Wii hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

We definitely did. Despite the disappointment of having to postpone our Tuttle-family Christmas because of the blizzard in Iowa, we had so much fun!! The boys LOVED everything about Christmas, especially the parts about Santa and presents and cookies and treats for days on end and spending time with their aunties and uncles and cousins and G&G. Since then we've been busy playing Wii and Batman and putting on guitar concerts and watching their new movies and playing new games.

Santa found us at our new house!

Give me your best Christmas smiles.

Jingle bells, Batman smells...

And the beloved Wii!!



But this... this is the devil. That's all I have to say about that! ;-)

Merry Everything!

No matter what you celebrate - Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, Festivus - we wish you happiness and peace and a wonderful 2010!

Ya know - we really had a great year. The boys are at an age where they are just so much fun. I've posted before about what good sports they were all year while we worked on house stuff - real troopers! We did try to make sure to balance the work with lots of fun. I think if you asked the boys about the year their highlight would be their first "real" vacation - we took them to Mexico in February and I don't think anyone could have loved it more. From the moment we left for the airport until we arrived back home they were nothing but perfect and so, so happy!!

That trip was sandwiched between a bunch of large and small house projects aimed at getting our house on Iowa Ave. ready to sell. We put it on the market in May and within 2 weeks it was sold - we were incredibly fortunate to have good traffic through it and were able to sell it to someone who fell in love with it as soon as she walked in the door (just like we did a little over 10 years ago). The only problem was... we had nowhere to move to and no options either. So began our search for a new house. We saw house after house after house and they were either too far away from our ideal area or too big or too small or not in a good school district or just not quite right in some way or another. We did try to put in offers on a couple of houses only to find out they were already sold. I gotta tell ya - our experience definitely did not reflect the housing market problems others are seeing in our area & around the country.

In the end we decided (after much deliberation) to design a house and build on a nice lot in a lovely neighborhood with a great new park less than a block away. Luck would have it that our realtors work with a great custom builder so the pieces fell into place for us. Making this decision was great but it didn't really help with the fact that we still had nowhere to live. So, we moved into an apartment from July to October while the house was being built. As much as I complained about the e-partment (as Eli called it), it worked out just fine as a short term solution. It had a great pool that we swam the heck out of. We had the boys out there almost every.single.day this summer and they loved it! They went from being slightly scared of the water and having to be held while "swimming" to Henry knowing how to swim all on his own and Eli being completely comfortable paddling around with his water wings. However once the pool closed after Labor Day, everyone really started getting tired of the e-partment. But, it was all worth it.

The house building process for us was so many different things - fun, exciting, stressful, scary, boring (if you ask the boys) - but in the end it was a great experience and we feel so lucky to have this wonderful new house that was built with such care. We loved our builder (Jason of Bald Eagle Builders) and our site supervisor (the awesome Josh) and all of the people who were in and out of our house doing their part. We absolutely love our new home!!

The boys are funny because they are constantly saying stuff like "this is the first time we've done xxx in our new house" and it's not exciting stuff like Santa coming or anything. It's like "this is the first time I've watched you brush you teeth while you are in your pajamas in our new house, mommy." I think they are really enjoying living here. They love their rooms (pirates for Eli and sports for Henry) and their clubhouse (a closet between their rooms w/ a secret door so they can "sneak" in) and just being able to run around and play and yell again. We have been meeting the neighbors and it turns out that there are quite a few new families so I think it's going to be so fun for them to have kids around to play with.

It really feels like this is going to be a wonderful neighborhood for them to grow up in and for Troy and I to make lots of new friends as well. We've been welcomed with cookies and plants and invitations to parties and "Bunco." Everyone is so friendly and attentive to one another. In Minnesota it can be tough to meet people in the winter so it's not ideal to move at the end of October but for us that hasn't so much mattered - we really have had a wonderful experience. However, we are looking forward to next spring and summer when everyone (including us) comes out of hibernation and spends time outside again.

2009 brought a lot of changes for our family but we wouldn't want it any other way. We're happy and healthy. We have good jobs and great families. Fun times were had with old friends and new. It was a good year!

Happy Holiday. We wish you & yours all the best in 2010!

Love, The Schallys

Black Friday's got nothing on this place

I've been stalking the Room & Board Outlet store each weekend. This place is crazy. Week in and week out hordes of people line up well before the doors open to get first dibs on the week's scratch & dent furniture. Sure, it starts out all friendly - chatting with the folks next to you, drinking some coffee, making smiley faces at their kids. But then it's 10am and the doors open. You'd think they were giving away gold. Seriously there's running and pushing, cutting in line, hollering, dirty looks. And then you finally get inside and you know it's all been worth it. Sofas and couches, chairs and ottomans, pillows and rugs, tables and desks, beds and dressers - everything that Room & Board has but cheaper! And sometimes a really lot cheaper!! It's worth the fear of being trampled. And it's so exciting when you walk in and see the perfect piece, run to it, check to see if there's something terribly wrong with it, find that there's not and you sit down. You just sit there looking all smug because you've snagged this beautiful Jasper sofa with custom fabric that will be just perfect in your sunroom knowing that all the other people who are looking at it want it even more because you want it. But ha! You're already sitting on it. And guess what? You just pay for it and take it home - right then! You don't have to wait - I love that because I'm impatient that way.

I haven't posted any pictures since we moved in really. Here are some of the rooms where we've made a dent in the furnishings. There's still work to be done but I'm feeling more relaxed about it now that we have a vision and start.

Our front entry with a very pretty rug I found at Crate & Barrel. I loved it so much I bought a matching one (only bigger) for the sunroom.

The sunroom - with the lovely matching rug and new sofa. Troy's not sure about all the throw pillows but I think they look nice - add a bit of color to things.

New TV and tables - love how they turned out (this is kind of a crappy picture though). The dark wood against the lighter floors. And the lamp is super cool b/c it's a touch one. I won't even tell you how long we had it before we figured that out - it's embarrassing.

Family room sofa, side table and lamps. We are thinking of getting an ottoman for this area too - make is a little more comfy and cozy. Plus an area rug, of course.

Living room (I think that's what it's called)... I had to call 3 different people from the outlet one Sunday b/c I wasn't sure if a red sofa would "go." I'm so glad I bought it plus this funky chair b/c they look really great in there. Plus my JC Penney lamp - the jury's still out on where this lamp should actually live. We shall see.

And as you can see, we haven't really done any actual decorating - as in, putting pictures up, etc. It's not one of my best skills. But... we'll get there. Slowly but surely.