Bathroom update

I love Christmas break. Not only does it give us time to catch up with friends and family, but it also gives us unstructured time where we can shut out the world and focus on just us. Ok, baby Jesus and just us. 

We were off of school on Friday. Though I wasn't technically "ready" for Christmas [shopping, baking and wrapping were all still on my to-do list] I felt like Friday was a gift since I still had Saturday to take care of those preparations and I was off of work. So, I found myself laying awake in bed early Friday morning making a list of the things I could fit in to my extra 24 hours that were gifted to me.

It was a little bit like the book, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" only entitled "If you give a Jac a job." There was a leak in our bathroom faucet, so that was the first thing on the list for Friday. But while tearing apart the faucet, we noticed that the ceiling vent needed cleaned. When we pulled the vent down I realized the ceiling needed painted and I knew we had ceiling paint in the basement. If you're going to make the mess of painting the ceiling, we might as well paint the walls, right!? I had left over paint from the kitchen, so we decided to paint the bathroom walls. Since the bottom was a crazy dark purple color, it needed primed first. Once it was painted white, we realized how weird it is to have a chair rail in a bathroom. Where are the chairs? We decided to transform it into a little wainscoting. Nothing like a little bathroom renovation the first day of break!

Seriously though, what a difference a coat of paint can make! Hello clean, white ceilings!

Ugg...beige and plum. Definitely not my first color choices for a bathroom.

Fixed faucet, clean ceilings, fresh paint on the walls, and wainscoting for a little texture. Time for my favorite part...decorating!

Garden

This. This is our peaceful spot. We have a lot of work to do, but we are so thankful to our friends who gave us these beautiful art poles and told us how therapeutic gardening can be. Our backyard has become a beautiful oasis filled with butterflies, cardinals, and all signs that our baby boy is near us. 

New house

We're in! I can't explain what a blessing this move has been. It's nothing like I had planned and everything that we needed. Though it looks huge, we actually downsized. One less room to clean, one less shower to scrub and less yard to mow...how awesome. The neighborhood is wonderful. We have no neighbors behind us so we have an incredible sense of privacy, yet we have fantastic neighbors that are fun to hang out with and the girls love to play with. 

There are so many updates I can't wait to share here, but all in time. For right now, I want to remember the struggle that it was deciding if to move or not and the relief that it has been that we made the right decision. We loved our last house and neighborhood. It was painful to leave it. I felt like we were leaving behind friends, memories, moments. It is no secret that we were looking for a new house before we had Will. With crazy schedules and full-time jobs being close to our work and school was an important time saver that would allow us more time as a family. However, not knowing what might await us with Will; medical bills, not working full time and uncertainty kept us from pulling the trigger. Once Will was born we were thrilled we had the chance to completely immerse him into our lives. But after he left, the girls refused to go into his room and his cries still echoed in the halls. We couldn't bear to pack up his things. This move was much more than a convenience. It was a necessity. We had a reason to pack his things, beyond just the fact that he was gone. We had a reason to change our patterns, beyond just that we were adjusting. We had a reason to start new, and it cushioned the judgments that we were "moving on" so soon. 

What I love is that this new house is filled with Will. His pictures are on the walls, his presence can still be felt and we see him in the joy all around us. He has a garden of his very own, a tree in his honor and all of the same love we felt for him at the old house. When we moved, he came with us. It is so hard to explain, but while the Will that we lost came with us, the "us" that we lost did not. Our fears, our sleeplessness and nightmares, our triggers, those things didn't make the move. I no longer hear his cries and have to remind myself it's all in my head, it's not really him. Not once have I awoken standing in his room wondering where he is or what I'm doing in there. The girls don't fear any rooms in our house and are okay with being alone in their own space.  A simple change of pattern and simple change of space was all that was needed. 

Though the heartache will be carried for the rest of our days, the crippling moments that questioned reality seem to have left. It is peaceful here. This house has been such a blessing and we are so excited to continue making memories in our new space. 

Project: Fencing

When we were searching for a house, Mark was pretty sure he would like a fixer upper. He loves projects. We ended up moving to a house that was pretty much done in the realm of "fixing" but as I told him before we moved, I always have a project list for him. :)

Project #1 at the house is to fence in the back yard. Hazel is a pup ready to run and once she feels like she might get an ounce of freedom, it's off to the races for her. Our backyard is beautiful with lots of mature trees and landscaping, however, it has been neglected for a few years and has gotten pretty overgrown. Since we needed to establish a fence line in the back, we called in reinforcements and thankfully my dad brought his chainsaw and a really big trailer. He made quick work of helping us remove trees, limbs, bushes and anything else that was overgrown on the property line.

