Sunday, January 24, 2010

Catching Up & Transitions

Wow, where has the time gone? The holidays have come and gone, and January is almost over. It has been a very busy time for us -- full of transitions and activity.

My last post focused on my grandmother's 90th birthday. Lennie and I had the opportunity to travel back to Minneapolis to help celebrate her birthday and to reconnect with family. The party was a great success, and we were treated to sunny but cold winter days (a high of 19!?) while touring around the Twin Cities. Photos from the party and our weekend are available here.

Upon returning home, we were thrown into the holiday season, complete with my brother's family in town for two weeks. It was fun to have kids around for the Christmas season, and we filled our after-work time with trips to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens and other area Christmas events. My oldest nephew had a hockey tournament that started immediately after Christmas, so we trekked up to Mountlake Terrace quite a few times to take in some of his games. It was busy, but we really enjoyed having the family in town. View photos from the holidays.

Ch-Ch-Changes
Amidst all of the holiday cheer, Lennie and I also began packing up our condo. For quite some time now, we have felt that condo living is no longer appropriate for our life stage. The opportunity came up to stay elsewhere while we had a our condo updated/repaired, and we jumped on it. (Note to self: don't try to pack up and move during the holidays; both items are stressful enough on their own!) Needless to say, we moved out on January 2nd and have been living out of boxes for the last few weeks (which partially explains why photos haven't been posted and I've been delinquent in posting here). As we've transitioned out of the condo, we donated many items and began "organizing" all of the 'stuff' that we have accumulated. To say that it's been overwhelming would be an understatement!

I tried to get a few "before" photos for our condo, but our contractor was on the ball and got started just before these photos were taken. Either way, you get the idea... I'm happy to say that we're nearing the finish line for the condo update project, and I snapped these photos yesterday. We could not be happier with the work that our contractor did.

So, for our next trick we'll be putting the condo up on the market within the next week or so. If you know of anyone who wants to purchase a great two bedroom, one and 3/4 bathroom condo in Bellevue, let me know. It's a great location, we're just ready to live in a house instead of a condo. :-)