Webarnold.net

We’ve just had our offer on this lovely, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom ranch-style house accepted! We couldn’t be more excited!

It’s really a long tale, and we’ll love to tell it all at some point, but just the high-level view for now. We’ve been doing the open house circuit on Sundays this summer, and hadn’t really found anything that we loved that was in our price range. Plus, we wanted to wait for Kirsten to finish the bar exam before really diving into a house hunt. It wasn’t until the beginning of August we started actually taking steps to be proactive.

We found a realtor (more to come on this process later), and saw about eight houses with him last Friday (8/29). We really liked one, and it was in our price range. We immediately scheduled another visit that Sunday, when my parents were going to be visiting from Illinois. We took them through the house, and they liked it too.

Then, we made an offer on Tuesday, the builders (it’s a brand new construction) counter offered, we counter-offered back, and they accepted! We have our financing in place through our bank and we’re all set. We really can’t believe that we’ve come this far and actually will be in the house in mid-October.

More to come on the whole process soon, as well as some life updates, but as it stands now, I’m packing up from work to head home soon!

Tags:   Family · House · House Hunt 20083 Comments

Last night I updated Webarnold’s version of WordPress from 2.3.3 to 2.6. It was a drastic change. Mostly, my own laziness has prevented me from upgrading sooner. The upgrade went smoothly, however, with only one moment where I briefly panicked upon seeing a database error. I quickly realized I had entered the wrong password in my new config file.

So, we are now proudly running WordPress 2.6. My next tasks will be converting to using tags for posting instead of categories, and also designing a theme or settling on a new theme for the site.

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I’ve updated the version of the Cutline theme that Webarnold uses. I’m getting ready to do some major renovations to the site over the next month or so. With Kirsten posting now as she has time, the focus of this blog is going to be changing. I haven’t really figured out exactly how it will be changing, I just know it will be.

So…please have patience over the next month as I work on the site and tweak various aspects of it. Both Kirsten and I will continue to post updates as often as we can.

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This is Kirsten writing again, which means … I survived!!  First off, thank you thank you THANK YOU to everyone who was praying for me and thinking of me during the bar exam.  During one of my sad, stressful, frustrated episodes while we were in Des Moines, I made a physical list of all of the people who were praying for me.  It was quite a long list, and it was really encouraging!!  So thank you.  I’m not sure what I can do other than just say “thanks” and promise to reciprocate if any of you ever need the same! If you have a minute, say a prayer, too, that I stay sane during the next 6 weeks (until September 12) while I wait to find out whether I passed!!

Ben and I went with my family to Minneapolis this past weekend for a little getaway after the bar exam.  We had a blast!  Amy, Ben, Mom, and I went up on Friday morning, and Andrew and Brooke (my brother and sister-in-law) came up in the afternoon after they finished with work.  Amy, Ben, Mom, and I went to Potbelly for lunch when we got there aroun 12:30 or 1:00 on  Friday.  We then drove around to some of the places we frequented when I worked in Minneapolis last summer.  Then, we went to IKEA after checking into our hotel.  That took forever and exhausted us, so we went back to our hotel to chill until Andrew and Brooke arrived and the fun could begin!!  Once A&B got there, we ate at TGI Friday’s and then went to the Minnesota Science Center to see the Star Wars exhibit and learn about special effects in the movies on the IMAX screen.

 On Saturday, we went to the Mall of America.  It rocked.  I got a lot of new clothes for work from Banana Republic, J. Crew, Ann Taylor, and other fine establishments, so I will (hopefully) look something like a lawyer come Monday morning!  We ate at Buca di Beppo for dinner with my friend, Christina, and my aunt and her family, which was a blast.

