House remodeling US style

We've now signed on the dotted line to get our kitchen and two unfinished rooms downstairs remodeled (which is the US term for 'done'). We got two great (so far) contractors who will manage the whole project for us which started when we went to Mexico and will go on until the middle of July with paused while Martin and Margaret and then Denise and Bill visit.

The idea is to make the massive kitchen space a lot more usable, despite its size it not brilliantly laid out and its awkward if more than one of you is working in the kitchen at once. Also we want to make use of two of the basement rooms, one of which has no windows and is just dead space.

Here is what we have at the moment.

Kitchen

More kitchen

Empty room

Basement

Basement again

Guest basement room

Rather than wax on about the work, we've created a separate blog to go into all the gory details which you can find here.

Buenos Dias from Mexico

Most Minnesotans get away in Jan or Feb in order to stay sane through the long winter. We're not so experienced to it took us until March to realise that humans need to photosynthesize as well. So we got a cheap deal to an all-inclusive (which is the key when you have young kids) hotel in Puerta Vallarta in SW Mexico and headed into the sun.


What is Mexico like? No idea, apart from the language and Tequila we could be in any hotel, we ventured out the once to go on a planned excursion but really we have no idea about Mexico.

What did we do in Mexico? The easy answer is pretty much the same every day.

1. Get up late
2. Go to breakfast, ate a fried breakfast, cereal and fruit (probably a bit too much)
3. Back to the room to get suncream on
4. To the pool for 2-3 hours
5. Late lunch at the hotel's beach restaurant (probably a bit too much)
6. Siesta for a couple of hours back in the room
7. Suncream on again
8. Down to the beach, fight the waves or play with bucket and spade
9. Back to the room for a shower
10. Down for dinner (far too much)
11. Out to the watch the entertainment, which was actually half decent
12. Bed

Rinse and repeat for seven days or until relaxed.

Highlights were that Dan learned to swim from being in the pool so much, the food which was excellent, plus the whole chance to really relax. Plus we also saw the colour green a lot which we'd been missing.

Here are some photos, not too many but enough to give you the idea.

From the balcony of our room

View on the way to breakfastOn the boat to Calinas island (our one day trip)On the island

Larry and Dan go Kayaking

Entertainment at the hotel

Spot the DanAt the hotel beach at sunset

At the hotel beach front restaurant

Becky with a Banana Mama, her tipple of choice

In one of the hotel restaurants

We went to the beach one evening and Dan wanted to chase the waves.; so we said, 'so long as you don't get wet'. This is the equivalent to saying to a bull in a china shop 'don't break anything'. It didn't take long for the inevitable to happen - several times over.

Whether the weather be good...

We had some proper sunshine for the first time this year so we were all out in our summer gear as the temperature climbed to a scorching 9C. On Saturday (5th April) we went to a birthday party for one of Dan's friends from church.
Just beforehand I went to the park with the kids, Andy was at a chocolate course perfecting her truffle technique. If you want to find out how good they're getting you'll have to head out to Minnesota, it would probably be worth it!

As you can see the snow is still hanging in there.


Sunday, and in fact all this week has been most British in its weather, it rained a fair bit
Which pleased this particular person no end.

And the kids enjoyed being able to go outside without having to put 30 layers on.
So on Sunday (6th) we went to look around Minneapolis city center. It is less picturesque than St Paul , although I'm sure the rain didn't help.
Saturday 12th April: Off to St Cloud. We headed off early in the morning to choose the granite for our kitchen worktops. Work begins on Monday on the house and we have a huge list of things to do before we go. As you can see the weather has taken a turn for the worse again since last weekend. At St Cloud the lakes are still completely frozen over and have snow on them.
Dan doesn't care about the weather as long as there is a pile of snow to climb.
Here is the granite shop near St Cloud, deserted apart from a rather chilly looking woman, why is she standing outside just freezing like that, she should go inside.
Behind the chilly woman is a whole load of granite, we ended up going for a granite that comes exclusively from Minnesota which is obviously very eco friendly of us :-)

Summer arrives

Finally we get some good weather, the lakes have thawed out andthings are looking upEven Dan who loves the snow is pleased to see the green and not have to dress up warm to go out anywhere. The summer comes so quickly its almost as if Spring get's missed out altogether.

Andy is really pleased to see the summer, she doesn't like the winter as much as the rest of us. She hopes it goes away for a
very

very

very

very

very

very

very

very

very

very

very

very long time.

We now have to wakr Becky up as she has been hibernating a lot of the winter. Here she is asleep on the kitchen floor.


When she does wake up though she will have dreamed the good weather, after all it is April Fool's day. I took some pictures this morning of our driveway and the road outside, this is what it really looks like.



The car was parked after most of the snow had fallen.


Ah well, maybe it will thaw in May.