords.
-Hung up a bunch of stuff: pictures, temporary blinds, clothes in closets, decorative items, shelves.
-Hauled a bunch of stuff up and down stairs, from the garage to the basement, from the bedroom to the office.
-Opened, unpacked, then broke down about a bazillion boxes, and stuffed mass quantities of packing paper into the garbage.  Having other people pack your stuff is nice in so many ways, but man, they use more boxes and more paper than they need to.
-Made about a bazillion tiny decisions: where should I put the cutting board? (Lazy Susan.)  What should I do when there's nowhere handy to hang a dish towel by the sink? (Buy one of those 3M removable hooks and stick it on the cabinet by the sink--but then I bought a silver hook and I think it clashes.) Should I throw away this vanilla scented lotion that I haven't used since 2003? (yes.)

On top of all that, four of the six of us gave talks in church on Sunday--only Jonas and Wyatt were exempt.   Then there was the regular stuff: homework, swimming lessons, Ethan being shuttled back and forth from the school as he helps out on stage crew for the upcoming musical.  Parent teacher conferences. Laundry.  Food preparation.  Sleeping.

Forrest keeps saying with a real wistfulness in his voice that we need to go to a movie.  I so agree.

So as soon as I get things in picture-taking shape, I'll take some pictures.  But all is well here.  Busy, exhausting, but good.  And getting better.

Exhale. (Almost.)

So I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks because I've been engaging in one of my least favorite of extracurricular activities: taking a nice scenic trip on the anxiety train!  Ah, the good times.  Queasiness, irritability, a general sense of doom-and-gloominess that's hard to shake.  I'm sure I've been a joy to live with.

But.  BUT!  Things are looking up.  The house is set to close on Monday (in fact, Wells Fargo wired the money to the title company on Friday, or so I'm told) and every thing's gonna be all right.  One nice thing about situational anxiety is that, well, it's situational.  I've also found that, even though I still can't seem to help the cascade of physical symptoms that come when my anxiety gets triggered, the older I get the better I am at stepping outside myself and realizing that most of what I'm feeling is originating in my blasted BRAIN and isn't an indication that the world is, in fact, going to end.  So although I hate being in the middle of it, I don't necessarily interpret the feelings as a prompting that I've got to be frantically fixing things or warding off disaster.  Instead, I prefer to think of it like a really bad migraine headache that will (hopefully) pass.

One good thing about anxiety, though.  The ONLY good thing.  Lost five pounds!

So what was causing all this anxiety, you ask?  Well, I'm not going to go into all the details because they are 1. boring and 2. complicated, but the main gist of the situation had to do with obtaining our mortgage even though it had been placed in the hands in one of the most incompetent supposed "professionals" I've ever had to work with in my life.  Every day this guy would lose something, or mis-communicate something, or ask for something that in the end he didn't actually need, or forget something (I mean, after WEEKS of working with this guy, some days with two or three phone calls a day, when he talked to me on Thursday night he'd forgotten, after DOZENS of reminders, that we were closing on Monday.  Not Tuesday, Stephen.  MONDAY.)  At any rate, usually our mortgages have been approved a few weeks before closing, but we didn't get final approval on this bad boy until this Thursday afternoon.  We have great credit and have been long time Wells Fargo customers without ever making a late payment, but after this experience it's no wonder to me that the housing market in the US has ground to a halt.  Yes, four years ago they were way too lax in their mortgage qualification standards, but the way that the qualification process has ratcheted up to almost ridiculous proportions (I won't bore you with all the crazy information we were asked to supply) coupled with all of this information being entrusted to a truly incompetent Wells Fargo employee made this whole mortgage approval process pretty excruciating.

But now we're good.  We close tomorrow.  And we received some very real blessings that have helped smooth the path, even in the midst of all the difficulties of the last two weeks, that have strengthened my faith and helped me to realize that God will help us.  Even on things as seemingly-mundane as the mortgage approval process.

And the house is beautiful!  I can't wait to move in.  Can. Not. Wait.  Here are some pics of the (almost) finished product.  (They put on the wrong front door and installed the wrong tub, both of which will be fixed after we close.)

 The master bath, wrong tub included.

 The family room, looking to the office on the left and the front doors (wrong doors included)

 The kitty's chin.  I love love love the kitchen. Nice and big, and I love the mahogany floors.  They're "scraped" (or something) so that the texture is slightly bumpy, and the finish is a lot less glossy than our floors in UT.  Those glossy maple floors in UT drove me NUTS--almost impossible to keep clean and streak free.  These floors will be nice.

 I also love the island.  All four kids will be able to fit around it great.

