Well, we didn’t move this weekend as planned. We did (and by we I mean Kody and his Dad) tear up the kitchen and get a few other things done so that the house would be in better condition before moving. We also ordered our kitchen floor on Friday, so as soon as it gets here it can be put in.

The first project was putting in a new front door. The old one was wooden and ugly and someone had painted it red, which we didn’t like. Plus when we tried to put our new locks on it, they wouldn’t fit, so we just bought a new one. We put the old storm door back on since nothing is wrong with it.

After that Kody dug a hole and put in our huge mailbox! So now we can get mail even if we aren’t there:) I think the post looks great - it was Kody’s idea to do it like that.

Then they moved inside to the kitchen. The floor that was there had been vinyl with 2 layers of plywood (3/4 inch thick) under it. We decided that we didn’t want to keep that plywood for many reasons. First it made the kitchen floor a lot higher than the living room and hallway next to it. It also smelled terrible, so it needed to come out. In order to do it right all the cabinets had to be taken out of the kitchen since they too were on top of the plywood and flooring. We ordered laminate tile from Lowe’s, which you can see here. They are having a 20% sale on all special order flooring through Monday, so we took advantage of that and our total came out to $50 less than we had to spend on the floor! It is a textured floor and will be going into the kitchen and sunroom.

Anyway, most of the cabinets were out by Friday night when we came home and the floor under the refrigerator had been torn up to see what the damage was. By the time Taylor and I made it out to the house on Saturday the subfloor was repaired and the plywood was totally off the preparation side of the kitchen, so the cabinets could be moved back! We are not putting the cabinets on top of laminate, so they are already bolted back down. The dining side still needs to have the plywood removed - it is hard work, I even pulled up a little (using a flat bar and hammer).

The kitchen is well on it’s way to actually becoming what we want though, so we are excited! The walls will still need to be painted and the cabinets really need some touching up too. The fan in the pictures doesn’t work and we have a new light fixture to replace it with as soon as we get around to it and a new flourescent light fixture to go over the sink.

Then they moved into the room we are going to use as our offices. This room had one electrical outlet which was placed higher than we wanted. That just won’t do for a room with lots of computers and sewing machine! So they started making holes for more outlets and then went beneath to thread some wires through. Here are the first 2 ready:

After that, Kody and I spent a little time cleaning up the huge mess that had been made all over. We swept up and got rid of some trash. I went into the laundry room/closet and took everything off the shelves and cleaned and organized and put our things up there. The last people to live in the house left all kinds of things behind*, most of the cleaning things I don’t really want though. The shelves look much neater and now I can find things when I want to clean.

I’m a little sad that we didn’t move yesterday, but at the same time maybe it’s better if we get more of the things done before we live there. Our phone and internet still hasn’t been switched, but is supposed to be any day. I still need to contact a couple more places to get other services set up, so this will give me the time to do that before being there. And to be truthful, we still aren’t finished packing our things…so this will be fine.

I went to the doctor on Wednesday and everything was perfect with baby Kameron. I did the glucose and iron tests and they were normal. His heartbeat was great and my blood pressure was perfect. I scheduled my c-section, so unless he comes a few days early like the other two have, he will be here September 17 - very early in the morning! Unfortunately that makes it so that I will be going home either the day before or the day of Taylor’s birthday. That was the earliest date they would let me pick though and the doctor that I wanted was there that day. For anyone who is interested in seeing it or if you need any ideas or even want to get us anything, I have added our baby registry link to the sidebar. It is at amazon, but most of the items can be found other places if you prefer to shop somewhere else! Even though we have had two babies, we still don’t have have all the things we need.

I have to go get ready for church now! Hope you all had a Happy Independence Day and have a wonderful day today:)

*There were gas cans, an air conditioning unit, boat motor, weed eater cord, and canned food left in the garage. Upstairs they left an old sewing desk (the kind your machine fits into) and a nice looking chair (that would need to be re-upholstered). And there is a clue game and lots of cleaning supplies: chemicals, brooms, mops, dusting things all over the house. We have already used some of the things and some of them are headed for the trash pile.

Last night was kind of chaotic. I had great plans and then the kids got there and I was really overwhelmed, but the other teacher did a great job with everything while I comforted Taylor and some of the other children who were a little unhappy that their parents dropped them off. Three is a really hard age to do much that takes any amount of time or concentration. I knew this, but I guess it hadn’t really sunk in. I haven’t spent 2 and 1/2 hours in a room with 11 three year olds before. We did have fun though, just not doing what I had planned to the T:)

Tonight is a new night though and now I think I’m ready for it. The kids are all very sweet and I will be fine as long as I don’t expect everything to go exactly as planned! We’re going to plant flowers and hopefully do another craft along with the bible story. Plus we’ll have dinner and go outside for some play time.

Here are the pictures of the room we are in:

It doesn’t look as exciting in the pictures as it does to me when I’m there, but you get the idea!

Have a great day everyone!!

