Introducing.... DUKE!

Our little man! Duke, we picked him out yesterday and get to pick him up on the 1st!

all Duke's brothers at the breeder's house.

Our complete family!

it's a boy!

Coming soon.....a new member of the family! We are getting a puppy for Christmas this year. He is a goldendoodle, and we are naming him Duke. We can't wait to be puppy-parents!!!

job update

Thinking on this past weekend and all we have to be thankful for, the thing that I am most thankful for this year is my new job. I believe God has planned this all along, and it was worth the challenging year working in Boston. I am so grateful for this new place to work. In the past I haven't had the pleasure of working in a distinctively Christian environment and is is truly a blessing! My co-workers are wonderful and I love the work I do. It is great being in a school environment without having to take any work home with me at night! I have great hours and although I am now working 30 hours instead of 15 hours... with the less commute I still have time at home in the afternoons.
Kyle and I are looking forward to the holiday season and are excited to be in MI for Christmas and New Years with Brandon and Amy... finally, the family reunites!

Happy Black Friday!

We had a great Thanksgiving celebration yesterday with my parents and Josh and Rochelle's family. Good food, fun and fellowship to celebrate all the things we are so thankful for.
We continued our celebration by getting out to the shops on Black Friday! A few new purchases for some early Christmas gifts!

A great new camera!!! And due for a new phone.


MERRY CHRISTMAS!

ready to weather the storms!

We just got in the storm windows and put them up to get ready for the winter storms!

first day of school

As many of you have heard, I just started a new job at Whitinsville Christian School. I am the administrative assistant for the middle and high school office. So although I am excited to "go back to school" I am most excited that I don't have to take homework home with me at night! I am sad to leave the Y as things were going well this year, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity and I believe God has a great plan for me here!

to the mitten

We are soon headed to the mitten!!! Back to MI for Tracy and Brian's wedding. I am leaving tomorrow (Sat.) morning and Kyle is working a little next week and joining us on Thursday. We are looking forward to seeing family, friends and of course celebrating the wedding! Can't wait to see you all.

The end of the tunnel

We have finally arrived at the end of the tunnel, we've seen the LIGHT!!!!!

17 Spring street is complete and ready for our new renters! I will just go along with the saying that 'a picture says 1,000 words' and post some pictures of our 'other half'!

Smells like "home"

It is feeling more and more like fall out here in the east! I absolutely love the cool nights and its getting beautiful out here with all the leaves changing color. There's nothing that makes me feel like I am home more than the smell of when my mom was cooking her chicken soup... today, I think that our house here is MA smells (and feels) like HOME! We are eating homemade chicken soup for dinner tonight!

Homegrown Goodness

Nantucket

Last weekend we went to Nantucket for a beautiful wedding! It was an awesome weekend filled with celebrations and great weather. We stayed in a house with a bunch of Kyle's friends and the Bajema's. We spent our time going to the beach, touring the towns and celebrating the festive occasion.

Outdoor Makover

BEFORE......

.......AFTER!!!

One year down... a lifetime to go

Newport on our 1st anniversary



us in 60 years! a cute couple reading/ watching the sunset

Pure Michigan

Over the 4th of July we enjoyed a little bit of heaven in pure Michigan!!! Summers are perfect there and we have a great weekend of wonderful weather and catching up with family. We spent the weekend at the cottage in Fremont and monday at home in Holland. Of course the weekend wasn't long enough but we had time to enjoy the pontoon boat during the day, fires at night (compliments of Kyle's experience at camp when he was younger) and a fireworks display like never seen before!!!

On Monday we got to see Dave and Michelle and the boys, and we met our niece Avery Anne! She was so precious and we can't wait till we can see her again.
Back in MA we (maybe mostly me) are missing home and seeing friends and family. The weekends always fly by when we visit. Wish we could go back more often!

spring street coolers

The new drink on the block!
Kyle brought this great drink home and I thought that we should share it.