 The Children!  And we're going to do drapes instead of blinds in the family room.  We found some at Ikea and I really like them: birds and leaves, purdy colors.  Can't wait to show you once they go up.

 The exterior now that the dirt has been graded and our two maple trees put in.  Forrest (bless him) will be installing the sprinkling system early this week.  We only have a week or so after final grading to get the sod in (some kind of rule or law), and most people have the builders do the sprinkling system.  But it's pricey, and Forrest can do it.  This will be sprinkling system #4 after all.  He's a hard working dog, my husband.  ("Hard working dog" is in reference to an old Sesame Street song, so "dog" is meant in the admirable sense. Of course!)

 And lo, the back yard.

And lo, the back yard again.  We have a nice line of evergreens along the back, offering a little privacy.  And can I just say that I can't quite believe we're putting in another yard?  Did I say that already?

 Wyatt in the loft.

Elise showing off her VERY OWN bathroom.  Lucky girl.  Lucky girl who gets to be in charge of keeping it clean. :-)

So we close on Monday morning, we'll do some painting and sprinkling system installation and landscaping on Monday and Tuesday, then the moving trucks come on Wednesday and we'll (finally!) get to go home!

I'm so glad.

Getting in the Groove

Well, it's Sunday night, and the funny thing is that it feels like a "normal" Sunday night.  Well, normal-ish.  We're still crammed into a little apartment, we still don't have any mini muffin pans, and when I made some Velveeta/Rotelle cheese dip, Elise looked longingly into the pot and sighed, "I miss Grandma's house."  (Nobody makes cheese dip like Grandma.)  But this last week has felt refreshingly normal.  A few highlights:

-Ethan went on his first Scout camp this weekend and had a good time.  I think he really enjoyed not being in charge, since he spent most of his Deacon-hood as the quorum president and felt like he had a lot of responsibilities.  Now he can just hang around like the other guys and not worry about whose job it is to sweep out the tent.  He's also keeping up well in all his classes and is the designated "snake holder" in Biology.  Being the only 9th grader in his Bio class, I think he enjoys handling reptiles for the upper-class females. :-)

-Elise tried out for choir and made the "Bel Canto" group for her middle school--an all girls choir that meets once a week after school.  She was excited to make that particular group because the mixed choir meets in the morning, and we (and I do mean WE) are having a hard enough time getting up at 6:35 in order to be to school on time.  She's doing a great job keeping up on her homework and staying organized.

-Jonas did some math testing and got moved up to 5th grade math.  He's had math homework twice now, and has eagerly settled down at the dining room table to get it all done promptly (if not neatly--he suffers from the same handwriting ailment as the rest of his siblings).  He also went to Cub Scouts for the first time and had a lot of fun.

-Wyatt has been LOVING preschool.  He cried on Tuesday when he realized it wasn't a school day.  And although I've already told Grandma this story and posted it on Facebook, I'm putting this little exchange on the blog so it will be recorded for posterity:

Me: What did you learn at preschool today, Wyatt?
W:  There was this guy?  And Jesus taked his rib?
Me (thinking):  Do you mean Adam?
W:  Yes!  And guess what Jesus did with that rib?  He turned it into a woman named Steve!

Classic!  Then, on Friday, he recounted the whole Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge part of the creation story with great seriousness.  ("One tree was a good tree.  But the other tree was up high [don't know why he thought it was up high] and Jesus said if you eat that fruit you will DIE!")

He's definitely listening during Bible story time. :-)

-Forrest has really been enjoying some of the new challenges with his job, which is great (although he would love to have somebody hired to replace his old position, so he's not doing both).  He also just got called to be second counselor in the YM presidency.  He really likes the Young Men's, so it's a perfect calling for him.

-I'm still flying under the radar, calling-wise.  But I HAVE had some fun lunches/breakfasts with old friends, people from my old ward, people from my new ward, etc.  Too bad there's not a lunch companion calling.  I would ROCK.  Wyatt's gotten to the point where he's totally cool with hanging out in the booth, munching on french fries while Mom talks.  I've also spent some good time writing and catching up on Irreantum (my last issue comes out the end of this year), and getting a few things squared away with the move.  We close in two weeks.  Eeek!  Hooray!

So things are good here.  Pretty normal, really.  Which is good.  I still get these pangs of Utah loneliness, and sometimes when I walk outside my apartment and look around at all the mid-Westernness, I feel like I'm in an alternate universe.  Like I'm living my bizzaro-life and pretty soon the scene will go all wobbly and I'll wake up and find it was all just a dream. Or something.  But the truth is that we MOVED TO MINNESOTA.  Crazy, huh!

