All Work and No Play!

Painter Boy John

John & Kristi's Nephew, Avery...they look like they are up to something!

This is the Lewis & Clark statue

which normally sits NEXT to the Mississippi River!

Kristi adds a personal message to John

before he starts painting the stairs!

Holy Week was Kristi's spring break. Some people go to Florida or someplace warm and sunny for their spring break. John went to Missouri where it was cold, rainy, and as you saw on the news...very wet with all the flooding! Kristi lives in Valley Park, about a mile up from where some of the major flooding took place. Thankfully, her house is high up on a hill...so she was not impacted by the flooding, other than having to re-route some of the driving during the week.

We spent the week preparing Kristi's house to sell. John helped Kristi paint her sunroom, family room, master bedroom, front entry (including the stairway) and the ickiest job...the musty, leaky basement! John wins extra points for that dirty job! We should have taken before and after pictures of that...because the change was quite dramatic!

In addition to all of the painting, we cleaned out the basement, storage room, and more! They were thankful for the help of Kristi's mom who has been helping her with packing, friends Kathy and Greg, who brought a delicious dinner Tuesday night, and then stayed to help us paint, and Kristi's Uncle Bill who knows how to fix just about anything...and came over on Friday to help with things like replacing broken window panes, replacing a wall destroyed during last year's termite battle, and more. The place is looking great! There's still a bit more to do...but it is getting close, and might actually be ready for the April 1st listing date!

We also rented a U-Haul trailer so John could take some of Kristi's things to North Dakota. Thanks to John's dad for the use of his pickup truck!!!

We did get out of the house...we spent Monday and Thursday meeting with Pastor Ryan Peterson, who will be marrying us, our DJ, reception coordinator, photographer, Kristi's step-dad, Pastor Doug Nicely, who did our pre-marital counseling and we stopped off at the church so John could see where we will be married. We also fit in a lunch with Kristi's Grandma Milkert, dinner Thursday night with Kristi's mom and step-dad and bonus guest, Kristi's 4 year old nephew, Avery, who was visiting his "Granny and Papa Doug".

Unfortunately, because Kristi was such a "slave driver", we didn't get to do any antique shopping or even go back to Target or the mall to add to our wedding registry. We worked most nights until about 1 a.m., took showers, had a snack...and hit the sack around 2 a.m. John doesn't mind working late too much, but he wasn't used to having to get up so early! There was just so much to do...but we both feel good about how much was accomplished! We did take time out the night before Easter to go out to dinner and rent some movies...although, Kristi pretty much passed out about 10 minutes into the movie, despite the fact that she was sitting up on the couch and drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper!! In her defense, though, the movie was not started until after 1o p.m...which is her usual bed-time!!!

John drove back to North Dakota with the U-Haul on Monday, March 24th...and arrived home around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, March 25th...Kristi didn't sleep much during that night since she was calling John to make sure he was still awake!!!

All in all...despite the rainy weather, floods in St. Louis and hard work, we enjoyed our time together...even if we weren't always working in the same room, it was nice to know we were in the same house together. Now that John has brushed up on his painiting technique...he's ready to finish painting our new house in Mandan!!!