Happy Halloween!

I've been trying to upload a video all day but for some reason it won't respond. We are leaving for a weekend of fun at the cousin's house so I guess I have to give up. Hope you all have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Siding!

Okay, I'm finally ready to post some pics! The siding weekend went wonderfully! Grandma, Grandpa, Noni, Papa, and Uncle "Bo-Bo" all came and helped us SO much! Thank you, thank you, thank you! The phone lines had to be disconnected to put up the siding, and T just got them fixed last night so we haven't had Internet for a few days.

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They did such a great job and the house is 70% finished. We had to order some windows for the garage so it didn't quite get done and the upstairs areas aren't done, but all the ground level stuff is on and looks great!

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I don't really want to post any identifiable pics of the outside of our house so these are all really close up. When everything is finished I will e-mail some before and afters.

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So here is a close up before...not too bad actually. When I look at this I wonder why we started this project!

But then I keep looking through my pics and remember that this is also what it looked like!

And this! Yikes. The house was sided with metal: a taupe that was fading to pink with missing pieces on the ground floor, and a vertical metal siding painted red on the upstairs areas. The garage had wood siding on the front and didn't look too bad but this is what the side of it looked like. A square hole...maybe a doggie door at one point? and a missing board.

This is what our house has been wearing since last spring. A beautiful plywood number. But underneath the plywood an extra two inches of insulation was also added and we are definitely noticing big heating results already!

And this was the final costume change before it's debut. A lovely pinstripe tar-paper.

And now for the main event...ta da! I love it! It's hard to really see the color but it is called Clay and it's exactly what I wanted! Thank you everybody!

We are going to be re-doing the roof next summer, which includes some restructuring, so unfortunately we can't actually finish everything (we would just have to tear it down next summer). So some of the plywood is still showing near the roof. I am debating whether or not to paint it just for the aesthetic value, but unless it warms up a bit I won't be able to. Oh well, it looks a million times better than it did and we're very happy with it!

Handy Dandy...I mean Daddy

Sorry I haven't been posting much. All we've been doing is remodeling and that subject seems to be getting a little tired. As is Daddy.

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I'm hoping I'll be able to talk him into a little vacation after we get done with the siding and the living room b/c he's going to just plain wear out one of these days. He gets up, goes to work, and if he can come home for lunch he changes clothes and does a little bit of mudding during his hour break. Then at night he comes straight home from the office, throws on his work clothes and works on the outside of the house until it is too dark for him to see his hand in front of his face!

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All that, plus our rental house had a leak in the kitchen so we had to spend Tuesday night going all the way into town (45 min. each way) so he could fix it. I am so blessed to have such a handy husband!

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I always used to like that show "The Pretender" where that guy was so smart and could pretend to do any occupation and get away with it. I guess liked it so much I married a real life pretender! T can do anything: electrical, plumbing, building, repair, you name it. He really is a jack of all trades.

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Now if I can just get him to take a vacation and "pretend" to relax he'll be just about perfect. Haha. :)

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Anyway, Grandma and Grandpa will be here in a few hours to officially kick off siding weekend! I'll have lots of pictures in a few days and hopefully a completely sided house! Stay tuned!

Watch Out

Our weekend was once again spent working on the house...the never ending project! Actually we are making a lot of encouraging progress and T is taking next Friday off to finish prep for our "siding weekend" next weekend! We are really excited! Grandpa and Grandma picked up the siding this weekend and it is great! I love the color...exactly what I wanted! I can't wait to see it on the house. T and Grandpa also got the tape (on the Sheetrock) up in our living room, so now T just has to begin the long process of mudding and sanding, but we are getting there. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

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This is just a silly video of K playing on a little car one of the neighbors gave her, but you can see the extent of remodel in our house. This is our living room and dining room...or as we have called it for the past four months: the hallway. That's pretty much all it has been good for - getting from one place to another as you try to avoid getting Sheetrock dust all over your clothes, but hopefully that will soon be a thing of the past! For now you can watch our very conscientious daughter, "Watch out Mommy, cars will hit us in the street!" :)

Knitting and Poker

I've been wanting to learn how to knit for a long time, and my good friend Olivia learned a couple of years ago. I think her first project was a baby blanket for K. It was beautiful, and quite the undertaking for a first project, but it turned out great! Now I am finally getting around to learning myself. Our friend Tiffany wanted to get some pointers as well so we all went over to Katie and Jared's house for a knitting/poker party. We planned a poker night for the guys so they wouldn't be bored while we were doing our own thing. :)

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Here we are learning to knit!

Me, Tiff, Katie, Liv, and the kiddos

Jared has a fancy poker table so the guys were playing in style!