And now it's 8:22, and I've got to start the getting to bed machinations because we're all exhausted from our new early morning schedule.  Ah, 8 hours of sleep, how much I need you.

Back to School Pics

The kids have one week of school under their collective belts and are all doing well.  Ethan really likes his biology class, is making some friends in band and went to his first high school football game; Elise is excited about choir and is trying out for an after school choir group next week, really likes Spanish, and has a group of girls to sit with at lunch; Jonas has a great teacher and is making friends with other "J" named boys (named Jake and Jerry, or Jack and Joey, depending on the day he tells me) and is taking Chinese; and Wyatt was a preschool rock star, enjoying his first two days of school with a smile on his face.

And speaking of smiles on faces, here are some photos of the first day of school.  Since Ethan has to be out the door at 6:40 a.m. for early morning seminary, we did the traditional first day of school photo shoot AFTER school.  And school started on a decidedly gray and blustery day, but the pics turned out pretty good nevertheless.  These were all shot right across the street from our apartment building.  I'm going to start with some black and white portrait shots I created expressly for Grandma Sweat, since the ones on the magnet board in her kitchen need updating:

 

And here are some more, in color, that show their outfits to best effect:

(Truth be told, I'm pretty sure Ethan didn't put much thought into his fashion choices.  But he looks handsome just the same.)

Elise, on the other hand, had some strong opinions about her first day of school outfit, and chose this particularly daring number, complete with wicked cool pants.  She considered wearing a scarf, then thought it would be too much. I thought she looked great.

Jonas wanted to wear his slicky pants.  And yes, that's Ethan staring maniacally from the lower left hand corner.  Both Jonas and Ethan find this hilarious.

And this wasn't Wyatt's official first day of school, but he looked cute too.

Here are photos from Wyatt's first official day of school!

Wyatt, sporting his name tag, in front of his all-important backpack hook.

Sitting in his chair, getting ready to trace his name.  Look at that pencil grip!  He's a natural.  I think all three of the others had to get those little triangular-shaped gummy pencil holder thingies (you know what I mean!) to help them learn to hold their pencils correctly, and Ethan (alas) apparently didn't receive early enough intervention and still holds his pencil wrong.  But Wyatt!  Look at you!  (Note to other kids:  I love you all just as much as I love Wyatt, his pencil-holding skills notwithstanding.)

Who's this little guy going off to school?  Makes a mom wistful.  And I know I've said it before, but isn't Minnesota purdy?

And a few close-ups, mugging for the camera:

Dang, he's cute.

Here's hoping week two goes as well as week one!

The Day Before the Day Before School

(The St. Croix river valley, viewed from the windows of the car on the way to church this morning.)

So tonight is the second to last night we'll spend in our little apartment before the chaos of school and extracurriculars (whatever they may be) and Scouts/YM/YW and, probably eventually, church callings descends.  We spent our second Sunday in our new ward and found everyone to be exceptionally nice and welcoming.  One family in the ward even had us over for dinner earlier in the week--see? exceptionally nice.  They live just one street over in our neighborhood and have kids our kids' age & that's such a blessing.  Their daughter even told Elise she could find her at lunch and come and sit.  So kind!

I've felt very calm and settled since we've come here, which I'm chalking up as one of them multitude of God's blessings we've enjoyed in the midst of all this.  I know myself well enough--and I know life well enough--to realize that this relative calm will pass, and that there will probably be some bumpy spots, especially as the kids get established in school and the rest of what makes up their lives.  And as the house gets finished, too, and we make that final move.  But I've really been enjoying the opportunity to just be with my kids and my family without anything else tugging at me: no classes to teach, no Webelos to plan, no homework to oversee, no soccer practices to run to.  We've just been, well, hanging out.  And although we've occasionally impinged on one another's space, everybody's been getting along remarkably well.

And speaking of space!  I'll stop rambling and post a few pictures.  Here's the fabled apartment, in all its glory:

This would be the kitchen/dining area.  Obviously.  Now, if you're interested in picturing us in the kitchen/dining area, you'll be better prepared to do so.  And here are the kids in the family room, which is, of course, just off of the kitchen/dining area:

You'll notice all three boys huddled around a cardboard box on the floor.  Forrest ran a cable from our bedroom to that little corner so the kids could set up their all-important computer.  We stuck it on top of an end table and used the boxes for the keyboard.  The mouse sits atop one of Wyatt's dinosaur books.  It seems to be working.  And Elise is watching (what else?) some Comcast On Demand sitcom of the iCarly, Suite Life, etc. etc. ilk.  Cue laugh track!  (Oh, the laugh tracks.  They are boring themselves into my skull.)

