Our Three State Honeymoon: The Surprise!

I might be the worst blogger ever right now.  In the last three parts of this honeymoon post, I've hinted at a surprise multiple times, and then I just left you all with nothing! I'm so sorry.  There aren't really any excuses...just life getting in the way!

But I'm back now, and I'm ready to share our exciting news with you.  And for those of you that might have been thinking baby...think again! I wish that was our news, but in our little one bedroom house right now, with a grad student's salary...it just isn't happening!!  A couple more years...

But our news does get us one more step closer to having that baby!  Remember how we were looking at land?? Well we're currently under contract for 40 acres of raw land 30 minutes south of Duluth.  We found the perfect lot while we were up there looking on our honeymoon.  We've already negotiated the price with the owners and we've gotten preapproved and done all of the financing.  Now the title agent is looking into everything to make sure there aren't any leans or easements on the land and that the previous owners actually own the title to the land.
Once all of that goes through, we'll close on the 30th of this month!!

Would you like to see some pictures?

 You come in 3 miles on a gravel road, which curves to the right and ends in a dead end with a lady and her farm at the end.  So if you picture the corner going to the right, our land would be in the nook of the corner.

This is looking out at the road before it curves; you can see our truck sitting out on the road.  On the left is an inset of trees, and the land goes on the other side of that as well.  From where we're standing, a driveway would come up along the tree line and then turn and head back down so there is a turn around.  Our future house will sit right where we're standing!

This is the same standing point, but turned around facing away from the road, so this would be our "backyard."

Here's the same standing point, but looking more towards the trees, or the side of the house.

And here we are, standing in what will eventually become our home!  I absolutely cannot wait =]

The added bonus?? See all of the trees along the side of the road?  On each side of the curve, our land backs up to 50,000 acres of state land.  All of which Josh and his brothers and dad can go hunting on.  Some of the land we were looking at was heavily wooded which would be great for hunting.  But with this land being so open, we won't have to worry about trees falling on our house and having to be constantly cleaning and maintaining falling and dead trees.  We have all of the same benefit with the state land, but we won't have to be responsible for any of it!

So that's our exciting news.  We're heading up there on Wednesday to show his parents while they're here visiting.  I'm going to try and take some better pictures then.  And then with any luck, we can close on time on the 30th!  I'll keep you all updated on the progress.  And eventually I'll show you all the floorplans that I've been drawing up.  We're still a couple years out from building, but it's exciting to get ready!


Be sure to check out the giveaway for one of my custom parasols on Happy Hour With a Housewife's blog!!

Our Three State Honeymoon: Minnesota

Okay, so you've seen Illinois, and you've seen Wisconsin, and now we're on to the unscheduled part of our trip.  Mr. T and I have been talking for some time now about buying land in Minnesota sometime in the future.  We know that this is ultimately where we're going to end up living for the rest of our lives.  We have big dreams for our future, and the first step would be finding land to start our lives on.  So we decided to drive up to Duluth, MN and get in touch with some realtors to look at land.

Why Duluth?  Well we both want out of the cities, and Duluth is the next biggest area.  We figured we would work backwards a little.  Buy land, and then find a job in that area.  That way we end up exactly where we want to be.  Duluth has multiple high schools, middle schools, and a couple colleges.  There are also quite a few surrounding towns with large high schools.  So with any luck, Mr. T will be able to find a job within a reasonable commuting distance.

So we checked out of our hotel in the Dells, and drove up to Lake Superior.

Mr. T has been up here before, but this was my first time, and I didn't expect there to be SO much water.  It looked like the ocean, where all you see is water and sky.

We had made reservations at a hotel right on the Lake.  And I do mean right on it.

This is the view from our hotel room window.  You could walk out the lobby doors and across a boardwalk and be on the "beach."

The back of Canal Park Lodge from on the beach.  If you're ever in the area, I highly suggest this hotel.  It was absolutely gorgeous, and the price wasn't bad at $116/night for a lake view.  Here are a couple of pictures of the room. (I remembered this time!)

View from the doorway.  The bathroom is to the right.

My hubby relaxing after the drive.

The cute little bar area.

The couch and desk past the bed.

A peak into the bathroom.

We got up early in the morning on Wednesday so we were at the hotel by 2 or so.  We put on our suits and headed down to the beach to put our toes in the water.  Unfortunately, it was freezing, and the beach really wasn't a beach so we couldn't lay out.  But we did take some pictures!

After that we decided to go inside and swim in the pool since it was much warmer.  On the way though, Mr. T thought it would be a great idea to jump into the lake and then run inside to the hot tub.  And I'm not kidding when I say the water was freezing!

How handsome is this man?!

We spent a little time in the pool and then got dressed up to go to a "fancy dinner" which apparently I didn't get any pictures of.  But we headed across the street to a nice Italian restaurant the hotel was featuring called Bellisio's.  I got a pricey glass of wine, that was delicious but that I couldn't justify having a second glass of.  We got escargot as an appetizer which neither of us had tried before, but it was actually really good! They cooked each one in a little shallow bowl in a butter garlic sauce with cheese on top and it was served with small pieces of bread.  Very delicious.  I got an amazing lobster cannelloni and Mr. T got some sort of fancy chicken.

We decided then and there that we would come back as often as we could on our anniversary and stay the night in the hotel, and come out for dinner at the restaurant.  I'm planning on holding him to it!

The next morning we got up and drove 1/2 an hour south and met up with two different realtors over the course of the day.  It was very informative to see what kind of land you could get for what kind of money.  We're looking at buying multiple acres, so it was also nice to see just how big 40 acres, or 60 acres really is.  All in all, it was a really great learning experience for us, and got us even more excited to start our future!

Here are just a couple of pictures of some of the land we saw.

