"Before" Fair Grove House

 We are moving to Fair Grove!  We have purchased our newest fixer upper.  And honestly, we're so excited about it, we may not end up flipping it for a while.  It comes with 10 acres, is near Fellows Lake, and is in Fair Grove.   As is typical, I didn't get the "before" pictures until Sean and our wonderfully helpful family had started work.  But there's still work to be done, so you'll see a difference in the "after" pictures.

A view of the living room (and Erin!) which is right when you walk in the front door.

 A view of the kitchen (one of my favorite rooms) from the living room.  Neither Sean nor I would've picked the cabinets out of a lineup, but we both really like them, so they'll stay.

 View of the dining room from the kitchen.  All the arched windows have to go--they're damaged, and they cost 3x as much as square ones, so that's what we'll be getting as replacements.

 This is the girls bathroom.

Erin's bedroom

Elise's bedroom, and the current toy room.  The kids are so good to play and hang out while we work!

 View from the back.  We're going to extend the porch to the end of the house.

 Master bedroom

 Master bath

 Guest bedroom

Guest bath.

It's our intention to move sometime during Christmas break.  With Elise changing schools, it seems to be a good time to make the move so she can start at semester, and Sean doesn't seem to be stressing too much about getting it all done before then, so I guess we picked a good time.  

As we get ready to list our current house in Strafford, I'll be sure to post "after" pics of it.  We've enjoyed our neighborhood, but we're really excited to get out into the "country" and enjoy some space to roam!

Brooke and Spencer's Wedding

 Excuse the picture of a picture, but this picture was on a table at the wedding, and I swear it wasn't that long ago that my cousin Brooke was that size.  Now, she's old enough to be a married woman!

 This beautiful bride was married on October 15th to an awesome guy.  We are so happy for her!

 We were also happy to share our anniversary with them!  I'll always remember their anniversary, as they were married on our 11th wedding anniversary!

 This gives you a glimpse of how much fun Brooke and Spencer are, and how much fun their wedding/reception was!

 Nan and Pop were guests, and I snapped a cute pic of them with 3 of their greats.

 It also amused me that Pop and Dad matched, so I had to get a pic of that too!

 It was so wonderful to have quite a few members of the family come to town from Nebraska to celebrate with Brooke and Spencer!

 When I was going through my pictures, I realized this was one of the only pictures I got of the two of them together.  Sorry, Spencer!  I kept missing you with my camera :)

 The kiddos danced up a storm and had a blast, too!

Congratulations, Brooke!  You were a beautiful bride and we're so happy for you!

Backpacking 2016

 After a failed attempt in the Spring, we finally got to go backpacking in October 2016.  We went to the Ponca Wilderness in Arkansas.

 It was my first run with my new pack Sean had bought me, and it was nice.  Sean carried over 50lbs on his pack, and I had 29lbs on mine.

 We started out by hiking to Hawksbill Crag.

 It was a really pretty hike, and not to strenuous on the path.

 A view of it as we were coming up on it.

 Us out on Hawksbill Crag.  Also known as Whittaker Point.

 However, after hiking out there, we encountered a problem.  There was literally nowhere to set up camp.  It's a bluff on one side, and pretty heavily wooded on the other.  Sean found a little break in the bluff and we hiked a really hard downhill hike to the creek bottom. 

 But the creek was dry.  And the whole area was heavily wooded and/or rocky.  The sun was starting to go down, so we decided to hike back out, which was harder, and try to find a campsite in Ponca, which was a few miles away.  However, when we got to Ponca, the place was dark.  We decided to drive to the next town, Harrison.  Too bad for us, Harrison was having a motorcycle rally, and there was only one room to be found in town.  A smoking room in a Super 8 that was pretty worn down. 

 We did get a pretty good hot meal at Dixie's though, and headed back out to try again the next morning.

 Hideout Hollow was a trail Sean and Will had been on before, but was new to Jessie and me.

 The hike in was really pretty.

 We set up camp under the bluff and it was perfect.  The campfire pit was already there, and the boys made us a table to play Canasta.

It was an adventure, and as always we had a great time with the Kelbs!