More pictures

Yesterday, we worked at the house all day. The kids were away playing, so we really got focused time. John worked on installing the oven and the stair railing. I started the cleaning process. We still can't take the cardboard off of the wood floor, but we are getting closer.

This week, the front and back porch get poured. Hopefully, the septic will get approved. Once that gets approved, we can run water. It's a little difficult to clean the bathrooms without water!

The stone work around the fireplace should be finished this week. Also, the carpet is possibly going in towards the end of the week.

I can't believe we are almost finished!

Here's a picture from the entryway.
This is the view of the family room from the kitchen. John still has to put dark wood caps on the half walls, cabinets and mantle. Plus, the stone work isn't finished in this picture.
Our first set of shutters! So cute!
A clean room! Here's our little mud bathroom. The cabinets still need their knobs, but this room is finally clean! Yeah!

Please pray that we sell our current home. As many of you know, the market is really slow. We really don't want to move into our new home unless we sell our current one. So, we are waiting. We would really appreciate all of your prayers. Thanks!

The truly exciting stuff...

Malacai turned 10!!!! I can't believe we are in double digits. He and his cousin Noah are 2 weeks apart. This year they had a joint Birthday party and had a such a fun day!
Hudson was in his school play. He was one of the 3 men in the tub. It was so cute!
We have a graduate in the house! This one still doesn't care if she has chocolate cookie all over her face though. I'm going to miss Kindergarten. Gracie had a wonderful year with an AMAZING teacher!
This is what the kids do for hours while John and I work on the house. They've mapped out a course and go round and round.

What a great life!

Almost there...

We are getting so close to being done. We finally have lights - yeah!! In the kitchen we still have to finish the island, put all the caps on the drawers, put the microwave above the oven, and the crown on top of the cabinets. The plumber is coming today to start installing all of the faucets and plumbing fixtures. Dining room
The stairs that my dad spent many hours building! Thanks Dad for all of your work. It looks beautiful!
The fireplace. We (John) still has a lot of work here. We will be putting dark wood on top of the mantel and built in cabinets. Then, we still need the stone to be done around the fireplace.

John's to-do list is so long! I wish I was a handy carpenter wife, but no such luck here. I will be the cleaner. It's driving me crazy how dirty it is, I can't wait to deep clean it! I've been vacuuming a lot!

A few more...

Here's the bonus room.
The fireplace. It's the next big project for John and my dad.
The Master Bedroom, and no, we don't have a bathtub in it! :) That will be moved into the bathroom eventually.
Master Bath
Mud/guest bathroom and shower.

More Pictures...

My Mom has requested more pictures. So here they are...

We let the kids pick out the paint color for their rooms. Hudson's is dirt brown! He was insistant! He cracks us up. He knew exactly what he wanted and there was no talking him out of it.
Gracie's is a sweet pink. I have to admit I "assisted" in her color choice, but she had the final say.
Here's the "Seahawk" room. Malacai chose dill! I think it is so fun and he'll love it!
Here's the outside. We finally got front doors! We still have black shutters and the front porch to pour. Also some landscape, but we are getting there.
It's hard to tell with the lighting of a camera, but our interior doors on the main floor are a dark peppercorn stain. This is one thing that I've always loved. We are so happy with how the doors turned out.

John and my dad are doing all of the finish work (window trim, base trim, crown moldings, columns, fireplace mantel, half walls, etc.). They have been working so hard and doing a great job! I'll post some more pictures soon!

There you go Mom!

We finally have power!!! Now we can see our home at night and I love how it 'glows' on the hillside.
The hardwood floor that I LOVE. It's hard to tell in a picture, but it's Handscraped Oak. It's really beautiful in person.
The kitchen is coming along. Countertops and backsplash go in next week.
I love the stone work!

There's the latest! It's been a fun and exciting journey so far!

It's painted!

Thank God for sun!!!! It stuck around just long enough to paint the outside of the house this weekend! Yeah!!!
John's domain - the enormous garage!
I'm so happy with the color. It seems like the perfect yellow!
It's even more beautiful in person. I truly feel incredibly blessed by God. I can't believe this is actually our home! God is good!!!

Tomorrow, the inside gets painted. Hardwood on Wednesday, and cabinets go in on Friday. It's going to be another exciting week.

Pictures...as promised!

The outside hasn't changed much since I last posted pictures. We have to wait until we don't have SNOW, in order to even consider painting. I have been sampling many colors though. I'm back and forth between the one on the far left and the one on the bottom right. I don't want it to look gold or peachy. After we paint, we will have the stone done on the peak that still has plywood. The columns will go up after the front porch is poured. We also have shutters that will go up sometime after it's painted. So many things to do!!!
Here's the family room off of the kitchen.
This is looking into the kitchen from the family room.
This is what my mind looks like at 3 in the morning and I can't sleep b/c I still haven't decided on the paint colors - aaahhhhhh! Actually, this is my giant paint swatch that I'm using to try and decide what color to paint the interior. The dark rectangle in front is our hardwood. It's hard to tell how beautiful it actually is, but I LOVE it!!! The carpet swatch isn't the one we are getting, but the color that I like.

