And the fun starts here...

So we closed on our house on Friday...finally.  I'll tell you it was, at times, NOT going to happen.  God directed this one (as if He doesn't direct ALL of them?!?) and we really have to trust Him that this will all turn out good in the end.  

The story we have, and Dee, if I am wrong, please fill in the blanks in a comment, but this house was sold a few years ago on contract to a gentleman (perhaps with his wife) and his business went under and he couldn't afford the house any longer.  Since he defaulted on his contract, the house was taken back by the original owners and they wanted to sell it again.  When they came to see the house (they live out of state) they found the house in this unlivable condition.

Apparently, while the house was being purchased by the contract sale man, he basically gutted the house to remodel it, without the permission of the people he was buying the house from, and he made many changes to the house.  Then, before he could complete the renovation, he went bankrupt.  When the owners came in town and saw the condition of their home (of over 14 years), they were devastated, to say the least.  The house was put on the market in "as is" condition, and the rest is history.

The sun was shining right into my camera lens, so this isn't the best shot, but good enough.

Home sweet unfinished home.  Be patient with us.  We will take good care of you!

When you walk in the front door, you see the stairs.  You can tell that though now they come straight down, they used to have a little landing and then turn to the right.  I think we will change that back, just for the character of it.  Tim is NOT in favor of the time it will take, or the inconvenience it may be to have to get furniture up a turned stairway, but I guess the inconvenience doesn't really matter to me.  I like character.

This is the room to the right which is the living room, I guess.  I am not sure if we will use it as a living room or if we will close off that opening to the dining room you see there and make the living room into an office...or maybe we will put french doors there instead.  I don't know.  We don't really need a formal living room.  We don't have furniture for it. 

This is the family room, and it is to the left when you walk in the house.  The mantel is torn off, as you can see.  The crown molding is torn off as well as the brick for the fire place and a couple of little half walls that divide the family room from the eating area.  This is one of the only rooms that has original flooring in it, but in case anyone was wondering, he tore out the hardwood that was on this main level.  I mean, why not.  He was on a role, after all.

The kitchen is among the most needy rooms, as you can see.  From what we heard, the refrigerator water line was leaking and ended up flooding the basement, but that must be why the drywall is torn out of the kitchen.  Nothing explains why the kitchen is torn out of the kitchen.

This is the eating area where it looks as if maybe some part of a wall was torn out or starting to be put back in, I don't know.

I guess the good news in all of this is, that with our laughable budget (others were calling for more that twice what we are allowing for), everything that the guy tore out of the house is in the garage...including the brick for the fireplace.  ????.

I am excited about this space.  This is the door to the back yard.  There is a nice walk in closet across from it and the rest of the space is the laundry room.  It is basically huge.  Coming from my tiny room that barely fit my stacked appliances and a sink, this is paradise!  C'mon laundry.  Hit me with your best shot.  I can run circles around you in there.  Literally.

This powder room is in decent condition.  It is a touch dated, but only needs flooring and paint to be in full working order.  We can update later!

This is back in the family room again and I am not sure whether the guy was building the faux beams or if he was tearing them out.  I am totally keeping them and going to wrap them in wood, perhaps a rough sawn cedar.

This picture begins the journey to the basement...where all the magic happened.

Those are the cabinets from the kitchenette.  Unfortunately they are mold-ridden and I don't know that we can salvage them.

I believe off to the left is where the kitchenette used to be.  There is some storage area behind it all.

There is a full bathroom down here and thankfully this guy was kind and left the tile floor unscathed.  I don't know why.  He was on a role, right?  This bathroom has a nice huge closet for extra storage.  I was trying to get Tim to use it as his office/recording studio/ but for some reason he turned me down.  Hmm.

This is the entrance to the rather large and unusual master bedroom.  We are still trying to figure out what to do with it.  I believe it measures something like 17x28.  It's nuts.  Our wimpy furniture is going to get so lost in here.  Notice the ceiling fan with no blades.  They are on the floor, in case you were wondering.  Most of the screws are there too.

The whole upstairs, except for the girls' room, is covered in linoleum.  And not just one pattern either.  He was creative.  The word on that is the guy's wife couldn't handle the dust, so they removed the carpet and put this in.  Don't they realize that at least carpet would hold the dust and not let it fly around as you walk by?

 

As for the bathroom, this is the original single bowl sink, I think, with a walk in closet, but "Red Green" took care of that for us...oh, and that lovely flooring you see is more white linoleum.  The plumber comes on Wednesday and I will see then if we can get our whirlpool tub in here.  It is going to be hard to configure all this, and since the master closet was removed to make room for the tub, we have to build that closet somewhere, I think, but at least there is space in the bathroom.

