week 1 progress

It's been just about a week since we began working on the house. Quite a lot has been done, especially if you look at the kitchen, which has pretty well been torn apart.

Here is JoAnn, my lifesaver in the kitchen. She and Herb showed up and took initiative in the kitchen. I told her that I hadn't been expecting any help so I was so very blessed to have their help. She has taken off all the cabinets to sand, wash, prime and paint them. The next plan was to take out the breakfast bar and remove the hanging cupboards and soffet. Here, the cupboard have already been removed - and it opens up the kitchen wonderfully!

JoAnn also scraped all the old Formica off the walls. It was a back splash and it was original I think!

Kathy came and helped paint Noah's room. She is an expert trimmer! Brenda also helped me prime one day. I'm so thankful for ALL the help we've been given. I feel so blessed.

Here is the main living room all primed. This wall had been red so it required two coats! And ha ha, you can see Herb in the dining room beginning to take out the breakfast bar.

Good bye breakfast bar! We are going to get new counter tops and extend it to where the bar came out to.

Kalli joined us one day =) My kids are doing so great while I work on the house. They play outside, mostly in the sandbox. I'm a little concerned about this due to previous cats... We need new sand soon. But anyhow, Evie naps in the downstairs guest room so I have been spending every afternoon at the house working.

Herb also removed the small desk thingy that was here as well as a cupboard that went up to the ceiling. He had to patch the wall too =) And we'll need some more wood to put on the outside of the pantry.

Good bye stove. Dr Dave is like an amazing carpenter handy man and is gracious as to help us out. You can't see it in this picture, but he has done some work on the "shelf" where the stove had been sitting on (it was a small one) so a new one can take it's place.

Good bye fridge

Good bye dishwasher

Good bye carpet

Here is Evie's completed room. It's green and pink, like her current one. I still love the colors.

Here is Noah's room. The color is like a gray blue. And I have to find some new kind of fabric to put in those shutters, which I do like!

Here is our Soft Moss room. I love it. Plus, it should match a couple of our comforters.

change is a comin

Back in September, I wrote about us moving to the other parsonage that the senior pastor had been living in. I did just say, "had been living in." They just moved out yesterday! Man, it's been a long road for them and I'm so pleased and excited for them that they've finally come to this place.

Why this is relevant to us is that we are going to be moving into their previous house, which was a parsonage. I did just say, "was a parsonage," meaning that it is no longer a parsonage. The church is so gracious as to let us buy the house!

This means we are moving. There is quite a lot to be done to the house but we hope to be closing by June 1st. We have both received a crash course in home ownership, mortgages, taxes and insurance in the last few weeks. I'm still pretty clueless but I'm coming along. We even attended a Home buyer Education class for two evenings this week.

Like I said, there are many things to do in the house. We measured for carpet today and I took many, many photos of the house. Here are a sampling, the idea being "before" and eventually "after."

Here is the main floor. The door with 3 little windows is the front door. The stairs up lead to three bedrooms and a bathroom. The stairs down lead to another living area, guest bed room and a bathroom. Then are more stairs down from there to a finished basement.

Here is the other side of the room. Paint and possibly wood laminate here...

The kids are running through the dining room to the deck and generous back yard, which you can see here from when we were there for Easter dinner.

Here is the other half of the dining room - the kitchen of course. There is so much to do here, paint being just one of them.

I'm standing in the dining room looking toward the main floor front door. That is a build in hutch in the corner.

This is the lowest level, the basement. We won't be doing much to this space. It can wait. But if we ever have more than one family staying with us, this will be a great place for them to sleep.

Now we're come up the stairs and this is a bathroom on the lower level (the level that is in between the main floor and basement). We are going to have to gut this bathroom =)

Here is the guest room next to the bathroom.

Here is the living area in the lower level. The open door on the left leads down to the basement. Then the stairs go up to the main floor. There is much built in shelving. This carpet will be replaced.

This is the uppermost level, one up from the main floor. This room will be the master bedroom. After new paint and carpet =)

This room is next to the master and will mostly be Noah's.

This is next to Noah's room and across the hall from the bathroom, and will be Evie's room.

