What we do to pass time......

So last week hubby was at the store pricing shingles for the roof. We didn't need to replace the roof yet. We were told we had about 2-3 years when we had the house inspected before buying it, before we needed to replace the roof. But in 2-3 years we will have a child prepping for college and a toddler getting ready for pre-school, and possibly another newborn. So we figured while we had the money and time, we would go ahead and do it. Well hubby found some great ones at the big orange box on sale. 30 years, architectural design, slate in color. Gorgeous!

He had them delivered (roof top of course, cause it was free, and having to lug these heavy shingles up ourselves would just have been silly), got a couple of his brothers and a member of our church to come help and 3 days later, they were done! Well, the first day, his brother Joe came for 4-5 hours, the second day it was just Jacob, and the third day is when Joe came again, John came and the member from our church came. Seriously, the help was soooo appreciated. And I love LOVE how it looks now. As Tammy commented, our house actually looks newer, just by reshingling the roof. :D Next project for the outside of the house, repainting. :D

Above: Before (taken May 5, 2010)

And now, for the big reveal (that is, if you aren't on my Facebook and haven't already seen it)

The after (taken June 25, 2010)

We also bought a new dishwasher. The old one was leaking so we decided to buy a new one. We spent a little more than I would have liked, but we opted to get the one we would want when we redo our kitchen next year. Figured it would save money rather than having to get a new one now for a couple hundred and then spend more later to get what we actually want. Plus, it was on sale so we're happy.

Today is July 1st. I never thought July would come. July is the month Baby Emily is due. It seems surreal honestly. We have waited so long for this, and now it is almost here. We have had a couple of baby showers for family. My mom did one for her side, Jacob's sister-in-law did one for Jacob's side of the family and there is still 1 more before the baby comes. Our birth mom K and my stepmom, are throwing us one next week. My friend Annette offered to throw us one after the baby comes. She is in the middle of a move right now so when we talked, we decided after Emily comes would be better. We will probably do an open house as well but we haven't decided that yet. Since we are also doing an open house when the adoption is finalized and we are able to bless her and go to the temple, we may wait on that.

Later today we have a dr. appt. that we are going to. Hubby is coming with so that he can hear Emily's heartbeat in person for the first time. This is also the appt. where they do the tests to make sure all is good for a regular delivery, and I think they will start checking K as well to see if she is starting to dialate. K is 36 weeks today which means we have 28 days left till her due date. 4 weeks (give or take depending on if the baby comes early or late of course). Or as my friend Brittany would say, 4 Saturday's (it always seems less when you count in Saturday's). YAY!!!

Finished!

Jacob finished taking the deck out and leveling the soil (of course remembering to slope it away from the house for drainage - thank you home inspection! That was part of our home inspection when we bought our house, the sellers needed to fix a small area near the house that wasn't sloped properly for drainage-which we were totally willing to fix, but the VA inspector wouldn't let us. But if it weren't for the inspection letting us know what we would need to do in that instance, we would have had no clue we needed to do that). He built a sprinkler as well out of PVC pipe and sprinkler heads. This way we can water all of it at once. So the new yard has been de-decked (HAHA!), all the cement footings for the deck have been taken out, the area has been cleaned, the soil has been prepped, fertilized, seeded and watered (alot!). In doing all this work he uncovered a flagstone looking (only it's not flagstone) walkway that goes from the patio to the area in front of Jacob's shop. So funny because I was thinking of adding one! lol This is a heavily shaded area so we made sure to get grass seed made for shaded areas. Hopefully we will end up with a nice, lawn back there. Wish us luck! ;o)

Jacob is setting up the sprinkler that he made. You can't see the walkway very well because it's so dark outside and Jacob is in the way. ;o) Jacob also trimmed the Ivy on the fence back a little. In a couple of weeks hopefully he will be able to get it all out.

Today (Sunday) we went to church, and then it was over to my brother Ben's house for a get together. It was really fun. I will post pictures in the next few days.

Bye Bye Deck! A.K.A. what Jacob has been doing on Spring Break.

