BIG NEWS!!!!

HOLY COW it has been a really long time since our last blog update and so much has happened. I will try give you the short version. The end of September Brian and I moved back to Grand Forks, ND and just before Christmas we found out that I am PREGNANT!! YEAH we are super excited! I am due August 26th!! About 4 weeks ago we bought a house in Grand Forks and we are starting another remodel project in hopes to move in some time in May before the baby arrives. Here are some pictures to document these new big strides in our life. ENJOY!!! I am going to try to be good about documenting my belly so stay tuned for the growing of little baby Bergner.

I am 12 weeks along in this picture. Not much to see yet. I started feeling the baby move at 13 weeks which I hear is really early. Yikes I hope I don't have a huge baby :)

I am 15 weeks in this picture

Well we are heavy into the demo of our remodel, well I guess I shouldn't say we as I am not allowed in the house during construction. We are tearing out our kitchen, new flooring, paint, doors and trim and of course Brian is doing about 90% of the work so he has his work cut out for him, but I think he likes it that way.

This is currently the state of our kitchen and dining room, Yikes we have alot of work to do :) Along with a baby pool we should start a house pool and see who thinks we will have it all done before the baby gets here. HAHA! Well lets hope we do :)

Brian and I had a nice Valentines Day together, he made me a new Thai dish and bought me roses!!!

And I made him his own chocolate cake!!

And of course bought him a few little gifts from me and the baby since he had been so good to me making me breakfast in bed every morning for about 6 weeks as I was so sick with morning sickness I couldn't even get out of bed without eating something.

Oh and we are not going to find out the gender of the baby so I bought one of each :)

Voilà!

Well, we met our goal of finishing our remodel before my parents came to visit at the end of April! We're still waiting on some trim and new interior doors, but everything is functional. We got new carpet in a few weeks ago so our house now actually feels like a home, not just a construction site! Everything turned out great, we're really happy with everything. We started the whole project last October so we're happy to be mostly done and enjoy our new space. We will soon have all of our pictures from the remodel, start to finish, on our picture website which is linked at the top right of this page.

We had a great time with my parents for a week at the end of April. Unfortunately the weather wasn't very cooperative, but it didn't rain much, just cloudy, so we can't complain too much. We had a great time down at Pike Place Market, we took a trip to Snoqualmie Falls for a GREAT breakfast, had some fun at home grilling out and they were able to see a lot of their old friends. It was a lot of fun having them out to visit! We have a few more pictures of their visit on our picture website as well.

Catching Up

Whoa time has flown by. I've been meaning to get a new post up for the last couple months now but never seemed to find the time. We went to Burnsville for Christmas this year and had a lot of fun. Katie and Renee and their families were all home, it was great to see everyone! We were also able to spent a few days in Grand Forks with Katie's family. Not too long after we got back Katie and I had our 1 year wedding anniversary. We're going to be doing a lot of traveling this year, so we decided to stay close to home. We spend the afternoon and night in a nice hotel downtown and went out for a nice dinner. It was great to get away from working on the house for a bit and truly relax! We lucked out with the weather and the sun graced us with its presence for the afternoon. The house is coming along great. We have begun remodeling the master bathroom and closet. We pretty much gutted it completely, took out the inside walls and re-framed a new wall and a new doorway. We put a schedule together to make sure we kept track of everything and so far we're two weeks ahead of schedule! We hope to be done by mid-April. Here are some pictures from the last couple months.

Mt. Rainier from our hotel room

A view of the sound, again from the hotel room. The sun was so nice!

Ripping apart the bathroom

Here's the new door to the bathroom. Katie and I had a fun evening putting together the new closet wall

Finished pocket door

New bathroom all framed in. The sinks will be on the left just this side of the small wall. The shower is just beyond the small wall, and the toilet will be in the far right corner.

Thanksgiving at the Ranch

Last weekend Katie and I flew out to North Dakota for Thanksgiving. Her family has a ranch in central ND, so we stayed there for the weekend. It was a lot of fun to see everyone and get some R&R. I also got to go hunting for the first time. We warmed up first shooting some trap. So I figured I probably wouldn't do that well, but Katie would keep me company because she hasn't really shot much...she hit the first three in a row. In the end we all did pretty well though. We didn't have much luck with the real birds, however. We only saw a dozen or so over the two days of hunting, so we didn't have many opportunities either. It was still a lot of fun, and we had great weather for it.

And what would a Thanksgiving be without a hicup or two? The night before Thanksgiving the, oven decided it had had enough and wasn't going to work anymore! Luckily a very sweet lady in the nearest town offered us her electric roaster, so we were able to have turkey! She also decided that wasn't quite enough, so she baked us a few homemade pies, homemade rolls, and a homemade pizza for lunch the next day! You just don't find that kind of hospitality everyday, we were very thankful for all her help!

The last day, Nick, Randy and I got to working on an entry for the ranch. I'm still a bit baffled that we actually built the thing, it's huge! But a little planning, elbow grease, and heavy machinery can go a long way!

Rylan and Mackenzie were as cute as ever and are getting more and more fun as they get older. Mackenzie is walking all over the place now, and Rylan will carry on a conversation with you until you're blue in the face! We had a great time with everyone, and we can't wait to come back for Christmas in a few weeks!

Katie just before she blew the clay out of the sky

We didn't get any birds, but at least we looked good!

Rigging one of the posts for the new entrance. Heavy machinery is so cool!

The finished product

Oh something else I fogot to mention...Katie almost got thrown off a horse! He reared up, but Katie held on like a pro!

We had some awesome sun rises/sets

This is the original homestead on the ranch. It's pretty crazy to see something like this and realize somebody used to live here hundreds of years ago...and built it with their hands!

DONE (well, kinda)

Hello everyone, we are finally finshed with the outside part of the addition. Brian put the final coat of white trim paint on today!!

Soon we are getting new windows for the other bay wondow on the right and we will match the trim. It is really coming along!!!

The drywall guys were here today and sanded down all the mud so we are finally ready for our final inspection. This is our closet which we doubled in size and I am super excited about it.

Here is the inside of our room, this gives you kind of an idea how much room we really added on. The aqua wall is where the front wall used to stop.

That is all we have for now but we will keep you updated!!

Progress

Well we've been making some good progress on the house. We got the roof on and the windows in a week and a half ago. The siding is almost done, and we're hoping for a few days of dry weather this week so we can get it painted. I got all the electrical done and signed off, and we have light in the room again, which is great! Over the weekend, my friend Nate and I got the insulation in. I had never done much insulation before, and I now understand the motivation of the guy who invented the spray-in insulation. It took the full weekend to get it all done. But we're now ready for sheetrock, which should go on mid-week.

On a non-house note, Katie had her wisdom teeth removed on Friday, so it's been a veg weekend for her as she recovers. Her cheeks are a little swollen, but she's not in too much pain thanks to the pain-killers.

After a long weekend, our addition is now energy efficient!

The cedar siding looks nice, it's a shame we have to pain it! It sure made the garage smell good.

Quick Update...

Here's just a quick update before bed. The new walls are up and the bay window is framed in. We're praying for dry weather tomorrow, but it's not looking good! Thursday through Saturday looks okay though, so hopefully we'll have a roof by the end of the weekend. The new bedroom is taking shape, and is going to be a very nice size. Overall things are going well. It's crazy to see it all coming together!

Before...

After!

This picture doesn't really show how big the room is, but you can see where the old wall stops, anyway.

So here's the completed shower. This is main bath outside of the bedrooms.

In case you don't remember from previous posts, this is what the shower started out as.

Time for bed, hopefully I'll get pictures of a roof posted this weekend!