All cleared and ready to fence! I can't wait until Hazel and the girls can run around and play ball in the backyard without having to worry!

Making friends

Leaving our last neighborhood was almost as difficult as leaving our last house. We have made some incredible friends where we lived and though I had no doubts that the friendships would remain regardless of proximity, the girls were worried. Not only worried that they wouldn't get to see their friends in our old neighborhood enough but also worried that they wouldn't make any friends in our new neighborhood. 

The week we moved in was HOT. We were only in the house 5 days before we left on vacation and with it came a lot of unpacking, settling, repacking and preparing. It didn't leave much opportunity to meet new neighbors and given the heat, not too many people were out. The girls waited by the windows and bolted out the door any time they saw any signs of life under the age of 20. Grace was the most worried. Each day she volunteered to walk Hazel as, "no one can resist a cute puppy." One day she even returned home and asked if Norah would come walk Hazel with her as it would double her odds of someone saying hi to her since no one can resist, "a cute puppy and a cute kid." 5 days straight. Nothing but a few embarrassing encounters. [Grace will tell you a hilarious story of how she tried to say hi to someone but her shoelace was caught in her scooter so she couldn't get off...she came home changed shoes and grabbed her bike only to crash in front of the girl she was trying to befriend]. 

We left on vacation and though the girls loved the new house, they weren't sold on the new neighborhood. 15 days later we returned to find the same neighborhood waiting. They played outside all day hoping for someone to come by. No luck. Finally, I was out talking with the neighbor [who as luck would have it has a daughter Norah's age and they love to play together] and our sweet neighbor stopped a group of girls on their bikes and said, "that's Grace, she's new." Immediately they rode up our driveway, introduced themselves and asked the G&E to ride bikes. It was a huge weight off of this mama's heart.

Though I hate that they ride in the street and not a single one of them is wearing a helmet, it would be awfully hard not to see this huge group coming. Thankfully we live on a street where we only see a car every few hours.

Growing up in the country I never really had the chance to play with neighbors. However, I do think it made me a bit more of a "kids should spend the summer playing outside" type. I want my kids to come home dirty, climb trees, and be outside until the dark dictates otherwise. I'm excited for just one more reassurance that making this move was the right choice. I officially have no doubts. 

Our after dinner front porch view: couldn't ask for more. 

Furniture refinish

Since we didn’t have much else going on *end of school year, moving houses, leaving on vacation, enter sarcasm here* we decided to refinish our bedroom furniture. This furniture is out of the 80’s and though good quality, it was extremely dated with its huge brass pulls and dark wood. I have never really liked it, but bedroom furniture is crazy expensive. Since we were moving Mark said we should update it and buy new. He’s not much into shopping so his price points aren’t too realistic, so when I told him what that might cost we opted for $100 in paint and hardware to refinish the ones we had.

Before and after...it's amazing what some hardware can do. 

I bought a gripper paint as the tops of the dressers were shiny smooth and the laminate protector was not easily sanded. I used the orbital sander and stripped them down as much as I could and gave them a first coat of the gripper primer. It adhered like a dream. It was easy to use, offered pretty good coverage and dried quickly. We then coated them with Behr white paint that although offered “one coat coverage” we reapplied a good 4 times, sanding just a bit between each coat. We added a little hardware and *viola* we had a ‘new’ bedroom set with all the great quality of older furniture with a more updated and modern look. 

Dresser 2 before and after

Desk before and after.

We love how they turned out and we love how they look in our new bedroom in contrast to the dark grey wall. We did scrap the headboard for the bed as it didn't ever fit the bed well and no amount of paint was going to help that thing, but we purchased a new one that fits the rest of the furniture well. Pictures of the new house all put together coming soon. [Assuming we ever get this house put together]. ;)

Bless this house

We're in our new house!! We made the move this past weekend. Thanks to the many family members and friends that showed up to help, we were almost completely moved in just 4 hours...many hands make light work, for sure! We have a lot of work to do to get it all settled, (I'll post before and after pics soon) but in the meantime, first things first. Let's start this house off right! Fr. Vu came over Wednesday night and blessed the house. The girls really enjoyed taking ownership over blessing their rooms and touring Fr. Vu throughout the house. It was a great way to start off our new life in our new town!

"Should I bless your bed for good dreams too?!" 

Crossing the front of her door, Grace felt pretty good about having her room blessed. 

