"before and after" 2nd bathroom

Today we completed our last project of updating - the downstairs second bathroom. Our house is officially done. And it's a good thing because now we have to sell the house.

So here is what the bathroom looked like when we moved in spring 2010. There were two places next to the shower that the drywall needed to be patched and the ceiling needed some work.

After. Notice the semi-glossy ceiling. I painted everything - ceiling, walls and cabinets - the same color as the kitchen, White Putty. It looks so good. So fresh and clean. I love the smell of a freshly painted room!

Ceiling before

Ceiling after. I love the sheen to it.

The hook board was blue before. I just painted it to match the rest of the house colors, Oregon Dunes.

Freshly painted cabinets, inside and out.

Patched drywall and new trim.

touchups

The sign just went up so maybe that makes our moving more official. Kinda sad looking!

Last week we had a realtor come examine our house and see what she thought it was worth. She gave us a few tips for for finishing touches.

One suggestion was the upstairs bathroom closet doors. We actually took those doors down before we even moved into this house and planned to get new ones or re-paint them. That never happened. We've just been using the bathroom with no closet doors. And check out the old tile and paint!

But the realtor suggested putting them back up so Terry scraped and wiped them down.

We got some glossy white spray paint to go over the old cream color.

All done.

If we had stayed in this house, we probably would have gotten new windows for the ones next to the stone patio in the back yard. Since that's not happening, the realtor suggested we scrape and paint those windows. So this was after I scraped.

Pretty...

I let Noah do a little because he just loves to paint.

After.

Nice right?

moving on

Well. We've told our family, friends and church. I've made it facebook official. Now I need to make it blog official.

We are moving. We are moving back to Rapid City. And here is the story from beginning to end.

Rapid City is home for us.

I practically grew up at Mount Rushmore where my dad was a law enforcement ranger for 30 years and I worked for five summers. My sister still works there.

We both lived there our entire lives until college. Terry grew up outside of Sturgis but went to church in Rapid, which is where we met. That church is where I became good friends with Terry's sister Shari, where Terry and I fell in love and got married, where we served in youth and college groups, where we had our first child Noah dedicated.

(the ranch where we lived)

We left our families, friends and church to come to Nebraska so Terry could get his foot in the ministry as a youth pastor.

(this was the day we packed up our SD lives)

(packed and ready to move to Nebraska)

I often tell people flat out that I didn't want to move to Nebraska. How different things are now though! When we first came, we missed our families so very much. We missed everything and everyone. We cried every time our family visited and had to leave - like this day when Terry's family left us for the first time.

But we don't feel like that anymore. It's been nearly five years that we've been in Nebraska and we've made a home here. We love it here too. We love our new family and friends and church just like we love our SD family, friends and church. This is so bittersweet for us.

Back in September our Rapid City church's youth pastor resigned to become a senior pastor. At first we were wondering if we could take his place. But Terry quickly squashed that idea and decided that we would not apply for the position. The very next day Pastor Dave, the senior pastor, called and wanted us to consider putting our name in. At first we were still very unsure but after a couple weeks of deliberating, we decided we'd go ahead and apply and see where the process would take us, using it to determine the Lord's will. Because, you see, things were and are going so well in Nebraska and like I said, this is home now.

The church looked at 80 applicants and the process came to the place in November where they'd narrowed it down to four men. Terry was one of them. They phone interviewed all four but after Terry's interview they were sure they were interested in only him. They called the very next day to ask us to move forward.

Next we were asked to interview over Thanksgiving while we were home. We did that and it went well.

Then they asked us to candidate and that we be sure we wanted to move forward with them. So we prayed, cried and asked for all kinds of advice from people we respect and finally decided that yes, we'd candidate. We did that at the end of January.

They voted unanimously for us to come. And we accepted.

We feel this is God's will for us and we are excited. But we are also heart broken to leave our friends in Nebraska. We love them. They are lifelong friends who we will never forget. This church has taken such good care of us. Thank you Hults. Thank you Cheryl. Thank you Wardyns. We love you guys so much. We love you students.

We began telling the students, leaders and church one week ago and it feels as if we are alive for our own funeral. The amount of kind, encouraging and uplifting words we've received is completely overwhelming. Terry, a golden retriever who is kind to every one, even those who don't deserve it, especially has struggled with hurting our Nebraska church family. This was such a hard decision to make because we knew these days were ahead of us. And now they are here. It's really tough.

And yet we still feel this is right for us and we are at peace with our decision (until we see you cry). We just wish we could somehow combine the two churches. So please visit us G-burgers. Come to Hills Alive. Come to Terry Peak. Come and see us. We hold you in our hearts.

“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” Philippians 1:3-11.

#100

The last time I did a blog about Noah's progress through his kindergarten reading book, How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, was November 9, 2011. And now he's completed that book. He's read all 100 lessons and is DONE! I'm so proud! Woot woot!

I remember when Noah was just starting the book in the fall of 2011 and I was flipping through the book to the back. I found it hard to believe he's be able to read such long stories. But he can! Sure, he still has to sound some things out and he can't read as fast as I can, but he's only six! I think he's done pretty fantastic. Look at that story he read all by himself!

And here is a video of him reading the first part of his last lesson, #100.