We ordered in a delicious pizza that night and laid in bed watching Shrek.  Then we got up in the morning and continued on our journey.  We had to stop in Saint Paul quickly, and then we went back to Wisconsin for a weekend of camping.

Make sure you tune in tomorrow for the surprise I hinted at! It's pretty exciting =]

Our Three State Honeymoon: Wisconsin

When we left off, we were all packed up and ready to leave Illinois.

Want to know where we were headed?!  We decided to go up to Wisconsin Dells for a few days and then head over to our campground for Memorial Day weekend and camp with some family and friends.  We found a great deal online for The Polynesian Hotel where we could stay for $49.99/night for any size room since it was during the weekday and the off season.  (Their normal season didn't start until that weekend.)  We picked the queen size bed with a whirlpool tub.  We should have just picked the king size bed because we didn't even turn on the water in the tub.  And I was a really bad blogger, and forget to take pictures of this hotel as well.  It was actually really nice.  It had a separate little room when you first walked in with a couch and table and chairs and a TV and then it walked through a little hallway with the bathroom off to the side and into the bedroom with the whirpool, bed, dresser, and TV stand.  We even had a door that walked out to a patio set by the pool.

By the time we got there on Monday night all we were ready for was some dinner and then bed.  We ate at Famous Dave's, took a dip in the pool, and then headed to bed.
Tuesday morning we got up and wandered into town to find some breakfast and then we walked up and down the strip wandering in and out of some stores.  Now, I don't know if it's just me, but it seems WAY less cool than when I was there years ago.  I don't if it's because I was a little kid, or if it was because it was still the off season.  But there weren't any people, and a lot of the shops and attractions weren't open yet.  So we went back to the hotel to see if we could check out early.  They said since it was past check out time, that we would have to keep our room for the night.  So we decided to make the most of it. 

First we went and took a Jet Boat tour on the Upper Dells.  We got on a big boat with bench seats and took a tour of the river.  This boat was basically a large jetski and it could stop on a dime, and spin a complete circle in place.  It was a lot of fun, and a little wet!

Waiting in line to get our tickets.

Mr. T after the first spraying on the boat.

I don't remember what this was called, but it's the last place the sun hits when it's setting at the end of the day.  I guess they take sunset dinner cruises out to that spot.

Our pretty wedding bands!

Then we headed over to the other side of the Dells and took a Ducks Boat Tour.  This was the one thing that Mr. T really wanted to do, because he remembered doing it when he was younger.  I believe it was a 7 mile ride, that went through trails and into the river and back out again.  Our tour guide was pretty funny too, so that didn't hurt!

You'd think by now that I'd know how to take some relevant pictures, seeing as how I've been blogging for over a year.  Like maybe one of us with the Duck, or something like that.  We did have some nice pictures taken of us by the photographer at each place, but they wanted to sell it to us for like $30 bucks and that definitely wasn't happening!

Then we went back to our room and got all done up to go out to dinner.  We saw a sign outside a Mexican restaurant for 1/2 price margaritas on Tuesdays, so that was our plan.

We have to have at least one kissing picture right?! It's our honeymoon =]

Delicious margaritas...we got a pitcher!

We got guacamole as an appetizer, and they actually brought out all of the ingredients to the table and made it to your specifications.  We made the most delicious recipe, and we've been replicating it at home quite frequently.  We used avocados, tomatoes, minced garlic, lime juice, salt, and cilantro.  It was AMAZING!

After dinner we went back to the hotel and headed down to the pool for awhile.  We wanted to get in the hot tub, but had to deal with two kids making out like they were never going to see each other again.  They looked like they were maybe 15.  It was gross.  I told Mr. T we should just hop in there next to them and give them a taste of their own medicine.  Instead we just sat in the pool talking loud enough for them to hear about how gross it was.  They got up soon enough and left.

Then we went back to the room and plotted out our plans for our impromptu next stop.  Find out where we went tomorrow!

Our Three State Honeymoon: Illinois

I hope you're all ready to join me on our journey through our honeymoon week!  It's quite an adventure, and it has some surprising news at the end, so stay tuned!

We really didn't know where we wanted to go or how much money we wanted to spend, so we didn't have anything booked until after the wedding.  At first I was 100% about spending a bunch of money and going down south and out of the country and enjoying a week somewhere all-inclusive and just enjoying our newlywed bliss.  Mr. T wasn't having that.  Then as the year went on, he was starting to turn towards the idea, and I was slowly turning away after thinking about what we could do with the money instead.  Then we both didn't want to.  And right at the end, I really wanted to again!  So as you can see, it was a little bit of a mess.

At the end of the wedding night, we stayed in a nice hotel room near the reception hall and enjoyed our massive king sized suite.  Here's the only picture I have from the night.

My handsome husband!

The next morning we got up and had breakfast with his family that was staying in the hotel and then we headed over to pack up the reception hall.  Then it was out to my parents' house for a nice catered brunch with anyone that was still in town. (Unfortunately there aren't any pictures from here either.)  Our pool was open and a little chilly, but we sat around the edge with our toes in the water, and a few brave souls jumped in!  It was really hot that day.
So we ate and we enjoyed our families some more, and then we opened presents!!  We opened all the gifts, and then took the envelopes to open later at the hotel.  We decided to stay in town for one more night so we could get everything packed up in the morning and head out.  We got back and relaxed in bed and opened up all of the cards that were in the cardbox.  It probably took a good hour to get through them all and read what everyone wrote.  It wasn't until Sunday night that we decided where to stay, and even then, nothing was booked until Monday morning!

We got up Monday morning and Mr. T headed out to his parents' house to take care of stuff, and I went and got my hair cut!  Then we packed up the truck and made our way to our next destination.

Stay tuned to find out where state number two took us!