1 shot of raspberry vodka (or a splash more... whatever you like!)
Fill the glass with Fresca soda
Top it off with a little cranberry juice
Squeeze of lime

Try them... you won't be disappointed!

let the games begin

This week I (Erica) am running an All Sports Camp at Whitinsville Christian with Kyle's friends Mitch and Brady Bajema. So far it has been a blast and we have one day left! It is a very nice break from work while still earning a few bucks! Working with the kids at WCS is awesome, so much different from the intercity setting that I have grown accustomed to. The kids listen... and actually want to play!! Its wonderful.
Kyle is doing good, but very busy with his job! Putting in tons of hours. He also started up Summer League basketball with games every Tuesday and Thursday. I am so jealous that he can actually still play the sport he loves! (diving.. not to easy to stick with, no facilities around here!)
That is all that's new here... coming home for the 4th of July weekend and looking forward to catching up with family at the cottage and meeting our new niece Avery Anne Engbers! Can't wait!

Memorial Day Weekend

Our holiday weekend was wonderful! My parents came to visit and we had a great time while they were here. We toured Rockport, a little more of Boston they hadn't seen, and dinned in the North End! Mom and I did a little shopping and gardening! Dad had a great time touring random towns while mom and I were at the outlets. We made some hanging flower baskets for the front porch, and cleaned out behind the garage. The weekend finished with a Memorial day dinner at Lance and RoseAnn's... it was great!

Just another Saturday on Spring Street

More and more projects! We started the weekend by visiting Kyle on the job site. He has been managing the construction of a new dorm building at Worcester State College; they are just about finished with it and this week they go into existing dorms to renovate. Here is a picture of the new dorm and some of the summer plans.


We are getting ready for the painter to come and scrape/ paint the trim on the house, so we had to take off all the storm windows... after many hours on a ladder we have got them all down, and everything (including Kyle) is still in one piece! We also spent a chunk of time searching for some plants... specifically hosta. Saturday was a bust, but today we went by a house that sells plants, and we got a ton of hosta for a good deal! I was stoked!!!

Spring is in the air....

which means the outdoor projects begin!
I went to Michigan for a week... and Kyle decided to build a new fence!
Our neighbor had a chain link fence with the pointed barbed wire on top... not too appealing at all, Kyle talked with him about it and he said that we could take it down and build a new one. It isn't finished yet, but looking great! We have to put up and few more boards on one side and then stain it.

out with the old.... in with the new!

17 updates

As if we weren't busy enough fixing up our side.... we started our tenants side when he went on vacation last week. We ended up redoing a lot more than we anticipated; I got a little excited tearing off the wallpaper... it only took me 1 hour to de-wallpaper a bathroom, bedroom and the kitchen!!! It was so easy, but after it was off that meant we had to finish all the rooms! I guess the pictures say it better than words but we finished the dinning room, kitchen, a bedroom and both bathrooms IN ONLY 10 DAYS!!!.... here they are.

the kitchen colors... turned out great! He had wood paneling on the bottom half so we painted it... I love it!

Dining room, very neutral... similar to ours.

Main floor 1/2 bathroom... had to work with the yellow tiles.

Upstairs room, same blue as the bathroom, also used in our bedroom.

Upstairs bathroom... ewwww the teal tile was a challenge for me! Turned out very bold!
That is all for now! Back to our side for a while.

one more finished!

The floors are finished and we are back in our house! Unfortunately I have currently lost my camera cord to put photos on the blog. I will post a photo when I find the cord, but they look great!! Kyle did such a great job and we are happy to be back home! (until we redo the kitchen... next major project)
Hope everyone had a Happy Easter! We had a great weekend, it was 70's and sunny every day! Friday night we went to the Celtics with friends Sarah and Alex, saturday we enjoyed the MI State game and played games and Sunday went to Uncle Jerry and Aunt Ellen's for Easter dinner!