Terry's messing around with the bathroom drawers. There will be new paint in here as well.

And that's it. Now time to get to work painting...and doing LOTS of other things. We're so excited!

a night out

We had such a fun night last weekend while Terry's parents were here. We got the kids all bathed and pajamed after traditional Saturday pizza night and headed downtown to the movie theater. We all stayed up late and watched How to Train Your Dragon. It was a fun show.

Here is be-jamad Evie with Gramma B. Grampa is not asleep - he actually made it through the whole movie without snoring at all. And if you know him, you'll know that's impressive =)

testing

What good is a huge couch if you can't put a lot of people on it?

So we had a movie night a couple days after we got the huge couch. There are six people here and even after I sat next to Terry, there would have been room for a few more!!!

That's right Levi, keep that pop on the floor!

the (pretty) beast is here

Well, our new sectional arrived today! I was quite pumped. As soon as I woke up this morning I was thinking about it (Terry was teasing that I wouldn't be able to sleep, but I did. HA!). I got the laundry put away, the dusting done and the carpet vacuumed all before 1pm, which was when it was scheduled to arrive.

So here is the big room with the ugly old green couch

This is how I moved the furniture. The matching green chair is in our bedroom for now.

I know I've mentioned how I love vacuum lines =)

BAM! There it is!

Terry is giving the kids a speech about how they are not allowed to jump on this couch (the green one they could - yeah, probably setting ourselves up for aggravation)

Evie went to bed after this

Once we move to the other parsonage and can get all the extra furniture moved to the basement, it won't look quite as huge. But baby, it does now! It came in three sections so, theoretically, we could move the middle section elsewhere to make more space but we don't really have any other place for it to go! Only about a month and a half of it looking like this and then we'll be in a new house! Guess we should've waited to order for another month or so... Oh well, now we can fit our small group in front of the TV!

Noah's 5th bday video

Noah is FIVE

Noah is five. He's FIVE! That seems like such a mile stone. It's hard to believe. On one hand it seems like Noah is older, but on the other, shouldn't he be closer to three? Where has the time gone? We've gone from the trailer, to the green house, to here. T-shirt Printer to Teacher of developmentally disabled people to pastor. Student to Nurse to finally stay-at-home mommy and housewife to Nurse again!

We've been through some changes and Noah's been through them too. I just can't believe he's five. Wow.

So, here I am showing off our birthday dinner - pan pizza. It was delish, if I say so myself.

Silly five year old

That's better boy

Here is the bike Grampa and Gramma B got the boy. He's never learned to ride a bike b/c the hand-me-down we tried last year was busted. Yeah...We better get on the ball and teach him how to ride! Thanks!

Noah is opening Shari and Jesse's Hot Wheels gifts. He was pretty psyched.

Opening Shari and Jesse's cars.

Pulling out all of Gramma K's exciting clothes =) Hey, I thought they were exciting though Noah quickly moved on.

Evie thought everything was really cool. She's taking advantage of a momentary distraction of Noah's by playing with this McQueen and trailer. He picked this out for himself!

Here is Shari and Jesse's gift: the Hot Wheels ramp thingy. Thanks dudes!

I got this game for Noah the day I was in Kearney and my appendix was giving me trouble. It said something about preschool and counting so I thought it sounded good. And I suppose it is - it's such a long game! I haven't had much patience for it, though Terry has.

And the video is to come!

youth group puddle

For youth group this week, we had a small college drama team come in and perform. I thought it might be nice for Noah and Evie to watch so we headed up there. But once like 100 wild kids arrived, my kids were a little freaked out. So we headed outside.

It was about sundown and the clouds were pretty, so Steph, you should appreciate this! Unfortunately, my cell phone camera is not that great...but it's not that bad either. And this is the field just northeast of The Building where kids sometimes park, or we play games in the stickers. Ouch.

Here are all the kids' cars. It's usually a little more crowded for high school youth group but there something else going on that night too...

Ya, and here is the puddle my kiddos were throwing rocks into. What is more fun to a kid? It's just awesome.

Another view of the puddle, and the corn field behind The Building