When we moved into our house the one thing we really had reservations about was the size of our back yard. The side yards, and the front yard are really a good size. But the back yard is small. Like from the house to the fence is around 14 feet or so. Tiny! Ecspecially considering what we're used to. Our backyard in New Mexico was massive! It was bigger then our house which was 2,000 sq feet. We miss that yard. So does our dog! But I digress.

We set out to find a way to make our back yard more user friendly. After all, when we bought this house we felt it was the one for us. And now that we live here, we know it is. If you recall from previous pictures, our back yard looked like this before we moved in (this is from the listing photos before we bought the house):

Incidentally, the green astroturf carpeting is no longer on the cement. Now it is just a nice cement patio. But as you can see, the deck takes up most of the back yard, making it really small, and really chopped up, and really, not user friendly, and definately not kid friendly. So, this week is spring break for Jacob and he has spent his time working on projects, this being one of them:
Good bye deck! It opens up the backyard soooo much! We are working on getting this all cleaned up and we will get some grass growing here instead of the deck. So by the time our little one is old enough to be playing back here, it will be nice and ready for her. :D We are also going to get rid of all the Ivy you see growing on the fence. It is actually from the neighbors yard and is overgrown into our yard. They want it gone too so we are all going to get rid of it. And that will open up this area even more!
In other news, "K" is 22 weeks along. Only 18 more weeks to go! She has an appt. on the 6th that I am going up for. I can't wait! We started a blog for her. We wanted to anyway, so that after the baby is born we can post pictures and updates for her to see. Yes, she will be very involved in the baby's life, but she does live 2 hours away, so she won't be able to see the baby every day. So inbetween visits, she will get to see lots and lots of pictures. The blog is private so only she can see. We started it early so "K" could see all the preparations that we are making for Baby Girl.

Birthday Celebration and Surprise!

Monday was hubby's birthday but he had school until 1:30 and then had to work that evening, so instead, we celebrated on Sunday. Tammy wanted to make him dinner. She said, "I don't have any money to get him a gift, so this is my gift to him." Trust me babe, that dinner meant more to him than any store bought gift could have. And it was YUMMY!!! She made steak with roasted veggies (potatoes, carrots, and asapargus) on the side.

Tammy making the yummy steak! It was a flank steak with red pepper, swiss cheese and spinach all rolled together. Sooo good!

And the yummy yeggies!

The steak she did on the George Foreman grill that we got Jacob for Christmas, and the veggies were roasted in the oven.

I asked Jacob what kind of a cake he wanted, he wanted an ice cream cake, so I went to Baskin Robbins and got one.

Cake from Baskin Robbins.

Silly man!

I know he likes Chocolate Cake and this Peanut Butter Chocolate cake was the only one they had that was a chocolate cake that didn't have Pecans or some other nut. And since I am allergic to nuts Jacob won't eat them either. All in all it was a great evening.

For my gift to him, I redid his office. But I had to wait till this weekend since he was away for drill for the Reserves and I wanted it to be a surprise. And boy was he ever surprised! My mom and Tammy helped as well, and I was grateful! It was quite the task, but the look on his face when he saw it, it's well worth it. He loves it!

Office before. It's in the basement, so it was kind of dark and dirty looking. We all hated going down there. I wanted to make it a nice room where Jacob could relax and study.

And the after. Here you can see his desk and TV. The TV is for him to watch movies, shows, or play games while he takes a break from the stresses of studying. The picture hanging on the cabinet door directly in front of his desk is a Greg Olsen print that his mom got him for his birthday. I also hung next to it a family picture from our recent photo shoot and picture of the Provo Temple. He has his bulletin board and calender hanging right there for easy referrence. the rug he got in Afghanistan. And I had my mom make the curtains to seperate this room from the food storage room.

And here is his reading/game corner. My mom and I brought the chair, affectionately known as "Jacob's ugly orange chair" down and set it in the corner where he can relax or play video games. I put his Lord of the Rings posters up and had my mom make a throw to go over his chair.