Change of plans

Yesterday at about 3:30 in the afternoon Kyle called and said he got 4 tickets to the Celtics game last night. A guy at work emailed the whole company and said that he had 4 tickets from a sub-contractor and his family couldn't go anymore. Kyle emailed right away and we changed our plans of coating the floors for a night of fun!! Josh and Rochelle joined us as well... it was really fun, I don't know if the game was better or the people watching... (some interesting characters out there.)

moving out.

Our house is empty and we will be saying goodbye to Spring St.....


just for a little while!!!! We are moving back to Theresa Circle (parents house) because we are refinishing the hardwood floors! Kyle convinced me that we should tackle this huge project this weekend, and I might say it was a perfect one to do it. While MI was enjoying another round of snow we were loving the 70 degree sunny days! (although... the snow is probably coming this way next!)
On Friday night we rented a floor sander from Home Depot and emptied the living room and dining room. I was very against the idea of doing the floors now... I didn't want to move out and have a super dusty house to come home to! Needless to say, now that we are this far I am very pleased with how the floors are looking.... definitely worth the 10 hours of sanding, 3 hours of cleaning, and 2 hours of preparing the stairs to get where we are; with the stain on and drying, just waiting for a couple coats of polyurethane!

before the floors were touched... you can see that last time they redid the floors (we thought like 50 yrs. ago) they didn't put polyurethane where their rug was!

after the sanding began! looking better already

the bare floors, came out really well.

just a sneak peak of the floors, saving the full picture till they are done!

a lot changes in a year

Last year at this time I was competing in my last diving meet ever. Nationals was in MN and is this year as well. I have two team mates from last year that made it this year and I wish them the best this weekend!! I would give anything to be there watching, but would even love more if I was still diving. I am missing it, but love the changes this year has brought.
Of course, we would never post without a change to the house! Here are our latest projects, we painted the stair risers and put up a chair rail in the dining room. The stairs and floors will really pop once we refinish them!


Kyle is of course stoked for the next little while seeing it is March madness. We have filled out our brackets and are ready to watch some (or a lot of) basketball! (Kyle and little more excited about this than I)

sprucing up the outdoors

We had a weekend of beautiful weather! It has been about 55 degrees and full sun all day. Today we began the transformation to the front of the house, we took all the screens down off the porch. It really opened up the front a lot, we can't wait to paint the house! Kyle started scraping one of the back windows and painting the trim around it.

The front porch looks better... but obviously the lawn needs a little work come spring/summer!

finished projects

We have been working on these projects for a little while, and they are now finished! Kyle built this shelf (a mock of one from Crate and Barrel that I really wanted) but it was free... already had the wood and paint, just a lot of work and it looks great.

My table runner is completed! RoseAnn helped me put the finishing touches on it yesterday. It looks great. I used the same fabric that I made the pillows out of on our couches.
Our next big project is the kitchen! As soon as that tax credit for the house comes back we are going to get started... can't wait to stop cooking in the 70's!

House updates and visitors!

So it has been quite a while and lot has happened since our last update. We have finished our renovations to the upstairs, above is our bedroom. We got pretty fancy with the paint in here- the back wall is a shade darker blue than the 3 other walls, kinda hard to tell in the picture but looks really cool! We are still going to paint all the trim but wanted to wait until the spring so we can open all the windows to paint them.

Here is the bathroom on the main floor, it was already done but I just made this curtain! It might be my favorite room in the house because it has the cute finishing touch.

This is the guest bedroom... still need to hang things on the walls, looks a little bare.

This is the long awaited craft room that was started over a month ago! Same color as the downstairs bathroom, it turned out great! Now I can't wait to start creating things.

We had visitors from the west coast! They traveled all the way from the end of 90 to the beginning out here! Although, fortunately they didn't have to drive the whole thing. Brandon and Amy came to visit and we had a great time seeing them and showing them around. We went to Boston for a day, Newport, RI and even had a lobster dinner at home!

Here we all are in Boston on the oldest street in the country! We also enjoyed a trolley tour throughout the town learning all the history of the city. It was tons of fun... thanks for coming!