House Projects

We've been continually working on our house (even though I haven't blogged about it for a while!) and are starting to check some big projects off of the list!  We put a new banister on the stairs instead of having a wide open space.  We didn't mind the look of the space without a railing, but feel it is much safer for the kids now that it is there! 

Scott and his mom spent an entire day tiling the fireplace area and then we had the fireplace and a new metal chimney installed!  We can't WAIT for our first fire in the woodstove.  We're heating primarily with wood this winter - I'm curious to see how long it is before the fun wares off!
I don't have a picture of just the fireplace...sorry!  But you can get an idea from this picture...

 Scott and his Dad rented a splitter and split multiple cords of wood taken from his parents' property.  Super Scott (that's his name when he's super efficient and super awesome) stacked it all at our house and we're ready for winter!  Oh, and do you see our awesome new shed?!?!  We love it!

We love hanging clothes (and diapers) on the line and we LOVE our backyard!

Country living at it's best!  :)

There are many more house projects to come, but we're loving the progress we've made so far!

Home Sweet Home

For those of you who are my Facebook friends, you may have already seen some of these pictures, but I just had to post the house update on the blog!  We are all moved in and almost settled!  YAHOO!!!!  After a week of trying to find homes for everything and putting away boxes and taking trips back and forth to the dorm, we finally feel like we can sit back and enjoy our little home.  Well, kind of.  In reality there are still doors to paint, a peninsula counter to polyurithane, a kitchen wall to slap another coat of paint on, a woodstove corner to be finished off with bricks or tile (eeek!  Which one should we use!) and the list goes on and on.  BUT, the house is more than livable.  In fact, we had our first friends over for dinner last night and had so much fun!  Thank you, everyone, for the support and excitement you've shown us throughout this process.  It's been fun, but it's also been absolutely exhausting.  I posted an album of before/during/after photos on my facebook page that show the transformation a bit better (click on this link to see the Facebook album), but here are some pictures of our nearly settled home!  Enjoy!  :)

Study/Playroom

Study/Playroom

Our purplish/gray bedroom room

Crunch Time

The end of the school year has come and gone!  We celebrated the senior class last weekend with the Senior Dinner on Friday night and a wonderful graduation ceremony on Saturday.  Graduation was awesome.  The weather was perfect.  The student speeches were excellent.  Matt Nathanson ('91) who just finished touring with Sugarland (!!!!) and Little Big Town was the commencement speaker and did an amazing job.  People were happy.  Camden ran around with his friends.  It was a great day.
I love this video of Matt's speech with scenes from the day...check it out if you're interested!


Here are a few other pictures from the day...

 Camden had fun with the girls!

 Micah took a little nap in the stroller...

Now that the school year is over and faculty meetings are done, (today was the first official day of summer!!!!), it is time to crank on the new house!!  We need to move out of the dorm by June 30th and we still have a lot to do to get the house ready.  In all our spare moments we've been painting trim (a very tedious job) and tending to various odds and ends that need to be taken care of.  Before we move in we need to:
-  Finish painting trim upstairs
-  Finish painted the walls in two rooms downstairs
-  The plumber needs to finish his work (toilets, sinks, etc...) - had been waiting for the countertops to go in which are all done now!
-  Get the woodstove set up and lay bricks or whatever we're going to use in that area
-  Re-paint old wood floors
- carpet the stairs and landing (The stairs are unsalvageable and we don't have the money to completely rebuild them from scratch - so carpet for now!)
The list goes on, but you get the idea...we have a ton to do over the next few weeks!  Eeek! 

Starting to move some boxes over!

 Countertops and a kitchen sink!  Yahoo!!

 Hardware on the cabinets thanks to my hubby today and appliances waiting to be installed!  YAY!

 Do you think we'll be ready to move in!??!?!  I hope so!  It's been a long process and I'm ready to get settled over there so we're not always running back and forth.  I'll try to be better about updating the blog with our progress as the month continues.  Wish us luck! 

A Much Needed Update

Wow, I'm such a blog slacker these days.  Sorry!  Usually when I slack off it's because I feel like I'm SO busy I just don't have time to sit down, but this time it's because I feel like I have nothing exciting going on to report.  How those real bloggers do it, writing every day, amazes me.  I don't think I'll ever be that good.  Oh well. 
We had fun celebrating little Ember's first birthday last week with many of our friends here on campus.  Here are a few pics from the first outdoor BBQ of the season!
Camden and Linden in the gator...

 

 Indira putting the moves on Jordan...

 My little munchkin...

 Tom and Molly with the birthday girl...

 Bria and Micah...

 Love that face...

 Scott spent some time this weekend cleaning up the yard at the new house...the meadow behind our house is completely flooded...looks like we have lakefront property! 

Cleaning up...

We now have shelves in our pantry!

 Our beautiful built-in bookshelves (we can rearrange the spacing of the shelves)...I love it!

 A true sign that a little boy has been playing in the house...

 Our new wood floor in the dining room area...wishing we could have put it across through the living room too, but it just wasn't in the budget...  :(

 Dining into kitchen...

 Things are coming along!  We still have a ton to do, but we're getting somewhere!  I'll try to blog again soon...no more slacking!

A Day in Photos

We had a fun day on Thursday - bright sunshine, family time, friend time...A good day all around.

 Poor little teething boy...he's cut both of his bottom middle teeth, but he's still gnawing away on that finger and in a lot of pain. 

 We walked down to our new house and played baseball in the street :)

 This is how Camden sometimes tries to catch the ball.  He thinks he's so good he doesn't need to look!

 New windows :)

 Cute little guy in the stroller...

 After our fun walk, our friends stopped by for a spontaneous visit!

 Just a couple weeks apart!

It was a wonderful day all around and we are loving the sunshine!!!