This is out of our room and down the hallway.  to the left right by that railing is the girls' room.

This is the girls' room.  It is nice and big and has a walk in closet.  Even the carpet, which I don't care for in the girls' room, is in almost perfect shape.  It makes me wonder what was in the rest of the upstairs and makes me groan all the more that he removed it all.

It looks as though he did remodel the kids' bathroom upstairs, even giving them an elongated toilet bowl, which I would have wanted.

But our guy removed the 5 foot vanity and replaced it with this single, miniature sink of a deal.  Again, ????.

This is what I would call the bonus room space, but it used to be divided into two rooms, and you can see the line on the right where the wall used to be.  We are putting that wall back up and the area you can see will be Levi and Titus' room.  The rest will be Elijah's room.  At least it looks like the guy built in some closets for this space, something we would have had to think about and now we don't.  There are some things that were thought out...I think.

This is Elijah's portion of the room.  Again, you can see where the wall was, to the left.

We are really grateful that the girls' room has the flooring because when we started the work the other day, the kids have a room they can go to and romp and play their DS's and not get filthy!  Thank you, God!

Here's our big daddy building that wall in the boys' room.  We have progress already!  Yay.

So helpful we are...

 

Two of our boys really like being shirtless.  They like to show off their skinny little bodies.  Titus is one of them.  The skinny little thing that he is, he's lucky his shorts aren't falling off.

Well, if anyone reading this knows of an HGTV show or a DIY Network show that would love nothing more than to invade my space and help me out, PLEASE OH PLEASE call them up and turn us in.  In the meantime, we are going to tool around and make something happen.  Stay tuned for other updates.  Just pray that they have the opportunity to start happening quickly.  We started work on Saturday.  Tim got sick on Sunday and when dad went to go work on Monday night, the power was turned off.  Sigh.

Hip Hip Hooray!

School is back in session!  It's not that I was tired of the kids being at home or anything.  It was just time.  There had been one too many fighting, bored, whiny, tired, irritable (did I say fighting?) kids.  It was either school started or I was going for the duct tape.  One way or another, I was going to get through a day without playing referee.  This was just the day! 

Every year at PCS we take this bench picture.  Titus is our new addition this year.  He is going to preschool, praise God!  If it weren't for the "after 3 kids, the rest are free" rule, I'd be putting on the ol' black and white and my whistle for one more year. 

Elijahboy is a 4th grader this year.  Wow!  He is growing so fast and we are so proud of the young man he is becoming.  Only a couple years before Jr High.

Levi has made it to the 2nd grade where I know his kindness is abounding already.  He is very quick to help his teacher in anything that she asks.  Can I get some of that at home?

Eden is in 1st grade and is a girlie girl indeed who loves all things sparkly.  For her first day of school outfit, she had a sparkly skirt, a sparkly shirt and even sparkly flip flops.  She is quite interested in how she looks...she is only 6 years old for Pete's sake.  We are in for it later on, I tell ya!

Our sweet Tidyboy started preschool this year and can I say that he was all but begging me to go every day.  On the Saturday and Sunday before school started, he got dressed in his first day of school clothes in absolute anticipation of THE day.  He was so cute too.  He had his backpack packed (the only thing that fits in it is his lunchbox) and was rip roarin' and ready to go.

 

He took no time at all to jump in to playing with the other kids in his class.  He kissed me goodbye, I think, and ran off.  Now it's a good thing I am not a cryer or we'd have had a problem he was off so fast.  I am glad for him.  He needed the challenge for so long.  Something to keep him busy was just the ticket and we have one.  He goes 3 full days a week and wants to go all 5.  I am thinking on it.

Well, now that the kiddos are in school, at least most of them are, I am able to get going on the house.  There is much to do.  Sigh.  I will post the starting pictures tomorrow sometime to give you all a baseline of what we are up against.  I will go into more detail about it tomorrow.  For now, congrats to all of you who have your kids back in school once again.  Summer is just the perfect length, isn't it? Ah yes!

I have a few words for you...

"Great Stuff" (if you don't know what it is, google it...)

Dried

Ouch

Happy Birthday!!!

Today is a very special day in our family and I wanted to mark that occasion by shouting a "Happy Birthday" to my brother, John Paul.  He is an old man of 34.  Yes, family, you heard right.  JP is 34 years old today.

Now, more importantly (sorry JP), it is our Micah's birthday.  This precious 2 year old went to bed last night and woke up a fabulous 3 year old.

