Hubby-less

Part of the arrangement of moving to Arkansas ... was to have Kyle travel back to MN every 6 weeks for a week of work at the Polaris headquarters. Seems easy enough, right? Except it feels like he's gone all the time! Now, I can't complain because he is the one making the 10 hour drive when tickets are pricey and living out of cheap hotels, and all to support my career ... but boy do I miss him when he's gone.

...I just sit around the house with nothing to do ...

(here we are at outdoor movie night in Rogers ... Mama Mia!)

... I come home in the evenings with no one to have dinner with ...

(here we are at happy hour, with live music and a slow ride competition during my first bike night experience!)

... I try to stay busy with things around the house, but just keep thinking of him ...

(here we are shopping!)

... and the weekend days when he's on the road just drag on and on and on ...

(here we are grabbing lunch at a random diner before horseback riding in Eureka Springs!)

To my hubby ... I do miss you terribly when you are gone and cherish our time together! You know I can't wait to see you when you finally come home!!

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To my girls - Chaney, Melissa, Claudia, and Mia (Megan and Kaylie, not pictured) ... thank you for keeping me occupied when I am flying solo ... I cherish our time together too! :)

Couch Potatoes!

It only took 6 months ... but we FINALLY found the leather sectional we've been looking for! And, we didn't have to take out a second mortgage to buy it!



It fits perfectly in front of our ginormous flat screen that we haven't been able to use much given that we didn't have any seating downstairs. We are in heaven! LOTS of laying around these days. Just in time for football season, and now I can put that Blueray player to work!

We also found bar stools for the kitchen. The house is finally coming together! Slowly but surely.

Kyle is in MN next week, so I'll hang our new curtains, some wall decor by the new couch and hopefully find an end table and lamp. I finally ordered some wedding pictures (just in time for our one year anniversary!) and bought some nice frames so I'll hang those as well. All the finishing touches that will really make it feel like home! At this rate, we should have this place together just in time to move back to Minneapolis. :)

A Touch of Color

Super excited to buy a newer house ... literally built 102 years after our old one in Hopkins, no joke ... but we've come to notice that it looked a little sterile. Cream colored walls, cream colored carpet, white blinds ... lacked a little of that warm, homey feel. Solution?!?! A few coats of paint, of course!

As we know (or could have guessed) ... Kyle likes to do things on his own. I am blessed to have such a handy husband, who will read up and teach himself if he doesn't know how to do something. I, on the other hand, find it much more gratifying to write a check and have someone else do my dirty work. I mean, really. Leave the sterile house in the morning and come home to perfectly painted walls with all the right colors and no mess to clean up? Who wouldn't love that?

Naturally, the next step was to head to The Depot, choose some colors, bring home a few cans of paint and roll up our sleeves.

A good 10 days and lots of complaining later, we painfully completed 2 rooms in the house and agreed that painting sucks.

We will shortly move on to Plan B ... calling someone that our realtor recommended and pay him to take care of the rest.

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PS - Thank you to my husband for finally posting a blog this week! It's mentally draining to keep up this type of award winning writing on my own. :)

Tracie's Hummingbird Hostel

Tracie has been fascinated by Hummingbirds ever since she visited the Blue Hills Inn near Chetek with my family during one of her first trips to Wisconsin. The Blue Hills Inn is known locally not only for their great food but also for the hundreds if not thousands of Hummingbirds that they attract each summer with their countless feeders right outside of their dining room windows.

One of the first things that Tracie said when we moved into our new house in Arkansas was "ooh, I wonder if they have Hummingbirds down here"?" On one of our first trips to Lowe's I noticed that they had some Hummingbird feeders alongside their other bird feeders, so we decided to buy one and give it a shot.

For the first few weeks we did not have any visitors, but then slowly they started to appear. We would see one come and take a sip for lunch only occassionally, but then as Tracie likes to say - he started to tell his friends. The food in the feeder slowly began to be drawn down by their little sips, and they began to spend the night at Tracie's hostel. Of course this prompted Tracie to question: "I think we might need another Hummingbird feeder, what do you think?" I guess this wasn't as much a question as a statement, so the next day we added another feeder.

The birds now visit the feeders from sun-up to sun-down and we have seen many different varieties of the little birds. Tracie is so in love with the Hummingbirds that she even asked "Can you have a Hummingbird for a pet?" A few minutes and a google search later, she realized she'd have to settle for just having them be guests at her Hummingbird hostel.

The Petersen's Meet the Big Apple

We headed to the East Coast for a friend's wedding and seized the opportunity to hang out with our good friends, Mike and Dana, and visit the busiest city in the US! It was Kyle's first trip to NYC, and my first trip as a Petersen. (Tracie Mulhausen had been 3 times before!)


Believe it or not, Kyle actually enjoyed the city ... now I don't see my country bumpkin moving there anytime soon, but we had a great time seeing the sites and exploring off the beaten path restaurants and bars with our local guides.


Here are the four muskateers atop the Rockefeller Center with the Empire State Building in the back. Thanks, Mike and Dana, for such a great tour of the city!! Can't wait to do it again!


Kyle will attest to the fact that I LOVE my Today Show in the mornings. While I couldn't get my hubby to agree to getting out of bed by 5am to see the taping of the show, I did make him pose in front of Studio 1A and a picture of my favorite morning news duo. Kyle was very excited, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Here's a nice pic that Kyle took of Central Park from the Top of the Rock. I wanted to make sure he saw where he will be taking me on a romantic carriage ride on our next visit to New York. :)

And last, but certainly not least ... here are some photos from one of the most interesting wedding celebrations we have ever been to! We got to experience a Hindu and a Jewish ceremony for our friends Kethan and Lauren. We really enjoyed the fusion of traditions, foods and cultures and were able to perfect some Bollywood dance moves.



Here's what I get for not knowing how to use my camera ... not to mention that I didn't pack the charging cord so we just squeeked out a picture with the happy couple. Congrats, you two!