Relax during our "summer" break?  Nah, not us.

We are finally laying the laminate wood flooring that we have had in our garage for MONTHS.

Thankfully we have the help of some wonderful friends.  They made it go very fast and I would even say enjoyable.

This is just a preview.  The final product will be posted soon.

the HOUSE: Katelyns' room

Here are the before pictures of Kate's room. Very boring. When we found out that we were having a girl I insisted on white furniture. So feminine, so pretty against a soft pink, lavender, yellow, or green. But not a yucky off-white.

Disney has a color called Cinderella's Glass Slipper. So beautiful, wispy and fresh. The perfect color for her fairy garden room.

We have painted her room, but I am not showing them yet because we are not done. We are adding a strip in Moonlight Waltz. And I still have to do a few other things to it. But soon.

Okay, a quick preview.

The picture does not do the color justice. You will just have to believe me.

So sweet, isn't she?

the HOUSE: Joshua's room

One beautiful and wonderful day J's room was clean. Very clean (I did help a little). So I took a moment to get some before pictures. Truthfully I have no idea when the after pics will come, but I do have a plan for his room.

From the door.

From the window.


From the closet door.

The closet. Not too great on cleanliness, I know. I took these picture to show what great closets we have in this house. They are quite large and hold a lot of things Perfect for people with kids! I am convinced that the architect of this home plan had a bigger than average family. There is room for everything and more!

take a peak at my house

We are in the house. Not only are we in it, but I am unpacking the things that I have not unpacked in years. The things that we had no space for in our previous homes. It is so exciting!

We are all loving the house. The space, the yard, the features that we have never had before, like a laundry room!

I took some picture to share of our lower lever. The house looks bland because the previous owner painted all the walls this very boring cream before they listed it. These will also be my "before" pictures.



I am standing at the edge of the living room looking into my kitchen and dining room. I love how big the space is and how much room there is to move around. 'Cause as you can see, my table is BIG.


The rest of my kitchen/dining area. Can you see the island? It is great to have that extra seating when we have people over! And check out the under-cabinet lighting!

I have turned around and am looking into the living room.

Now I am near the front door showing you the whole living area. I love that I have the tv above the fireplace. To me, it is very HGTV. Plus less to dust!!
This is the office area that I have created behind the living area. I love that I have room for bookcases again. I am still filling them up!

This is the view sitting at the computer desk. Have you noticed all the windows? There is also the one behind me that I didn't get this time.

I hope that you liked your mini-tour. I take more pictures of the rest of the house soon!

Extreme Home Makeover -- NOT!

I am going to make an attempt to make a very long story short.

On Wednesday night the babysitter called me at work and said that there was water in our kitchen. Coming from under the stove. FREAK OUT!!! I was stuck at work, and there is water on my floor? I called Brandon who was on a break. He left work and headed home to this scene.

Thankfully we are renting our house and so we were able to call the rental company. They called a plumber for us, but not until Thursday morning. We did not have water at all on Wednesday night.

The plumbers come in on Thursday morning and they say, "you have a leak." Yeah, well I figured that one out. First they investigate the bathroom behind the oven. Nice, huh? So what do you call a bathroom without a toilet?

"No water coming from there. It must be under the slab," they say. NIGHTMARE! So they bring in the jackhammer and begin to break up the slab. Did you know that a 13 month old will sleep through a jackhammer in her home when she is tired enough?

First they put a hole under my stove. Nothing. "Let's try the hallway." So move there and find wet dirt, but no leak, or pipes for that fact. "Maybe it is coming from the master bedroom bath, let's look there." NOOOO!!! I didn't scream the words out loud, I wanted to pack up and move to a fresh new house. But it was quitting time and so they saved that mess until the next day. Up to Rio Rancho we go (we stayed with my in-laws).

On Friday they came and tore apart my bedroom and found nothing.

Then they moved back to the hallway where they found a tunnel that they water had created. But still no pipes. They went and made another hole in my bedroom, where they thought they water was coming from. Then they went into the 1/2 bath. There they tore up the tile looking for the water. Still nothing. Finally they went back to the hole where they found the tunnel. They enlarged it and dug deeper.

And sure enough, pipes. Leaking ones at that. I am not kidding when I say that about 10 minutes after they found it they had it repaired. Two days of digging for this! And that brings us to the end of day 2.

And the hallway in front of my bedroom and the 1/2 bath (bedroom is on the left, bath on the right) looked like this. So we go back to Rio Rancho where the house is clean and has running water.

Now let's count here... we have one hole in the kitchen, 2 in the hallway, one in the 1/2 bath, and 2 in my bedroom. They cut drywall in the 1/2 bathroom and in the hall closet looking for the water. There is, yes, 8 holes that are either in my floor or in the walls of my house. Not to mention MUD MUD MUD and DUST DUST DUST, EVERYWHERE!

On Saturday the plumbers came back to cement up the holes. The above picture is of the hallway that was tore up. We cleanned it the best we could and this is what we live with now. Hopefully soon the rental company will send people in to repair the walls, tile, and carpet. The positive end to all of this is that WE DO NOT OWN THIS HOUSE!!!!

How was your weekend?

Only when Brandon is gone

Although I have never mentioned it before, I feel that recent events warrant me to talk about the irony of certain events. For the last several months Brandon has been working two audits shifts at a local hotel. For those of you who are unfamiliar with hotels, this is the graveyard shift, starting at 11pm. So for two night a week it is me, the kids, and the dog in the house. And it is the only two nights a week ANYTHING will happen. For example, when Eric has the stomach flu and was up all night, Brandon was at work. When Josh was up all night with an ear infection, the same. And that is just a bit of it. So this last Friday night when Brandon was at work and of course I had a problem. Katie got me up at 1:30am and this is what I walked into...

This is my very wet kitchen, I am not sure if you can see the several inches of standing water on the floor, but believe me, it was there. And it was not only in my kitchen, but also in my living room. Because it is just our luck to NOT have the water confine itself into one room.

As you can see, we had a VERY large mess on our hands. It took several hours of a wet/dry shop vac to get it passable and the a few more hours of a Bissel carpet cleaner, a lot of fans, and a lot of time to get it dry. Today, Sunday, we are back into our living room. The carpet is mostly dry, with just one little spot that it damp. "What caused this mess?" you ask?

This lovely dishwasher. The water hose had come off of it. I had turned it on before I went to bed around 11:30. So there were two hours of the water running everywhere before Katie got me up. Thank you Katie for sleeping so bad! If you had slept longer who knows what we might have had on our hands!

Here are a few more pictures of what happened that night! I am happy to report that the only apparent damage was to the back of a picture that I had yet to hang. Other than that everything was fine. I also wanted to share that Brandon did work again last night and all was well.

Easter Craft

Josh made this at pre-school. Too cute!

And here he is sitting at our new kitchen table! This one will actually allow our family to sit together!

He wants you to know that he loves his Diego pj's

Sold

We have been wanting to sell our house for for a while now. It has become to small... 5 people and a dog in 1250 sq ft. But, we have a lot of work to do to make it "sell-able." We were aiming to put it on the market in the spring. In an odd series of events our house has just sold! We are amazed, he took it as is! So we are able to walk away from it. We are very excited. So at this busy holiday season we are going to add one more thing. We are going to be moving on the 21st. We are unsure of where, as we don't have time to find another house to buy, but we are excited to have something bigger. I will update again with where we end up.