Happy New Year!

My hot farmer and his lucky wife on Christmas morning

Hello Friends!

Just a quick update to show you a few pictures of what we are doing on the house!

The upstairs bathroom is in working order! After the few last tweaks, it will be the first complete room in the house! It is really fun to actually see a room put together. It makes me think we are really going to live in the house some day. :)

We had a fabulous Christmas with all of the Gerdes siblings.  We loved having Joy home for more than a weekend, Noah was able to make it home from Cuba where he was stationed with the Marines and we got to have both college twins home for more than two weeks!

Jonathan’s brothers were kind enough to lend us their muscles and expertise over the holidays to put in our garage doors with Jonathan and Will. The garage doors look AMAZING! – I’ll put a picture of the doors in my next blog. :)

In other news… Jonathan and I purchased our plane tickets for Thailand!! It’s official. We will be leaving January 30 for two and a half exciting months in South East Asia. We will be teaching English at the Santisuk English School in February and March, and coming home in April. We really can’t believe this is happening…. Farmers? In Asia? How odd. God sure does have a sense of humor.

Today my sister Rachel is coming down for the weekend for painting ‘madness’. There will be more pictures to follow when there is something to show for our efforts!

Thanks for reading friends!

Liz & Jonathan

Will and Jonathan getting ready to glue in the bathtub walls.

Bracing the bathtub to get the bathtub wall glue to stick.
I personally found this hilarious because it
looked like a little boy's failed attempt at building a fort.

Painting the bathroom with sister-in-law Katie.

My brother Joe helped Jonathan and Will put in the floor.
Joe's wife Katie and Grace supervised :)

Getting closer!!

Opposite side of the bathroom.

Painting primer with my long-time friend and now sister-in-law Katie!

Celebrating Christmas Eve, Cub's Birthday, and Noah's homecoming
with a tour of the farmhouse.
This constitutes are first official "Christmas" and "Birthday" party in the farmhouse. :)

Christmas morning after Church with (almost) the family!
Nathan and his family came a few days later :)

One of many games we played at our Youth Group Christmas Party.
This winning "santa" was created while blindfold.

Will just sold Grandpa Gerdes' Old  Farmall Super MTA to a relative who plans to restore it.
Will literally grew up on this thing.

Jonathan's brother Nathan and his wife Theresa visiting for Christmas!

The garage door crew minus Noah who left before I had a chance to snag a picture.

It may not look like much, but I am grinding the old nails off of the kitchen trim.
I am looking forward to painting the trim!!!

See? Bye Bye Nails

Scraping the kitchen trim with Jonathan's aunt Connie and Grandma Gerdes!