Oh how time has passed! It is June already! Just celebrated my Dad's birthday this evening and two weeks ago we celebrated my Golden Birthday (I turned 24 on the 24th).  Then two days after we celebrated with all of our family and friends we left for Northern Minnesota to visit Chris' grandparents for the week. We left Sunday morning at 6:00am and made it all the way to St. Paul. We then traveled on the next day to arrive that afternoon.  We stayed with them till Friday at which point we started our way back home by way of the Mall of America and Some State capitol buildings.  We saw Minnesota's, Iowa's and Nebraska's So I have not seen 8 State capitol buildings up-close and personal.  (Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas? Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and I'm probably forgetting one.) One thing on my bucket list is to see all 50, but I think I would settle for 48 if I had to.
The Mall of America was everything that anyone has ever said it was and more.  I was overwhelmed by the massiveness!!! That's pretty much all I have to say about it too. I really can't even begin to describe it. More shopping that any woman could do in one day. Plus and amusement park. AWESOME! I had a great time and am definitely looking forward to the next time we get to go. I'd say I, but there's no way I'd go to that place all by myself.

I did read my last post about tripod and my new years resolution. I had actually forgotten I put that on here, but I've stuck to it.  She now knows "go lay down" and will go lay down out of the way, but close enough to see or hear anything drop to the floor.  She is such a wonderful addition to our family.

Also happening at the Lofstrom residence...
We have planted a salsa garden.  Almost everything we are growing can/will go in salsa. The only thing that won't is our cucumbers and lettuce. I'm pretty excited about it. YUM!
My amazing husband built one of the nicest porches in the neighborhood!!!

Spring Spectacular!
So over the past few months it seems just as we would fix one thing something else would break. It all started with the AC we had a hot spell in the beginning of May (I think) and we quickly learned that our AC was not working fixed that. Then the kitchen faucet started going out.  We knew is needed to be fixed soon since it would constantly drip, which in the winter time we used to our advantage, but over time it got worse. So we ordered a new faucet. The week after that the hot water heater got jealous and couldn't hold her water in anymore and spilled her guts on our floor. Thankfully I had taken most of the hot water when I took a bath, but soon found out that when I used all the hot water she wasn't going to fill back up without spilling most of it on the floor. Wet-tacular! Oh and the wonderful thing about our house is that if there's a water issue anywhere the only way to stop it is to shut the water off to the whole house. So we spent a couple of days without water. Thankfully it didn't take as long as some of the contractors thought it might to track down supplies.  OK....so I guess I'll just tell the whole story.
Sunday night. I decide to take a bath...a nice "hot" cozy bath. I'd been soaking for a few minutes, but realized my water was kind of cold so I turned the hot on to warm it up. Well it wasn't hot....it was colder than my bath water. Chris goes and checks the water heater and finds a rather large pool of water by the water heater. so he shut the water off and I finish my luke-warm bath, and then go assess the damage the next day some people come out and look at it, and give me an estimate. I decide I want a second opinion since the kid looked my age....probably younger and had looked at it for about 30 seconds. The next guy comes and looks at our hot water heater and gives us the bad news that it's toast and a new one like what we have will be around $1.600 which is a specially designed mobile home gas hot water heater. (Rather than venting out the top like normal hot water heaters do, a mobile home one vents out the bottom) He went on to suggest that if we wanted to go that way he wouldn't put it in for us because he thought it was a dumb idea to begin with. He recommended getting an electric water heater, and that's what we did.  While we are out at home depot trying to pick out a hot water heater we run into the plumber and he was able to help us get what we needed. Since we were putting in an electric water heater that meant we had to get the spot wired.  Which the plumber was friends with an electrician and about 30 minutes after we had decided we were going to get an electric water heater the electrician showed up to survey the situation.  He rattled off a bunch of stuff I didn't follow and said he probably wouldn't be back till thursday (this all happening on a monday) Tuesday rolled around everyone was there and working by about 9:00am and they were all done by noon on Tuesday.  So by Tuesday evening not only was our water back on...it was hot too. We've had the water heater for about a month now and it works really well and it is sooooooo much quieter than our old one.

other than trips and fixing things not much is happening in Lofstrom world. Thanks for reading!