So, I told you that I was going to put the things I’d knit for Kameron on here, but I forgot and then got busy and took forever! I have finished 2 sweaters, 2 pair of booties, 1 hat and 2 blankets. I still want to make him some pants (knit and sewn ones) and maybe a onepiece outfit. I just love sweater outfits on babies! Here are the things I have done so far:

I also went through my boy things from Kristopher and was pretty upset. Apparently I gave more of my baby clothes to my sister for her son than I thought. I only had about 4 items in each baby size. So, Tiffany, if you are reading this and still have any of my baby outfits please send them! I did go ahead and purchase several lots of baby boy clothes on ebay (for pretty cheap!) so I think I am doing pretty well with the 0-6 month stuff now. I just really liked some of Kristopher’s outfits and was expecting to find them in the box and they were gone. I have plenty of 2T-4T clothes for a boy, but all my small stuff was gone:( I also found that I kept all my sheets and blankets (which I thought I didn’t), so I don’t need any of those for a crib…only thing is we may not use a crib this time around. But we have blankets a plenty for baby:) It will be fun to out all the baby things away where they go after moving.

We are still cleaning and fixing for now. Hopefully I am going to talk to a painter today to see how much that might be for the house. We are planning to move in July 5/6th and then anything else we need to do can be finished while we are there. We’re ready to be in our house!

Vacation Bible School starts for me tonight. My co-teacher and I spent yesterday setting up and decorating our room. I think it looks great! We are teaching the 3 year old class. Hopefully I will be able to remember to take pictures this afternoon before the kids get there so you all can see. I am really excited about some of the things we have planned. I hope that I can do a good job of teaching and that all the kids who come will have fun. Taylor will be in my class which has been hard lately (she’s very clingy), but I think with everything going on and some friends she might be okay.

Hopefully VBS will be a good distraction for the kids and I. Kody is away for training again this week and the kids have already been a little upset that he is gone. I guess Kristopher didn’t believe that he was going to be gone that long and last night Taylor woke up, like she always does and I went to get her from her bed. She was crying and said she wanted Daddy…which was not possible. They’ll be okay and hopefully be too busy to think about it much! Kody if you read this - We miss you and LOVE you!

Thursday was my 27th birthday! Our church takes a trip for children k-6th grade every Thursday in the summer and last Thusday was to the Nashville Zoo, so we went. It was a perfect day. Taylor was not her usual self at all and had a lot of fun too! Kristopher went with the other group, so I’m not sure what he did, but I didn’t have to hear him ask about games all day which made it nice for me;)

We aren’t going on all the trips, but there are a couple that we will. Kristopher went on one the week before to play Jungle Golf and eat at Mr. Gatti’s. He seemed to like that - especially since I’m not a huge Mr. Gatti’s fan myself!

I hope that you all have a great day!

No, I don’t actually have any before and after pictures today, but I was reading BooMama’s blog a few minutes ago and she is doing a before and After thing. This is perfect for me, even though we were already going to do the fixing up. Now I will have a reason to do it in a timely manner and actually post about it so everybody can see!

For those of you who don’t read here and are just visiting from BooMama’s, we just bought a house 2 weeks ago and it is in need of a lot of inside work. We have been cleaning and ripping out carpet and getting it ready for the actual work. We are planning to actually start living in the house on July 5 (or maybe sooner if we have a mattress to sleep on over there), so it would be nice if some of the rooms were done by then. I’m sure we’ll be working on many of the things long after we have moved though.

My list of immediate goals:
Replace the Kitchen Floor
Paint as many rooms as I can find people to paint! (I would love to just dive in myself, but I am pregnant right now, so am not supposed to)
Replace some of the light fixtures with ones that work
Plant more things outside
Order curtains and hang for the living room
Actually get moved in and settled before the baby is born!

There are millions of other things to do, but that is my personal list. Kody is working on the other things that I cannot do and hopefully he will have a little help from people who know what they are doing!

So, here is the button if you want to see what some others goals are or participate yourself. I can’t wait to see some finished things!

BTW - I am planning to post rooms as I get them done, so the pictures may not all be in the post on July 25:) Have a blessed day everyone!

We closed on our house today! So I guess that makes us “home-owners”. I use the quotation marks since the bank actually owns the house for now, but someday it will really be all ours. Anyway, I know some of you are anxiously awaiting photos, so here it is:

Pictures are of the front of the house, the back with the lovely deck, the garage, and some happy children. They weren’t so happy after being there for an hour of me cleaning. I gave them what I thought would be a fun job of using huge sponges to clean the walls and they decided that it would be better to soak the kitchen floor (which is going to come off anyway). This was a great idea until they got so much water on it that they kept slipping and screaming… Anyway, I decided that it would be better to just come home for the night and get ready to go to bed early, so we can try for better cleaning time tomorrow. We are very excited and are hoping to get in the house soon to stay!

There has been quite a bit of knitting going on - for baby of course. I will show some pictures soon.

Hope everyone else had a wonderful day:)