A Little House in Minnesota

I've been a slow poke about blogging our Thanksgiving Adventures! Keeping up on our school schedule has been a greater challenge now that the President of our Apple Venture has decided he wants to Read, Write, and do Arithmetic! There really is very little in the way of extra time when the day is done! So, finally, here is our exciting Thanksgiving! Our Thanksgiving started with a little house in Minnesota.

When The Apple Farmer took the job offer from Nationwide, he needed to be located in his territory. We began our search for a little place that he could call home while we continued through apple harvest, etc. in Missouri. We found this sweet little house and made an offer. The monthly payments are far less than he would spend on rent someplace and still around 1/2 the average car payment. Tim is no longer covering this territory, and as of October, he is now working for Argo Select, the company he worked for when we lived in California. So it is now time to finish our fixer upper projects on this sweet little house and put it up for sale. We chose Thanksgiving time to load up the family and take a trip to Minnesota and finish a plumbing job that only had about 2 hours of work left on it!

Well, two hours turned into four days! We've done enough home rennovation projects to not be suprised. But among the fix it projects we had some fun!

We visited the German town of New Ulm.

Even though we drove through Sleepy Eye, we didn't make it to Walnut Grove. The boys were anxious to eat our feast which was a twist on tradition - Turkey Sandwiches, Chips, Soup, Fruit and pumpkin pie for dessert! As we drove through Sleepy Eye I couldn't resist taking this video for my nieces who love the Little House on the Prairie books as much as I did when I was their age! So I dedicate this clip to Chickie-nana-girl and my Gummy Bear!





After some more plumbing and eating and plumbing, we dug up into the attic of our little old house and pulled out these scrapbooks. The dates range from early to mid 1930's to 40's.

Most of these are scrapbooks of movie star clippings, but one was of a more personal nature. It was so amazing to go through it and read some of the letters and clippings that this Margaret had placed inside of this book for safekeeping! It really got me thinking about the kind of paper trail I'm leaving behind for my Great Great Great Grandchildren to discover! Something like what we have found up in the attic would be a lot more fun to go through instead of a stack of -emails? I don't even print those off!! Makes me reconsider the fine art of letter writing and snail mail!

We also found this paint book up there along with a Photoplay magazine

from the 1930's!




The fun continued as we plumbed some more, went bowling and then visited the local park!

This little town, I'm certain, was printed on the front of an old christmas card! The town square is lined with old, snow-covered homes. It is peaceful, and except for the sound of the occasional automobile slowly driving by, one enjoys the sound of Christmas Music which is played through the speakers along the square. Sounds too good to be true, but it is real!

We still have more to do to finish the bathroom rennovation. We need to paint walls too. I'm relieved that we won't be doing much more than those items before putting the house up for sale. I'm not afraid of the work...I was just beginning to feel kind of torn about removing the old green carpeting and replacing it with something modern. The carpet just added that much more appeal to the days-gone-by feeling that we enjoy when we are there!