Life in Austin Texas

Hello and Happy New Year! Once again, I am behind on my blogging! Every year I seem to get better and better though...again I find myself thinking...perhaps this is the year! Thanks for those that stick around to read this blog that I'm always behind writing!

I never got around to blogging about our move to Texas because the holidays seemed to come so quickly after our move...therefore I will quickly catch everyone up to speed and tie in some holiday cheer as well! :)

Noah and I were feeling very blessed when the opportunity to get back to the warmth of Texas came knocking on our door! While we absolutely love spending time with our family, nieces, nephews and friends in Minnesota...we realized we were not quite ready for the grey skies, cold temperatures and couldn't get ourselves to settle back there. We missed Texas...it somehow stole our hearts when we found it, like Noah stole mine back in the day :), so we are beyond excited to be back!
Noah was able to get back to work with the company that he enjoyed working with before we left, and then I decided to take my time finding a job in sales down here because we had a house to make a home, and I didn't want to rush into just anything! Although I did get very lucky to find something I really enjoy fairly quickly upon returning- more on that later. :)

SO how did we find a place so quickly you might ask? We knew we wanted to live out in Lakeway because that is always where we loved to go when we lived in Texas prior to moving to MN. We have always loved it for the rolling hills, views of the water, and the quaint feel of the city itself. There is something about the lake that Noah and I can't get enough of! That is the one thing we absolutely love and miss about MN! With the help of our awesome realtor, Jamie Yule,  we found a home in Lakeway where we can enjoy the lake 12 months out of the year...hey we will take it! While we are not located on a lake, we are not far from the views of a lake and as all of you know, we will find a place to drop our tubes with a cooler of nice cold drinks no matter how far from the lake we live! So, while some would call us crazy for flying here in one weekend, looking at a lot of homes, and deciding on one, we call it PERFECT! We knew what we wanted, were able to find something very close, and neither one of us likes to waste time, so it was a done deal!
Top 3 Things the house had to have:
Big Kitchen ( we love to cook together)-CHECK
One LEVEL (we hate stairs...did anyone see our rental in MN? enough said!) -CHECK
Big Garage (sales reps have way too much stuff!)-CHECK
Yard big enough for Pool(we moved to TX for more outdoor living-this was important!)-CHECK
3 Bedrooms(room for guests and additions to the Vennes family!) -CHECK

We love our new home, and are so excited to have a place of our own in a place we always envisioned ourselves, and close to many of our dear friends! And we welcome guests because we love to share the warmth of Texas with all of our MN family and Friends...the door is always open!

To tell the whole story: We packed our stuff in UHAUL pods, and it was shipped down to Texas prior to us arriving.  Noah and I drove down to Texas, each driving separate cars. We stayed overnight in Oklahoma City and then continued down on our way. We were unable to close on our home right away, so we had about a little over a week before we could move in. We had many dear friends that opened their homes to let us stay with them, which we sincerely appreicated so much! We stayed a little bit at each place, so we didn't overstay our welcome at one home. :) We started with the Sylestines, went to the Gristy's and then The Houghton's let us stay at their place for almost a week-they were out of town, so it was like our own little "home-away"! Once we closed, Noah and I couldn't wait to get in our house, so we slept on a blow-up mattress on the floor in our room for a few days before our stuff arrived! It was absolutely perfect!
So here our some pictures of our moving adventure:

Celabratory Dinner- Jersey Mikes and Shiner- CHEERS!

Our Air Mattress for the first few nights...Bailey loved it too!

Sealing the tile in our bathroom



We couldn't wait for home projects- here we go! :)

Our New Place!

The Water tower!

Ok, so I have to take a break to explain this water tower story! The VERY FIRST time I ever came to Texas, prior to living here, Noah took me on a little drive to Fall Creek Vineyard. We went through Lakeway on our way there, and I saw this water tower. I said, "that is the coolest water tower..a tee with a golf ball on top!" Noah never realized until that day, that it was a golf ball with a tee, and also realized I have a thing for finding cool water towers. Anyway- I have a picture of it from when I was visiting Noah that first time and whenever we drove past it in the past we always said there's the "water tower"-kind of our own little joke that I was so excited about a water tower :) What we didnt realize until after we bought the house, was that you can see this very water tower from our DRIVEWAY! Thats where this shot is taken from...coincidence?...maybe...I like to think something more...nonetheless- I think its neat and had to share! :)

Here comes our Stuff!

WOOHOO!

Bailey loved watching us move while basking in the sun.



Last box!

Noah and I don't mess around and had it all moved into the garage and rooms in 4 hours-not unpacked- just the boxes moved in! We spent the rest of the day/night unpacking and organizing. With some pizza and wine of course. It was alot of fun and we still are enjoying settling into our new place!



As I said, we love cooking together. So, since we moved in a few days before Thanksgiving, we decided to make thanksgiving dinner in our new place and eat on it for the whole weekend! HA! It was alot of fun to cook together, continue to un-pack/get settled that nice long weekend, and just enjoy our new place.

Noah smoked the turkey!! SO GOOD!

All this food for just us...did we eat it all by the end of the weekend you ask? YES WE DID! :)

Absolutely DELICIOUS!

I hope I have gotten everyone up to speed on our new life in Texas! :) Since I have typed much more than I thought I would on the move, we will do the Holiday Cheer in another blog post.