 I didn't get to wake her up myself due to the crazy sleeping arrangements we have here, but I did get to sing to her and so I officially have to say, "Happy birthday, Micah Joy Joy (as I so lovingly call her).  We all love you so very much."

A little over 3 years ago, I was flailing in my decision of whether I wanted more kids or not.  Tim, I must say, was done at 2 kids, but by done I mean that he only wanted 2 kids but as each additional one "accidentally" came along he found he had a new "favorite."  I always wanted 5 or 6 kids and here we were with 4 beautiful children and I wasn't so sure I wanted another one, so for the time being, we were going to be done. That lasted a whole month when I found out I was pregnant again.  Tim sure is potent for a guy wanting only 2 kids.  ;-)  That's my man!

At any rate, 9 months later we have another beautiful baby to add to the mix.  Here's a quick story many of  you don't know.  We still didn't have a name for her even after she was born because we just couldn't agree on anything.  I wanted Avery or Micah and Tim, as in all pregnancies, wanted Chloe.  We tried to start over and scratch both those names.  We had (trying to stick with the Bible names which, oddly enough I never wanted to do but ended up LOVING the names) Lydia and Phoebe and some other Bible names that I can't remember right now, and then for kicks I threw in Eleanor and Evelyn to complete our pattern of every other kid starting with "E".  I wish I would have done that, by the way.  I am such a symmetrical person that it almost bugs me now...at any rate, I finally said forget it and wrote down Chloe on one piece of paper and Micah on another.  Resigning myself to the fact that she could be called Chloe, I folded the papers up and called my nurse into the room.  I put one paper in each of my hands and said "Pick one".  She did and that's how Micah became Micah.  Yes, I did write Chloe on the other paper.  No, I didn't lift the "Micah" hand any higher or shake it at all to gain a favorable (to me) outcome.  ;-)

3 years later I sit here and say that though I'm still not so sure I want to be done, even after Micah, I am so glad that our "unplanned" baby girl came into the world as God had planned out long ago.  Micah has, in the past months, really come alive and into her own personality.  She is such a spitfire.  I suspect that word just may sum her up, but I'll add more anyway.  She has been a little comedienne since she could crawl, which I never knew was possible, and she is so tenderhearted and compassionate and impish and sassy (usually in a good way, if that's possible) and goofy and at times, as the "baby" of five, she's a bit bossy.  She's always been very talkative and at that, very wordy, and she's girly and tomboyish all at the same time, and boy if she just isn't the culmination of me at various stages in my life, only better.  I anticipate every year with her as I am even now seeing her features mature and her personality take off.  Thank you, God, for placing her in our care. 

Now for a few pictures.  I know only a mother can see the difference in pictures, but here are some of her personalities, the most impish of them not captured...oh well.

I'm so cute and I'm not going to sit still for a picture.  Nanny nanny boo boo.

Let's see, will she get mad if I don't sit still for a picture?

 Maybe, just maybe, if I sit still for a picture, I can go play with the other kids.  I'm thinking on it.

Fine, here is your bloomin' picture.  Take it quick.  The smile won't hold.

For the record, this will be the infamous yearbook photo smile.  Ugh.  At least she isn't showing only her front two teeth like she usually does in forced smiles.  Bucky.

Happy Birthday, honey.

Flood Aftermath

I know this is late, but I have been busy.  Here are the pictures from after the great flood.  I don't know that the pictures really show how crazy things were, but they do give a fairly good idea, if nothing else.  Phil and Shelley, I guess these are for you.  Can you imagine?

For those who don't know, this is the end of the lane and as you can see the road is now in the lane.  That ridge in the lane must have been at least a foot high.

It is endlessly amazing to me the power of water!  These are several inches deep and wide.

This is the view as you look to the left out of the lane.  This is the road that flooded out in 30 minutes time.

Granddad's mailbox made it just fine...but the road.  Holy smokes.

That is about 2 feet high.

Only on a farm do people congregate at the impassable road for hours on end.  It was a remarkable event that had just happened.

You can see that the river is still flooded, but at least not rushing the road away any longer.  The top of the grass there is a good 2-3 feet from where the water still is.  A LOT of road washed away.

This is the field to the left of the end of the lane.  It should be all green with deer tracks.  Now it's just about a parking lot.  I am guessing it will stay that way.  Too bad.

Still that field area.

Another shot of the road off to the left of the lane.

Across the street off to the right, but for some reason I didn't get the shot of the road leading the other way.  It was NOTHING like the one to the left.  I guess it just wasn't picture worthy.  Nothing really happened to the road that way.

The road is going to need a whole lot of gravel to fill the road back up to the top of the grass.  On the bright side, the lane has a nice wide entrance now.