Break

I am visiting my parent's home in Michigan now.  It is a wonderful, much needed break.  The fresh air and water takes my breath away every time.  I just love it so.

Target practice with grandpa's pellet guns and bike rides to the park.

My blog hasn't met Asher yet.  He's such a sweetie.  Sometime I'll go back and fill in all of his story.  Asher Steven is 6 months old now and is an absolute delight.  He's the apple of everyone's eye around here.

His eyes are soo blue.  Such a contrast to Judah's dark brown ones.  I love all the colors. Judah is 4 now.  Age 4 means that he's a big kid-no more sucking the thumb.  Ratz.   He's doing great with it, though. 

Joshies is 8 already.  He's a hoot.  Micah is getting sooo big.  He's 10 now and is growing up soo fast. 

And Sophia, my little girl, is 12 this summer.  Unbelievable.

I'm blessed.  So thankful for mom and dad to let me come and relax and blog once again.

Leaps Behind

I guess I don't need to say how crazy life has been- hence the last post being in August.  I'll try to recap these last several months.

September 2011....

The basement's foundation is now fixed so, although still unfinished, our things can finally be moved back downstairs.  Mess, mess, and more mess.  But kids are having a fun time.  Here Josh is making some shelves out of drywall scraps.

Such determination.

Our remodeling has turned into a large can of worms.  For example, we would take off the carpet to see the subflooring needed replacing.  This month we tore into the kitchen.  I should have taken a good 'before' picture.  You can sort of see the kitchen in the background here.

We wanted to extend the kitchen towards the family room for a little extra space.  Here are some demolition pictures.  

The cupboards are down, now it's time for the ceiling to come down...

Because of my pregnant state, we had a teenager from church helped us.  So thankful for Matt!  What a job.  He tore down all the ceiling.  Mess. Mess. Mess.

I just shivered remembering soon after the ceiling was down, Sophia pulled a mouse sketeton from my hair.  Anyone who knows me well, knows that mice are my least favorite creatures.  I was in too great of shock to take a picture of that one.

For the next several weeks we replaced drywall.  We made a new place for the fridge and opened up the doorframe between the dining room and kitchen.  When we first moved here, every room had doors.  The dining room, kitchen, even hallways.  We took the doors off right away, but have always wanted to open up the area even more.

Now I had to be creative and cook without a kitchen. 

It's a Boy!

We found out this month that another boy will be added to the family!  The expected date of his arrival is late December.  I brought all 4 kids with me to the ultrasound.  Micah was the most excited because he was 'alive and healthy'!  Josh was a little quiet- he was excited, but he wanted a sister for Sophie.  Sophie was dissapointed, but that has mostly worn off .  Judah saw that Mommy was right, there really was a baby in her tummy!  We celebrated afterwards by going to a park and getting some icecream.  So thankful for the little blessings God has given me. 

Under Construction

We have been doing this all summer:

Just after the new year, we received word that my husband's job would likely be transferred to another location.  For 3 months we started looking for houses there and began preparing.  In the late spring, some unforeseen circumstances happened at work and he was asked to stay.  As soon as we found out we were staying, literally that evening, my husband took a sledge hammer and started knocking down walls in our basement.  We have been wanting to remodel our home for some time now.  We have seen traces of mold in our basement and with Judah's asthma, we knew we needed to take care of that.  We began the planning process to remodel before the word about the job transfer.  When we found out it was likely, all plans came to a stop until we knew for sure what was happening (we would do just what we needed to do to sell the house-if we moved, not all we wanted to do).  So, when we knew we were staying, we started the remodeling process back up. It has been a can of worms.  It's been a series of peeling up one layer and seeing the bottom layer needs work.  My husband has been doing all the construction (in our college summers, he worked for a builder and therefore had learned so much), my dad has helped us with the electrical, so we've only needed to hire help with the plumbing so far.  I've heard remodeling is such a mess and it is.  There is a layer of drywall dust on every surface in the house.  But we're little by little getting somewhere and that part is exciting.  The basement, which started as the main focus, now has became the last.  It is unfinished now, but free from mold and mildew.  The new focus has been to bring the laundry from the basement to the 2nd floor and redo the master bathroom on the main floor (since they're right on top of each other they needed to be done simultaneously).  We also decided to expand our kitchen a bit.  So, maybe, by the time baby arrives this bit of construction will be over.  In the meantime, it's a family affair- mixing dope, sweeping with the shop vac and bagging up garbage.  Trying not to be overwhelmed- especially as school is starting up again next week!  God is teaching me many lessons through all of this for sure.

Two Summer Birthdays

Joshua turned 7 this summer! We dearly love this little boy-- he's so affectionate and yet so serious! He's my little thinker. We 're so thankful for all 7 years we've had with him so far.

Legos are a favorite around here right now. His cake was made by cutting into blocks with halves of marshmallows on it. Super easy!

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Sophia turned 11 a couple weeks after Josh. She's turned into quite a young lady and is getting so tall. I'm thankful for her passion towards music, reading and writing. I'm looking forward to see what this next school year will bring for her as she'll be in the 6th grade already!

Playing Catch Up Again

Whew. Looking back over the last several months I'm trying to decide what to post first. I guess I should back up to April. Today, I promised my grandmother I would post pictures of the murals

I've been working on and realized I haven't posted the most recent one. Earlier I painted the 50s children with pendants, then the next two were free standing canvases. The first was a baseball fence scene with hidden pictures and then the second was from an old photo of Roger Maris. This one was so fun because it was so different from the rest being in monotone. It also felt like the paint flew quickly for this one.

The shot below shows the size of the canvas. The living room was the only place I could fit the canvases. They were too large to take upstairs or downstairs to paint in an out-of-the-way spot. So, my kids were a bit disappointed that having many friends over to play was not happening much these days.

So fun to be painting again!

Judah turns 3!!!

It's hard to believe my little boy turned 3! Judah is such a delight.



Who knows who he's calling.

We love our little man!