And here is a video of him from the fall of 2010 in preschool reading a short book. But that was after he had practiced and memorized the book for like 6 days straight. Haha. He's much better now.

sick day

I had MOPS this morning but all the kids woke up with fevers so they couldn't go. Our replacement grandma, Miss Kathy, was kind enough to watch them so I could fulfill my obligation, but I decided the rest of the day was gonna be pretty chilled. Here are the three of them watching Despicable Me. Samuel stayed there for less than five minutes.

noah's pictures #4

Perhaps I should try to make money from Noah's photography skills. Because he's pretty fantastic.

Here's the boy behind the magic.

I think Noah captured Samuel's cowlick quite well. And his interest in cars.

Cheeks! "How do I roll his car down this thing?"

Samuel's first birthday

Samuel turned one year old on Wednesday, February 1. Since that's our busiest night with youth group and Awana, we decided to hold off on his birthday party until the following night, Thursday. It seemed like a good idea until I realized that he needed his one year shots on that day also. Poor little guy got four shots. And though I gave him ibuprofen, he still looked like this most of the night: He had a tough time.

But really, at this point in the evening, he was crying because he wanted some chicken pot pie pronto.

He calmed down once he got some.

At 7pm we had some guests over - Terry's family, the Strausers and Doerings, and our friends the Wardyns. There were 19 people in our house with us and all the other children. Samuel was fragile from the shots so he was pretty shy. He kept snuggling in my shoulder - not that I minded. I had to blow out his candle.

Our table is quite large with the two leaves put in but still there was standing room only for most of the adults.

As an aside, you can see the framed photos, etc. I have hung in our dining room. They've been there a while but I haven't posted about it because I know how boring you think it is.

Cake time.

My other two kids did not really dig in to their cake so much. Samuel, however, did. This was just his first contemplative handful.

I didn't think he'd go for the cake since he was crying beforehand. But he certainly enjoyed it. We thought it looked like a beard.

He did however do quite a bit of crying during the clean up. It was straight to bed with this little guy. And it was only like 745pm.

Poor Samuel didn't get to open his gifts because of his crankiness necessitating an early bedtime so Noah and Evie took care of that for him. The next morning they all had fun with them. That car track was from the Wardyns and Samuel enjoys breaking it apart. We call him "Destroyer baby."

Tawnya got this incredibly thoughtful gift for him - the book is a "Little Bear Bible." Perfect for us Five Bears.

12 months of Samuel

Samuel was born 12 months ago, 1 year ago, today. It's definitely hard to believe. It doesn't seem like the year should have gone so fast but that's just how time is, especially with babies. I remember times in the last year where I felt frustrated with something Samuel was doing and I would tell myself, he'll grow out of it in time. Too true. He's hardly a baby anymore.

It was also fun to read over Samuel's birth story. Before I refreshed my memory, I had thought I could recall everything so well. Reading that again really brought all the details into clarity. What a blessing his birth was. What a blessing this last year has been. I love that little guy. We all do.

Here are photos from the last 12 months to tell the story of Samuel's first year.

Here is Samuel's very first photograph. I love it. It was February 1, 2011 at 4:58am. Samuel was born after only three hours of quick, intense labor and he was handed to me right away. It makes me want to tear up about every time I really look at this photo.

Swollen little face. He still looks like himself though.

Here's a typical Samuel expression: Serious. It's amazing to me that babies are who they are right from the womb.

Here we are getting to know one another better.

This was two weeks later.

My kids always have pretty bad jaundice so they need to have some time in the sun and on the bili-blanket. Samuel stayed in the hospital for four days to beat out the orange skin. Hanging in our front room, I have a photo of each of my newborn kids sunbathing like this one.

Noah loved Samuel right away. He seems to particularly enjoy him. Must be a brother thing. Evie seems to enjoy her cousin Grace the same way that Noah likes Samuel. Here they are when Samuel is about one month old.

This is at one and a half months. Fuzzy little head.

At two and a half months Samuel started getting more fun. He became expressive. Though he was and is mostly serious.

Wrestling with daddy is pretty popular around here. This might have been one of the first times Samuel was "involved" with a wrestling match at three and a half months old.

Here is another three and a half months photo to show how long and skinny he was (and continues to be).

At four months the kids and I were in SD while Terry was on his two week mission trip. The only way Samuel and his cousin Grace could play together was to lay under the same toy. They were both starting to grab for stuff.

Tongue face! This photo was also in SD.

Five months and able to sit up with support. He looks so funny with all his hair falling out except for that comb over thing!

At six and a half months Samuel had pretty much mastered sitting up. He was pretty good at drooling too. And his hair is starting to come in under and around the brown comb over.

Terry's grandfather passed away at the beginning of September so we went back to SD for the funeral. This photo was at the grave site when Samuel was seven months old.

Eight months and so very cute. He was in need of a haircut though. It was about this time that Samuel finally started eating solid foods. Little stinker didn't want to for what seemed like the longest time. That too passed.

Just about nine months on Halloween. He was so cute this day. He'd started scooting on his bottom around seven to eight months and by this time he'd even started pulling himself up on stuff and cruising around.

Nine months again. His scooting got him in trouble here when he crawled in a basket and couldn't get out.

Ten months and looking for a Christmas tree.

Eleven months and walking! He looks too small to be walking!

Today. One year old. He's all over the place now. He loves cars. If you look closely you can see how he's trying to run his deflated balloon on the car track. He knows what he's doing.

Noah took this photo a few days ago. I love it. That's my baby Samuel. Happy birthday to you little guy. We love you SO much!