T, Jesse, Jared, Drew

K and Emery played hard together. Oddly enough, their favorite "toy" was the stairs. There is a little set of three or four stairs between Katie's living room and kitchen and they stayed on them almost all night. They also took a tumble or two down them (with K landing on top of Emery at one point and then crying saying, "I hurt my booty!"), but no major damage was done. :)

And I finally got a picture of K with Katie and Hudson! For some reason I never manage to grab any pictures of them together whenever we see them. Hudson is getting so big! I can't believe he is already 6 months old. He has the biggest blue eyes I have ever seen! What a cutie!

The finished product! I knitted (is that right?) a washcloth! I definitely made a few mistakes, but I think it turned out pretty good for my first time! Thanks for teaching us Liv! I need to try out the hat pattern next!

P.S. On a totally side note: it seems weird that I won't put our names on the blog but I will put everyone else's. Liv, Tiff, and Katie (and anyone else I happen to blog about) do you mind if I put your names up or would you rather I didn't? Either way is totally fine with me, just let me know. Thanks.

Before, During...Still During

We have been working, working, working on the house lately...every spare minute. Grandma and Grandpa have been over several weekends in a row and Noni and Papa came to help out last weekend too. We are trying really hard to get the house ready for the weekend of the 24th...otherwise known as siding weekend! Yipee skipy! I am so excited!!!

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We have the siding ordered and Grandpa is supposed to pick it up on Friday. That leaves this upcoming weekend for prep. We've also been working hard on the inside of the house. So I'll give you a few pictures of that.

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Here is the dining room "before". Well, after the big hole was cut out, that is. That wall used to be solid but we felt like it really closed off the room, and I wasn't able to keep an eye on K very well if she was playing in the living room while I was cooking. Now it is a nice, wide open space. I love it!

Once again, they had to replace a lot of old knob and tube wiring with up-to-date/code stuff. They sheet rocked the whole room, mudded, sanded, mudded, sanded, and mudded, sanded some more, until T declared it acceptable. Then we textured the walls. My mom and I painted it this pretty blue...actually we painted it another blue that wasn't quite so pretty and then re-painted with this pretty blue. I have learned that I should not choose paint colors while pregnant. I re-did the entry way three times!!!

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So after the painting, T started putting up wainscoting, chair rail, and trim. Here is a shot during that process. Who knows what K is doing. :)

And the "after". Sort of. The "after" for the dining room, but also after we moved all the furniture over from the living room so we could get started on that. You can pretty much see all the work though. We still have some trim work, and touch up painting to do, but for the most part the dining room is done! Yay!

I'm hoping the living room will go faster than the dining room went and then I'll be able to get my house back! I can't wait!

Pillow Games

I am already starting to have trouble sleeping (I don't remember that happening till later with K) so I bought one of those really long body pillows to see if it would help. K thinks it was purchased purely for her enjoyment and has certainly gotten more use out of it that I have. Nearly every time she comes in our room she climbs up on the bed, pulls the pillow to the middle, and starts rolling!

She thinks it is hilarious! "Watch me, Mommy, I do this!"

Over and over she rolls and rolls.

Funny girl. I guess she's just breaking it in for me. It does help a little with the sleeping issue, but it's no miracle worker. Just one of the cons to being pregnant.

I love being pregnant though. It is such a miracle! I know a lot of people just endure it for the sake of the end product, but I love my growing belly and feeling our sweet little girl rolling around in there. She is already giving her active big sister a run for her money! I was hoping for a bit of a calmer child (K never stops moving!) but if the belly activity is any indication I am not going to get my wish! That's okay, I know this is the perfect child God has created for us and I am already getting so excited to meet her! I better curb that enthusiasm though because we still have a long way to go. :)

First Frost

The "Weather Bug" is a little liar liar pants on fire bug! I checked it multiple times and never did it get below freezing in the ten day forecast. Apparently the weather bug needs to crawl into our garden and explain why all our plants keeled over in the distress after the first frost, when it wasn't supposed to get below 40!

Daddy and our little bug went out and dug up all the potatoes and carrots. They actually did pretty well. It was our first time with potatoes and some of them got quite large for reds.

Here are the spoils. I did much better on my carrot calculations this year. Last year we had about a bazillion more carrots than we needed. Tyson took bag after bag to work and we still ended up with two rotten bags by the time it was all said and done. This was a much more manageable number. Our zucchini was a little over the top. We've given lots of it away and used a bunch and still have some. The little round balls were supposed to be cantaloupe with a shorter growing season designed for the Northwest, but it still wasn't short enough I guess. And the squash didn't quite make it either. They were still pretty small and green (these two were the biggest!). Oh well, I'll use them for decorations or something.

We got a whole bucket of potatoes and I've got them in the basement according to the instructions for storing them after harvesting that I Googled. I've got the tomato plant hanging upside down in the garage b/c my grandma told me the green ones would ripen up if I did that. I've never heard of it before, but I figured it was worth a try. We'll see how it turns out.

All that work for a bucket full of potatoes and a bunch of carrots (we did get some corn earlier this month but the earwigs got most of it). At least they are organic and something we grew ourselves. Hopefully we'll get better results next year. :)