It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I know you all can hardly believe I'm blogging twice in a week, but here it is! Our first real Christmas tree together! It's an 8-footer and completely brings me back to my childhood (all except for the fact that we picked it out at Lowe's in the cold instead of cutting it down ourselves on a tree farm in the middle of Southern CA in short sleeves...hmmmm..) Our biggest challenge is now keeping Mani from eating it.

Condo Progress Continued

Okay, it's been a while since I have updated on condo progress. We still have to paint the 3rd floor and redo the entire 2nd floor bathroom, but we are making some progress. It helps me to see that if I blog about it :) The first is a picture of our new dining room table. This table turns into an 5X5 ft. square with the leaf that's in it and we have 8 chairs. Much more helpful for having game nights at our house than our tiny little Walmart table. It's also counter-height, so Mani can't put his nose on the table during dinner.
Next is a picture of our new couch for the 3rd floor, bought this summer. Much nicer for movies than two chairs! Note the mini-fridge. Thanks to good friends who donated that to our cause, we no longer have to walk down 36 stairs to get a drink when watching TV.
Next is the finished downstairs bathroom! Thanks to a good friend who helped rip the old vanity out, move the plumbing, re-drywall the wall, and put in a smaller vanity, it looks great! (lesson learned in home improvement...nothing is as simple as it seems!) I included a before picture for you from right when we bought the place.

The next two pictures are the fruits of a trip to an antique row a few miles from our house on my birthday. We needed a mantle and were looking for a stained glass window to hang on one of our massive walls. A guy gave us an awesome deal on these two together. The wood and the build of the mantle match our table almost exactly! We still have some tile work to do around the fireplace and replacing of the masonry on the hearth, but we were happy to find this!

And finally, as we close in on the first floor being done, here is a before and after picture to enjoy.

Happy 1st Birthday Mani!

Mani turned 1 year old this week. When did this:

Turn into this?

100th post! MI/Race

It's been a while again! Since our last blog post, our two biggest pieces of news were that we took our annual trip to the cottage with Keri's family and Keri ran a 1/2 marathon. We spent a week in August with Keri's whole family (including new nephew Arie!). It was a wonderful week with time at Keri's grandma's cottage and at Keri's parent's house. We'll include just a few pictures since it was so long ago!! Mani, again, had a blast at the cottage swimming, running up and down the dune, and getting puppy energy out!!

Dexter (2) and Nate (4) in the kayak

Paddle-boating on Spring Lake

Beautiful sunset-not taken in black and white!

Running down the dune at the cottage

What a trusting dog!

Picking blueberries

Kerri Walsh at Muskegon AVP tournament

Our Family

Uncle C.J. and Aunt Keri with nephews

Lots of Arie time sleeping on stomachs!

Dexter and Keri

Ryan, Kelly, and Arie after his baptism

On September 26th in Columbia, MO, Keri also ran a half marathon with 3 of her accountability friends. It was designed to challenge us spiritually and physically this summer, and that it did. We are all greatful it is over, but all in all, it was a cool experience. It rained for the first 8 miles and was very hilly, but the last 4 miles, we rocked it! Here are the before and afters:

What are we doing?!?!

So happy to be done!