Mark Twain Riverboat

Melvin & Francis (Keith's dad & step-mom) came up from southern IL to visit us last week. Friday night we went on a dinner cruise in Hannibal, MO and had a very fun time and yummy food!

Amberley, Reed & the kids had lots of fun, too - and JT looked adorable in his tie. The women on the boat couldn't get enough of him!

At its worst, we hope...

Here's what we think is the kitchen at what we think is its worst point. There's a little more destruction yet to do, but not a whole lot. We've got the old cabinets out - we'll see if we can salvage them for the garage or somewhere. Karen tore down almost all of the drywall that's missing from the lathe!

Keith of course, being the man, gets to use the saw.

Last night we even discovered square nails and some funky wall paper!

We've got our house!

Hey there. After over a month of dealing with the seller's mortgage company, we finally closed on our house Friday, August 17th. It's just a couple blocks from where we live now, but at least twice as big. Who knows what we'll do with all of that space, but eventually we'll think of something. For the time being, we're going to block off the upstairs and not heat it this winter (except for our bedroom).

We've got some work ahead of us (as you can see from the photos...), but the big things are taken care of - new roof in '01, new super-efficient furnace in '01, new windows in the past couple years. Anyway, I hope this link will work - there are some pictures we took this weekend before we started doing any work. I took more, but I guess there's a storage limit on free accounts, so I'm going to save some room for more!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11787633@N02/

Our first project is obviously the kitchen. We're fixing that weird doorway situation and putting in new white cabinets, painting the walls Red Dahlia and I think dark brown countertops. We've already done some demolition, and hopefully we can get a new door in there soon (that back room is unheated).