Time for an accent wall...

After a few weeks of hemming and hawing over Liam's newly painted room, I decided to paint an accent wall. I made the final decision after the neighbor ladies wanted a tour of the house (we all visited the other neighbors' houses!) and while in Liam's newly light gray painted room, the comments came back as "well, at least it looks fresh and clean!" So I decided we needed a bolder wall and so I chose a darker shade of gray. I also changed the placement of his bed to a better location given that there was now an accent wall in the room. Voila! (to put the colors into into perspective...the ceiling is pure white, the left wall is light gray like the other 2 walls not pictured and the back accent wall is dark gray)

St. Mary's Class Reunion

For the first time since we left back in 1986, we had a St. Mary's class reunion on Saturday eve. It was Lam's idea and then I did research to find everyone (28 grads and some that joined us through 6th grade only) and then we relayed the info on to them (back in the spring). Kelli offered her lake house for the gathering (north of Faribault). Some classmates never responded at all and others had conflicting plans, but we managed to get 13 together for the gathering. One came from NY and another from TX and then 3 from Owatonna, 2 from north of Faribault and the other 6 of us are in the Cities. Here are some photos...


The entire 13 that came.


Dan Matejcek & Lam Nguyen



Dan Matejcek, Dave (Katie's husband), Andrea Lehrer Lembke, Katie Walerius Stenzel & myself on a pontoon ride.



Beth Regan Berry, me, Andrea Lehrer Lembke & Emily Thurnau Wannarka



Emily Thurnau Wannarka & Angie Barry Faith



The hostess, Kelli Wencl.



Craig and Randy Adams catch up after all these years.


Katie Walerius Stenzel, Phuong Stephanie Do Nesbitt & Andrea Lehrer Lembke

French party

Friday evening we had a party of 19 people to welcome Francoise and her husband and daughter to Minnesota. She is the French woman with which I set up the French III pen pal project with 9 years ago and we have continued ever since (with Cristina, my colleague continuing in my absence). Cristina and family hosted the Leluc family for the weekend, but we felt compelled to have a party for them. It was fun to hang out, speak a little French and enjoy the weather telling stories about life in Minnesota. You can see Francoise in the center of the photo with Cristina on her other side.

B.H.H.S. 20th Class Reunion

We ventured to Central Minnesota for the weekend for Ray's 20th. Ray organized the class reunion from the Cities and did a great job getting everything taken care of. 18 of the classmates made it to the reunion although Ray did see a few others at a bonfire the night prior (there were 42 back then of which 4 were foreign exchange students and then 3 are "missing" and so of the 35 accounted for 18 came). We stayed with Ray's sister Christine for the night and went to the Bertha parade in the morning which was fun. The boys met a lot of other boys at the reunion and especially enjoyed having a water balloon fight outside the Hewitt Community Center.

BEFORE and AFTER patio pix...

Hooray -- Aaron finished our new patio yesterday! After the first rainfall, he will come back and put more sand in between the pavers since it will settle quite a bit, but we will enjoy it until then. I'm not quite sure that this will be the furniture that we will use on there either -- I'm still looking at other possibilities. But you get the effect. It's really beautiful! And since Ray had to cut the landscaping back quite a bit in order to give space for Aaron to work, it doesn't look as "full" in the new pictures, but it will grow back! And Ray will have to put some grass seed along where the patio meets the grass as there is still some dirt along the perimeter. What do you think?

BEFORE...



AFTER...