He was thrilled when he saw it! And we are just thrilled that he is thrilled!

Happy Birthday Honey! I love you!

Moving update

I have been working to get us ready to move. Jacob has been a huge help! It's so nice to have him here for this move. One of the times we moved he was deployed so I did that entire move myself. Because I have been packing so much, I have been so tired today that I ended up taking a nap and now here it is almost 2a.m and I'm still wide awake. But on the upside, we are living in just a few rooms in a virtually empty house. In just a week and a half we will be loading our truck. In just a little under 2 weeks we will be arriving at our new house and unloading. Then, the adventure of unpacking, renovating, and redecorating begins. *grin*

Thanks to my mom, some of the renovating has already begun. We are sending her the money and she is going to spruce things up for us by painting and redoing some of the floors. She has already pulled up the carpet in Tammy's Room and in the room we are putting together for when we are chosen by a birthmom and have a baby placed with us. Underneath those ugly pink carpets were hardwood floors. We are going to cover them with laminate hardwoord though. For 2 reasons, 1, we don't want my mom to have to go to the trouble of refinishing the floors. She would need to sand them down and then restain and revarnish them. That is a lot of work. Frankly, we already feel bad that she is doing what she doing and don't feel good about asking her to do more. Also something you have to understand about my mom is that she thrives on having projects to do. She renovated her entire house top to bottom by herself. Now that she is done with her house she has been itching for a new project. So she asked if it was o.k. if she tackled these projects so that when we get there we can just move right in. The other reason we are covering these with laminate hardwood floors is that our dog doesn't like actual hardwood. He is o.k. with laminate, but the hardwood for some reason he is afraid to walk on.

We aren't redoing the flooring in the family room or the living room yet. Those will be carpet and we need to be there to pick it out. So we'll do that later down the road. Once we get there we will refinish the cabinets in the kitchen. Why you ask? Well, cause they now look like this:

You can't see it too well, but the cabinets, while in good shape structually are scruffed up. So we are just going to sand them and restain them. We are also going to redo the countertops because tile countertops aren't what you want when you decorate cakes and bake a lot. So those will be replaced too. And since we know how to do the work ourselves we just need the supplies. Wish us luck!

It's Official!! We're Homeowners!!!

Remember this post where I told you about the house that we found, put and offer in on and got our offer accepted? Well, Monday, the sellers signed the papers and the papers were overnighted to us (since we are still in New Mexico). Tuesday we received the papers, signed them, had them notorized (thank goodness for JAG who notorizes for free to military), and overnighted them back to the title company. Wednesday (yesterday) we got a call that the papers had been recorded and funded and it was official!! We are homeowners!!

Our house is going to take work to get it to where we want it to be. We know that. That is actually what we wanted. We wanted a home that we could make our own. We didn't want to pay $20K more for upgrades that someone else did that may not be quite our tastes. The same upgrades that we could do ourselves for half that, and they would be our tastes. *big grin* We're sooooo excited! My mom went on the walkthrough on Monday and went over again on Tuesday to take more pictures. So here are some photos from that.

The front of our house. It needs a good power washing to get all the dirt that collects over the years off the house. We are going to spruce up the landscaping and are considering doing maybe some flower boxes under those two front upper windows you see. They are too thin to me and need some help, so some simple window boxes should do the trick.

This is our living room. This room will be painted a pretty taupe color, will have the flooring changed out (eventually, for now it will be covered with my gorgeous burgundy rug that Jacob got me while he was deployed to Afghanistan). This room will have the window coverings changes and will have my piano, my antiques and some furniture that my mom is recovering for us.

In the last post I showed you another view of the kitchen. So here is this view. We are going to refinish the cabinets, replace the countertops and backsplash and paint. In a few years we will redo the whole kitchen.
I will share more pictures later. For now I just wanted to share the good news!! I need to get some more packing and cleaning done. We are over halfway packed and in fact all 3 bedrooms are packed, empty and cleaned out with the doors closed. We're making progress. Just 2 weeks till we move!!!