But we don't just sit around and stare at screens all day, oh no sirree.  We do fun stuff like take the boat out on Lake Elmo.  ("Elmo?" Wyatt said, and giggled.)  And, I know, I forgot the camera, which was too bad because it was a gorgeous day.  Blue sky, calm water, nobody on the lake.  Minnesota: the land of driving 5 minutes and putting your boat in the water.  Nothing like it!

We also went to the Minnesota State Fair on Friday, an activity which non-Minnesotans can't really comprehend unless you've attended (like Grandma and Grandpa Sweat).  We went on a blustery, downright COLD Friday (earlier in the week it was low 90s and humid, then blamo, it's 57 degrees!).  Anyway, we thought it wouldn't be so crowded, given the weather, but we were wrong.  Masses of humanity, all waiting in line for fried food and/or rickety carnival rides and/or to gawk at the fair's biggest pig.  We joined right in:

Wyatt, reaching out and petting a most impressive hog, wearing his pink pig's ears with pride.

"Gather round, kids!  Of course you want your picture taken with Smokey the Bear!"

While at the fair we, as a family, shared: corn dogs (kinda mushy); a giant cup of french fries; a Famous Dave's pulled pork sandwich; Alligator sausage on a stick (Ethan's selection, which he's holding above--it tasted overly spicy and kinda dry, since I can't imagine alligators are all that fatty, but Ethan's nothing if not adventurous); roasted corn on the cob; mini donuts (I'd forgotten how much I love mini donuts); a giant tub of Sweet Martha's chocolate chips cookies; a caramel apple; three glasses of milk (chocolate and plain) and three cups of Coke.

I kinda had a stomach ache when I got home.  Go figure.

I also had a stomach ache watching my beloved children ride this:

Yes, that's three of my four children, suspended upside down, high in the air, on a suspicious-looking carnival ride.  Jonas barely made the height requirement, and he's so skinny I kept having visions of him somehow slipping through his harness.  Luckily they made it out alive and begging to go again.  Here are some more action shots:

I like how Wyatt's got his tongue out.  Ready to go.  And I felt for the poor carnival workers in their hip waders and gloves, pushing preschoolers around in a chilly pool of murky water all day.  Talk about challenging work conditions.

Nothing like getting to ride up front!  And with your big sister, too.

I'm just barely getting old enough that this ride (which those of you who are familiar w/ Lagoon would call the "Music Express") makes me a little bit sick to my stomach.  But only when we're going backwards.

We had a lot of fun, even if it was chilly.  We've also done a few other fun things this last week: the Minnesota Zoo, the Mall of America (don't know if I'd exactly call that one FUN, necessarily--man, that place is big and loud and crowded--but it was good to go back and see it again.  Elise said it had a "familiar smell.")  Elise and I had our yearly "mom and daughter day" yesterday and went school shopping and out to lunch at Applebees, and that was a lot more fun than the Mall of America.  Ethan and Forrest went and bought Ethan a bow, since the legal bow hunting age here is 12 and Forrest thought it would be fun to teach him a little archery.

We also have some pictures of the inside of the house (almost forgot--and I realize these pics are probably a little boring, since there's not much but walls and cabinetry):

Kitchen/dining

More kitchen

Family room

Entryway (living room to the left, office--can't see it--to the right)

Upstairs loft, which will save my sanity as all Disney channel sit coms must be watched UPSTAIRS.

Master bedroom

Back yard.  In Minnesota, people don't have fences (usually) and in our neighborhood, fences are expressly forbidden in the association's covenants.  I've gotten to where I like the look of unbroken green, but I am glad that we have this nice stand of trees that lines the backyards, so we have at least a little privacy.

And last but not least!  A few pictures I'd forgotten to upload from my phone, back from the lifetime ago when we were living in Utah.  (Yes, I've felt peaceful over the last week and a half, but it's been an incredibly looooooong week and a half.)

Ethan and Elise jumping off the platforms at Ethan's birthday party at the Kearns rec center.

Ethan and his friends at the aforementioned birthday party.

Elise and her Beehive class at her goodbye pizza party.

A beautiful Utah sunset, made all the more wistful by the "under contract" sign in our lawn.  Apparently the sale went through on August 31 and people who are NOT US will soon be occupying our house!  They're moving from North Carolina, so I'm not sure if they're actually there yet.  It's always so strange to sell a house . . .

The kids up at Ledgemere, having one last picnic up the canyon with Grandma and Grandpa Sweat before heading em up and moving em out.

And now I think I have all the important stuff covered.  Or at least most of it. Tomorrow we're getting together with the family of one of our former bishops in the White Bear Lake ward for lunch, then spending the rest of the day gearing up for school to start.  And then--blamo!  Real life.  Hopefully we're ready.