Well, there's the update! I think the painter's are actually starting to paint at the end of this week. So, in a couple of weeks I should have some really fun posts! It will actually look like a kitchen and not a big box!

New House Update

I know it's time to post some new pictures.

There's not much new on the outside. We are waiting to paint it at the same time that we paint the inside. Inside of the house we now have plumbing in the walls, electrical wiring, HVAC, insulation, and they just put up the sheetrock. Next they mud and tape the walls. Once they finish the drywall, then it gets fun again. We will paint, put in the cabinets, then hardwood, and so on. I will try to post some pictures this weekend!

WE ARE SELLING OUR HOUSE!

In the midst of building our new house, we've been busily getting our current home ready to sell. It will be a sad good-bye. So many memories wrapped in the walls of this sweet little home. My kids have loved it here. We told our kids that we would get a dog when we move. Gracie said she just wants the dog and wants to stay where we are. It's been a great place for them with the big yard and cul-de-sac and all their dear friends. (Notice the traces of snow on the ground on April 1st! What a crazy year!)

Spring Break!

We are on Spring Break enjoying snow, snow, and more snow in Idaho!

In other news...

We've had a looooonnng winter!

At the end of January, Hudson tripped over his brother while playing. Nothing monumental, not many tears, but he said he hurt his leg. He recovered quickly, but woke up crying during the night 4 times. This is really unlike Hudson. He's pretty tough. So I took him to the doctor the next day.

They took x-rays and didn't see a break. While at the doctor he started to throw-up! On top of a hurt ankle, he had the stomach flu. When we got home he started throwing up at the front door and saying, "I can't walk!" (He had been hopping). I was trying to hold him, the garbage bag, and all his school stuff while I was yelling to John, "Help, open the door!" It was quite the sight!

The next morning Hudson woke up distraught! I took him back in to the doctor. They took another x-ray and referred him to a specialist at Children's, because they couldn't see a break in the bone, but his pain was too high for something not to be wrong.

At Children's the doctor looked at the x-ray and showed us that he had a plastic deformity...uh, what???

His fibula (small bone in lower leg) was bent just above the ankle. This can only happen in children because their bones are soft. It is very painful though, because it doesn't bounce back into place.

She placed him in a walking cast. She said he shouldn't have any pain with the cast on, but if he develops a fever and complains of pain to call her.

In the middle of the night, he woke up crying and felt warm to me. His temp was 100. The next morning he didn't want to walk on it and had a low-grade temp of 99.5.

I called the doctor, feeling kind of silly, because it was such a low temp, but he would wince everytime he stepped on it.

She had us get blood work done, just in case he had an infection.

The next morning she called and said that we had to have Hudson to Children's right away she thought he had a bone infection.

When we got there they did bloodwork again. The infection was increasing rapidly. They were going to admit him to the hospital and he could be there up to a week - ugh!

I called people and asked them to pray.

When the admitting doctor came to see him, he thought that we may have caught it in time. Instead of admitting him, he wanted to start him on strong antibiotics and do bloodwork again in a day.

Thankfully, Hudson responded to the antibiotic and didn't have to be admitted. He had to take 3 tsp. a day for 5 weeks.

Two weeks into the antibiotics, he had blood work done and he still had the infection, but it was getting better.

The first week of March, he had blood work again and there was no sign of infection. Yeah!

She showed me on the x-ray where the bone infection was. He has a little spot on the end of his fibula. It was basically resting on his growth plate. So, we have to got back to Children's again the first week of May to make sure it didn't damage his growth plate.

I'm thankful to have him well!

The siding is almost done!

I can't believe how fast it is all going! They are going to come and finish the siding this week.

We are going up today to try some exterior paint samples.

Latest pictures

We've started the siding. This is the view from the top of the driveway.
Peeking through the trees.
The back of the house.
The front of the house, so far!

This part is so exciting to me. It's actually looking like the house that we've "imagined" for several months now.

I have paint swatches laying everywhere in my kitchen trying to finalize the exterior color. Along with that, I have 2 cabinet doors, tile, granite, back splash, formica, and hardwood samples!

On the inside of the house they are working on HVAC (heating and air), plumbing, and electrical.

Yesterday we finalized some decisions on our cabinets, cabinet hardware, bathroom fixtures, and doors. Aaaahh, so many decisions for a not very decisive person! Now, I'm off to look at a kitchen sink. Thankfully, I can do that on the internet!

The roof is done!

Roofing!

The roof is being put on! It's so fun to watch all of it coming together. We are crazy-busy with all of this on top of family life, but we are loving it!

Windows

It's not the greatest picture because it was taken at dusk, but the windows are almost all in! They still are finishing a few things on the roof and some framing inside.

Still framing...

This was a couple days ago. We are getting so close to having the framing done. We still need the front porch, windows, and the paneling on the roof to be completed. They made a mistake on some of the trusses over the garage, so we had a minor set-back.
Here's the back (garage on left).
I just thought this was a cool picture!

I will keep you posted!