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We have lived in our new house for 2 whole weeks now! It's very exciting. We really love having our own place. I LOVE how the floors turned out. Ross did an excellent job. With some help from friends, he did all of the living room, the hallway and then hired someone to finish the kitchen. We hired someone to put in all new carpet in the bedrooms and family room. It is very soft and worthy of lots of play and wrestling on. Ethan loves to wrestle his daddy.

What else... I love having a garage to pull into. Love having a fenced yard to send Ethan out to... Love the big shady trees all over our yard. But that's also a bit of a con since it makes our house a little bit darker-- hard to get nice naturally lit pictures indoors.

Our happy little family in front of our new house. Ethan's holding a stick:

Lovely new floors and baseboards. Still no furniture yet in our living room. We have quite a bit of furniture to get ahold of to make our house complete. You can consider all of these photos after and before pictures. After paint and floors, before all decorating and other renovations. Ross will eventually be building slender shelves that will designate the front entry. (Next to the front door, and then next to the opening on the right. That opening leads to our family room.)

Our lonely dining room table that we bought on Craigslist. I'm thinking I might paint it a fun color. I'm not sure yet. And I'm collecting chairs to use for it as well. Sorry about the poor photo quality.

Here are the continued floors into the kitchen. The paint is also new as well. It looks lime green in the picture. It's not quite that intense in real life. We are planning on adding one counter and cabinet and painting them all white. As well as replacing the sink, oven (as cool as it is), and counter-tops.

Ross is building a kitchen nook around the window you see where the table is. A bench, and shelves or cabinet up the sides of the windows. One thing about this kitchen is there is NOT much storage at all. We have no idea where they kept their broom and mop.

Here is the kids room. I still need to put all art and everything up. I like the color though. Check out that floofy fan! Pretty awesome.

This closet is really huge. It's probably 3 1/2 ft deep and 6 1/2 ft long. But it's not really practical for two small children and all of their toys. This last weekend Ross started working on building lots of shelves in it, so I will be posting pictures in a couple of weeks of the finished organized closet.

I'm really happy. It's starting to feel like home. There is still a giant mess in the basement, where all of our unpacked and random stuff is. At least we have a place out of the way to put all of it.

Ross only has 5 more weeks of school for his Masters to go and he is done for GOOD!! He is gone Monday-Thursday until 9:00pm until then. So all the little projects are taking a while. I can not wait for him to be done with school! And to have dinner with him on a regular basis. That will force me to make a meal more often, instead of just grilled cheese.

Kids in stripes

So I've been thinking that it's been a really long time since I've taken pictures of my kids! Shame. Shame on me!

I have to say that one of the most rewarding things about being a mother of two is seeing them love and interact with each other. The first time Ethan reached over and helped Leah get one of her toys just melted my heart. Ethan is always very concerned about Leah and where she is, and is very gracious at sharing his (precious) cars. Because Leah is definitely more mobile now, she is able to be involved with Ethan and likes to be where he is. She's a lot more aggressive than Ethan is. It kinda makes me laugh that she pushes and runs over Ethan more than Ethan does her. It has not been a piece of cake having kids this close together, but I'm so glad we did. It's getting easier every day and I know they will have a great friendship and relationship. (I'm sure with a lot of quarreling and whining in between.)







Oh, and FYI Leah will now eat baby food! She eats both store-bought and home-made and likes to take bites of what we're having. I really don't know what clicked, I tried every other day or so and all of a sudden she acted really excited when I got it out. Maybe she just got hungry enough!

Phase 2: Pulling my hair out because I'm so sick of painting

We have gotten a heck of a lot done over the last few weeks; I need to document! All of the rooms are now painted. That one little sentence does not seem to do justice to all the work that went into accomplishing it. It was a LOT of painting. Also, what people don't tell you, is that it's not the removing the wallpaper that is the tricky part, it's preparing the wall afterward. There were two places in the house where wall paper had been put straight onto the drywall. When we removed it, little bits of the drywall came off and of course lots of glue was left behind. So Ross had to skim-coat the entire wall with joint compound and then sand it and then we had to prime it, and then we could paint. It makes for a long process.

We had help from family and friends, and now all that is left is the trim and the doors. Painting trim is pretty annoying, and now I've run out of steam, so I hope I can get it done before the carpet is in. Ross and his dad have also

- Put new locks and bolts in all 3 doors
- Cleaned out the gutters
- Removed ceramic tile from the entryway (took ALL day)
- Ripped up all of the old carpet
- Removed the old banister and baseboards and
- Started installing the wood (bamboo) floors

It's looking SO GOOD! I'm so excited to be there permanently. This living in both places business isn't too fun. We're *hoping* that we can move in this weekend, but that depends on whether Ross can get the floors installed and whether our order for carpet has come in.

Yay for new houses!!

The living room. Ross is stepping on the tarp that
goes on under the floors, not the wood:

Before, with "schmaltzy" banister:

After:
Before:
After:

Ethan's room. I painted it a sagey grey green:

Master Bath. Hasn't been touched.
We'll just leave that door closed:

Master Bedroom. All painted except the darn trim.
I did start on the window I guess:

Sorry this is boring! That's all we got going on right now.