Home Repairs and Fun

We are mostly moved into our new house and we are so excited! Two days after we moved in we had our new furnace and A/C installed. Our Realtor has a brother with his own company and he got us a great deal on the two together so we didn't have to deal with that blasted swamp cooler. Sweet! A lot of houses out here have swamp coolers and we had to replace the broken furnace anyway, it was a good way to get the central air as well. For two days they were here drilling and fixing and I was un-packing and dealing with a puking two year old. She screamed and cried and luckily missed the light carpet. Our furnace is now installed and it looks something like this:


I have opened our utility closet door more than once just to see the "pretty" furnace. The basement is cold no matter what the temperature is upstairs, but it is so nice not to have my kitchen be 90 degrees. Just a quick button push away and it all cools down. Now that we have A/C it was time to put some weather stripping on our door. The front door had an inch where from the basement you could look right outside and see who is knocking on the door. A nice feature, but not energy efficient. Robert said he feels very manly in using his tools and fixing the weather stripping. It looks great too!

I worked for days on putting brown contact paper in the cupboards because the old 70's paper would not come off. I finished that and loaded my cupboards with dishes. I was so excited though to finally use one of these- brand new too- after 4 years without one!

And then I was amazed when I used this without going outside, to the next stairwell, down the stairs, inserting 50 cents, setting my timer and coming back 46 minutes later. Instead I just stayed right here and turned it on. Beautiful!



The girls toys are all over the playroom and they really need some shelving for organization so I went to Target and bought this:

Perhaps it is not a bad shelf normally, but the parts did NOT fit and it was 2-3 hours of nightmarish fighting, screaming, pulling out hair until I gave up, shoved it in a box and will soon be taking it right back to Target. If anyone has any easy shelf ideas, let me know. I hated this one. We were tempted to buy one of these today:

We didn't, but we may. We have horrible reseption. We went from free cable to no cable- can't bare to actually pay for it. Now we are down to 4-5 channels total. Its been interesting missing out on my TLC and HGTV. Oh, well. More time to fix up my house!

Our living room has a solitary college dorm chair. College dorm because I got it for free from a room mate when I was in college 7 years ago. It is falling apart and is pretty ugly, but as of right now it is the only thing in there. So we went out today to find a couch. I forgot that I have distant relative friends who work at a local furniture store, but when I walked in it was nice to see familiar faces. I liked a couch that was white and was told it also comes in brown and my nice relative also gave me a friends and family discount. The microfiber couch that was already very discounted, was cut down even more. One of the best deals we have found all over town. In about 2-4 weeks we should be getting something like this delivered to our door, but in brown of course and a little different from this one.


We have also been over run with WEEDS. This home was vacant for awhile so the weeds have taken over. Tonight Robert sprayed them all and hopefully we should see their demise soon. It will be nice when we can get down into the lawn care and I can trim back my rose bushes too. I have to brag about my awesome husband who has been AMAZING at each home repair, cleaning, un- packing, etc. thing to do with this house. He has helped me every step of the way and I am SO impressed by him and have to tell everyone that I married the most awesome guy EVER! Next time we buy a house I will know for sure that it is complete when I have one of these with me:

And sorry I got the last one and there is no sharing AND I am the lucky one because I got the best model there is. Moving, home repairs and buying furniture. Its all fun and we have been happily busy doing it all.

House

These are some pictures of the house. I debated on showing them before it is ready, but I really want everyone to see it. Its a nice house and we are excited.

Dining room area- light is old and I would like to update it eventually. We bought this fridge and I really like it, even though our other appliances are white. Its a nice fridge.

The ladder is so we could change some light bulbs.

Stove and dishwasher are brand new.



His and hers closets in the master bedroom.

Upstairs bathroom- the bathtub has a pipe we are working on with a friend who knows a lot more than we do about this stuff.

Front door. We think painting the outside of it red would be fun.

There is some of the house so far. We have lots of plans- some of them include a new furnace and roof, but that is STILL fun. I also plan to paint even though the walls are newly painted. I can't handle stark white walls too much longer!

Big Day

This is the day we made the biggest purchase we have ever made since we have been married. Robert's sister Lisa had our Realtor when she bought her house and she took a picture so to keep up with her we decided to as well. Our lender said in 14 years she has never had it done, well first time for everything! That's sparkling cider over by us, they give you a choice of "real" bubbly or the fruit stuff. We did go home and celebrate it was a very good day. Scary too, but good.

Emily's Enchanted Play

Since September Emily has been going to a singing/dancing/drama class that was doing a version of the movie Enchanted. It was really fun to watch them dance and Lindsey loved going to "singing class". She even knows a lot of the songs and loves to dance to them too. Last week Emily performed in her play she played Perla the mouse opposite 3 year old Gus-Gus. She memorized her lines that went: Perla: "Oh, look! We can use this pine cone for the statues nose. Its perfect! Gus-Gus: "But what about breakfast?" Perla: "We already had breakfast." Gus-Gus: "What about second breakfast?" Perla: "I don't think they know about second breakfast." Gus-Gus: "Well I'm hungry, I'm so hungry I could eat a whole elephant." Both Emily and Gus were quite overstimulated and got easily distracted doing their lines, especially with the audience. But they each got at least half of their lines right. She also got to be a part of the dragon at the end! She loved that.

They had two days of performance. One was at a local elementary school and the other was for family and friends in a Jr. High auditorium. Emily was very good at her dances and singing and she loved being able to wear a costume. It was a great play and she was happy to get a trophy at the end. It was a fun year of singing and dancing and now we are trying to decide what we will do next time.

Lindsey hanging out with me while we wait for the first performance at the elementary school.

Emily is on the front row wearing her dragon costume.

Blurry, but Emily is the second to left in braids.

Very blurry, but Emily is the mouse looking up, second to left.

Happy Mother's Day

I want to share the love and respect I have for the Mothers in my life.

My Mom. She has given so much for my as a child and sacrificed a great deal. She made the homes we lived in beautiful. She worked so hard with very little compensation for her efforts. She sacrificed her time to teach us and she taught us about the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am who I am because of her efforts to show me the way and I appreciate her greatly for these things. Thank you and I love you Mom!

My Mother-in-law. Few people can do what she does and has done through out her life. I have never seen a person with more work ethic than she has. She works and serves every second of her life. She sacrifices things for herself in order to give to those around her. She has tremendous faith and perseverance because she loves the Lord and her neighbor more than herself. She is a great example of Christ like service and she supports anyone who comes to her with a problem. She has unwavering faith in the Lord and I admire her for all she has done for me and my family when times have been hard. And even to just be there when I needed a shoulder to cry on. Thank you Arlene, you are amazing and I love you!

We Bought Our House

It is done and final. I am very stressed and busy right now and kind of freaking out too. Its so final and so real now that I don't know what to do. Tomorrow we are going to clean everything inside and out. I need to make it feel more livable and we have a great friend who is helping us with a lot of stuff to get it ready. I am very nervous and Robert will tell you he has probably never seen me so panicked. But I know that this is where the Lord wants us. I feel peaceful when I am there, but when I leave the doubts are so overwhelming its hard to get through it. Prayers are appreciated that we will be able to get things done in a week and feel good about this house. There is no going back now!