Lots of news to catch up on!

In case you haven't heard the news yet, we did make it safely to our destination. We drove straight through on Thursday from Missoula to Bismark, North Dakota. We figured what the heck as it was only another 120 miles or so. We didn't get there until close to 4 a.m. on Friday morning, though. The roads were bare and dry most of the way with speeds reaching an average of more than I care to admit to the general public. Not bad for a 6-ton truck with an auto transport on the back, though. We hit snow once we got to Fargo and it was slower going from Fargo northbound on I-29 to Grand Forks, North Dakota. There were close to 3-foot snow drifts along the roads where the snowplows had done their work in Grand Forks. We took a rural cutacross on County Road 3 (now named something else) to St. Hilaire, MN. The truck went into a skid just at the last intersection to turn North and head into Thief River Falls. I managed to stop the truck in time thanks to anti-lock brakes (go U-Haul)... That was about the only unsettling moment in driving the moving truck.

We pulled into Thief River Friday night last week around 5:15 or so and the nice lady at the bank stayed late especially for us to complete the mortgage loan paperwork. She handed us the keys to our house and we were walking into our house by about 6 p.m. that night. The house was more than we could have imagined with only the digital pictures we had seen from afar. The home inspection pretty much pointed out the major stuff we had already expected, but there was so much more space than anticipated and the condition of the house is pretty darn good for being built around 1905. The back yard we found to be much bigger as well. The picture we had was of only one corner of it and didn't do it justice. The fence all the way around comes to about 6 feet or just shy of it, so plenty of privacy and security. We arrived to the sight and sounds of many snowmobiles (mostly Artic Cat) going back and forth through the streets of our town. We obviously weren't in Washington anymore as snow covered everything in sight. The temperature wasn't bad at around 20 above zero.

It took us about 3 days to unload the truck as we took our time and enjoyed ourselves getting use to the town and local eateries, etc. Uncle/brother Andrew spent time in the back yard with the boys building a snow castle and palace and got the novelty of snow out of his system. Aaron made his first snow angel there last Saturday. Daniel was bundled up like the abominable snowman. Daniel had an unpleasant surprise when he went to the backyard and promptly fell waist deep in the snow back there. Quite the new experience for him to say the least.

Saturday morning I got a call from Bob, my godmother's significant other in Thief River, offering to go ice fishing with him sometime in North Red Lake or Lake of the Woods for walleye. Later that day, I got the U-Haul stuck in the alley behind the house, turning too tight into a snow bank with the right rear tires almost off the ground. We had a typical Minnesota sidebar with a few guys coming over and pretty much just standing around talking about the predicament and how best to get out of it. Six of us got behind the truck and eventually pushed it out. That was just a few minutes after I had pulled a native out of his driveway with our S-10 Blazer (he had an F-150, so go Chevy!). We got the truck unloaded by very early Monday morning so it could be returned. That morning, I found my next door neighbor across the street named Lacy had gotten her little sport coupe stuck in her driveway, bottomed out on snow. I tried pulling her out with the Blazer in 4-wheel drive, but it just spun tires. An older lady came out to help by spreading kitty litter under my tires and in the process found out who I was. She turned out to be the mother of a girl who had babysat me growing up here some 30 years or so ago. To make the world even smaller, we got a visit yesterday from another neighbor right across the street who happened to be my favorite PE teacher at Franklin Middle School here, Dale Folger.

Over the past week we've been unpacking, but also taking time to have fun and explore/re-explore our surroundings. Andrew and Lisa are getting a handle on what directions are North, South, East, West, etc. and where things stand in relation to each other. We've enjoyed shopping over here, finding only a 6.5% sales tax compared with Washington's 8.9% or higher. It's even tax-free to eat out over here... In those moments of enjoying ourselves, we paid a visit to a former classmate of mine who runs the Pennington County Humane Society here in Thief River and she had picked out a dog just for us named Duchess. She's a 4-year-old yellow lab who was given up due to an allergy in her previous family. She's a beautiful dog just the right size so Aaron enjoys being around her. His fear of dogs has almost been erased thanks to her. It's our first dog as a family and we think we got a pretty good one to start. We may add a purebred Yorkie to the mix later, but we'll have to see as we don't know how Duchess would act around another dog at home.

We took the grand tour of our kids' new elementary school, Challenger, this Tuesday, meeting old teachers of mine from elementary (5th grade with Tom Schaefer and Franklin Middle School with Ms. Knuttila). Many of the people were as nice as I had remembered and then some. The boys started school today with Aaron attending Mrs. Miller's 2nd grade class and Daniel in Mrs. Fulton's afternoon kindergarten class. This morning when dropping off Aaron at school, his teacher asked the class "who would like to show Aaron where his locker is to put his things" and almost the whole class raised their hands in unison and begged to be chosen for the honor. When I picked Aaron up after school, he had only three words for me to go with his customary broad smile: "I made friends!"

Aaron and Daniel will be taking the school bus tomorrow. I'll walk Aaron to his stop in the morning a block away on Knight Avenue and Daniel will be picked up right in front of our house. Tomorrow will be my first undivided day to allow me to focus on my work from home. It should be nice to start to get into the real swing of things here.

As for the neighbors, I've met quite a few already. The house on the end has four boys, at least two of which are Aaron and Daniel's age. Andrew and I were invited next door for a beer and chit chat with "Mike" who owns the "gingerbread" looking house next door. He works as a machinist for Artic Cat making snowmobiles and ATVs. Quite a freewheeling individual, he told us of the neighborhood barbecues they regularly have around here where they have a good 3 to 4 grills going at the same time with people throwing their own meat on if they want. Sounds like a good summer is on the way...

Sorry we weren't able to update our blog site for so long. Our house wasn't completely wired for cable internet access, so yesterday was pretty much our first day of access and I've been working since. We all miss you there in Washington, particularly those of you at Chase Lake in addition to family. We are having a great time on this "permanent vacation" as it were and look forward to reporting more good news in the near future to update you all.