 Sunday morning, we did church together as a family and then went out for lunch at one of Ben’s and my favorites: Brit’s Pub downtown Minneapolis, on Nicollet Mall.  It was too chilly for lawn bowling on the roof, but we made due with a few delicious beers and Sir Winston’s cheese toasty with tomato soup.  We went to the Twins game after that–Amy got us tickets for $1 each, since she’s a certified nurse aid and it was “first responders’ day” at the Metrodome!  The game was fun, the Twins won, and we headed out for a quick bite to eat before coming home.

 Sounds like a busy weekend, doesn’t it?  “What did you do today, then, Kirsten, to follow up from such a wild weekend?”  Well, I’m glad you asked.  I had a to-do list, of course, but I also did a little relaxin. :)  I’ve started reading a book (for fun) called Three Cups of Tea, which I will review on here once I’m finished with it.  This Wednesday, I will be spending an entire day at Jiva, the Aveda spa in Cedar Falls.  Other than that, I will sleep in, have coffee with friends, and play with the puppy, all while basking in the post-bar glow.

 Suffice it to say: it feels goooood to be done.

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Well, today is the final day of the bar exam.  We woke up to find our hotel bill slipped under our door.  I’m happy to report that it is less than both Kirsten and I were thinking it might be.  Even with room service!  I have already carried down several bags to the car and moved it from street parking (they start ticketing/towing at 7am) to the ramp.  That will be nice so that we can just get in the car and go by the time Kirsten is done at 4:30ish today.

We’re very excited that she’ll be done today.  Today’s bar exam festivities include the multi-state multiple choice questions, one hundred in the morning and one hundred in the afternoon.  She’s been scoring pretty well on the practice exams for these, so we have our fingers crossed.

Please continue to pray for Kirsten that she’d have a smooth final day of testing.

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Today marks day four of this epic event in Kirsten’s and my life.

We woke up the same time that we did yesterday.  I went down immediately to move our car off of the street into the ramp parking, and our room service breakfast was delivered.  Today was supposed to be less scary than yesterday.  We knew what the essay topics for today were supposed to be because we knew what topics were yesterday and we knew which ones were left, or so we thought.

I waited for Kirsten in the same spot as I had been.  Sure enough, her head popped up above the escalator right at about 11:40am, ten minutes after the morning session was done.  She calmly explained to me that apparently, she had mistaken one of the question’s subjects yesterday.  Today, instead of getting what she was expecting, she got something else.  For example, yesterday’s question she thought had been about Torts, and thus today was expecting Civil Procedure, but it was vice versa.  So it wasn’t a problem, her answer yesterday still was correct (or so she was hoping), but it meant that she had studied all the wrong law last night.  *sigh*

Overall, she was still encouraged by her performance that morning.  The phrase she keeps using is “tentatively optimistic.”  We came back to our hotel room and had lunch - our left overs from Cheesecake Factory, yum!  She looked over her stuff for the afternoon’s session some, relaxed some, and then we headed back over.  The session this afternoon was an easier time, where the test taker is required to look over a set of facts and law that is provided to you, and then write a legal memo or letter.  Basically, to show that you do know aspects of legal writing.  In practice exams, Kirsten had no trouble with this portion.

After dropping her off, I went back to our hotel room and read Wolves of the Calla for a little while.  At three o’clock, I met my friend Sean again for a quick drink.  He dropped me off at the convention center at about 4:30 and I met Kirsten again about 4:45pm.  She was exhausted, her hand especially was tired after writing all day, but she felt good that she was 2/3 done with  the bar exam over all.  We ran out to Granite City in Clive, IA to grab a quick bite to eat that included their buffalo wings, perhaps my all time favorites.

Now Kirsten is studying for the multi-state, multiple choice portion of the test.  We’ll pack some bags tomorrow and I’ll load the car up in the morning.  We have to be checked out by noon, so I’ll have everything in the car and the car in the ramp by then for sure.  I’ll pick Kirsten up from her last session and we’ll head on home for Cedar Falls!

Almost there!  Keep on praying for her!  We really appreciate all the support we’ve been getting!

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