FSBO

We sold our last house FSBO and decided to sell this one the same. As much as I hate not supporting our realtor friends, it is much less stressful and less of a hassle for us to sell on our own. I like being in control of scheduling showings, not having to play phone tag with a "middle man" and, of course, keeping the extra commission in my pocket is an added bonus. Though we had multiple realtors assure us that we wouldn't be able to sell our house ourselves, we sold it quickly. It published it at midnight on Thursday, had our first showings on Saturday and accepted an offer with a second showing on Tuesday. We received multiple offers and it sold for list price. We couldn't have been happier that such a nice family bought it and that so many new memories await our beautiful home. 

It was one more reassurance that our choice to move is the right choice for our family. 

Though this picture still makes me sad. :(

Moving

We're moving. It's a source of stress like all moves are, but this seems bigger than that. We have been planning to move for 2 years. Last year we even loaded up a trailer of our things and planned to put an offer in on a house and then we found out the news about Will and decided best to control what stress we could and stay put. Now that we plan to move we aren't just leaving behind our house, we are leaving behind the place we first brought our children home. We brought 4 into this house and we are leaving with 3. There aren't really words to explain it, but its an added dimension that makes this move a bit more emotional than it would be otherwise. 

I am ready to leave this house. It's not a happy place for me anymore. However, I feel forever connected to it as well which makes me not want to leave it. Could I contradict myself any more? I could stay in this house forever provided that I worked full time. The house doesn't bother me so long as I'm not in it alone. When I'm here alone, the silence is deafening. I've always heard this phrase, but now I understand it too well. It's so quiet in the house that my ears ring and in the ringing I hear Will crying. I've never been more thankful for our crazy dog to add a little chaos to the afternoon.

Moving was a big decision and the last thing we wanted was to add more stress to the girls after they've had such a big year already. So, I asked Will for help. Am I crazy?! I asked him to help put my heart at ease by opening the doors we were supposed to walk through. Amazingly, we are moving to a beautiful home in the location we wanted that had been on the market for over a year. It's like it was waiting for us to be ready for it. The owner is incredible. He had me at, "I don't know why people make moving so stressful...it should be fun." We made the [very un-like us] decision to put an offer on it before we put our own house on the market. It went right through. We cleaned, painted, cleaned some more and decided to try to sell our house FSBO. We put it on the market and within the week we had 2 offers. It's so bitter-sweet. A month from today we will close the door on this house for the last time.  Though I'm so sad at the memories we leave behind here, I'm thankful that it seems to be the right move. 

Spring Break!

Week 10 brought Spring Break!! As many of our friends jet-set to fabulous tropical destinations, we were quite content to stay home and RELAX this week! We snuck a quick overnight in at Grand Harbor so the girls could swim a little, but other than that we had a relaxing week filled with YES! Play outside, yes. Have friends over, yes. Play games, yes. Paint, yes. It also gave us time to house shop! We lost the house that we were hoping for, but we're in no hurry to move; so we'll wait until the perfect house finds us. For the meantime, we're in the perfect house. 

A spring break filled with play dates...it doesn't get much better than that!

We're in!

The kitchen is one of my favorite parts. From here you can see the pantry on the left, and the entrance from the garage straight ahead. On the right there is another door that you can't see that is the laundry room and a half bath.


From the kitchen sink you can basically see the whole rest of the house. To the right is the dining room and sliders to the patio and back yard. In front is the living room, you can see part of the fireplace and the TV above it. Then if you look really far left (you can't see it in the picture) you can see down the hallway to the bedrooms and Grace's bathroom. Grace loves running down the hall and being able to see me wherever I go...and I love being able to see her wherever she might go! :)
Here is Grace's bathroom. The other rooms are basically still full of boxes and things, but once we get more settled, I'll send more pictures!

The inside!

Here is the inside of our house...it is starting to take shape. You are standing in the living room looking at the stairs to go to the basement. To the left is the kitchen/dining area. Straight ahead on the left is the pantry and directly behind the stairwell is the laundry room. The walkway between those two rooms is a door into the garage...hence the 2 very large openings letting all the light in! :)

This is standing in the kitchen looking into the living room. The framed out box will soon be the fireplace and the whole for the TV. The room behind the fireplace is the master bedroom.


This is looking from the living room through the wall into all of the bedrooms. On the right is the master bedroom, on the other side of the hallway, there are 2 other bedrooms.

Its enclosed!

So it is all enclosed and the garage doors are on! We hit a minor glitch as they used the wrong shingles, so they had to re-shingle it all, but they are moving full speed ahead now.

Here is the back side of the house. L-R: dining room door, 3 living room windows and then the window in the master bedroom. We are thinking about adding a deck off of the back of the dining room doors.

Its almost a real house!

Well, our house survived all of the storms...thank goodness!

Now that they have it almost all enclosed, I am looking forward to

them starting to work on the inside.

We have walls!

Now that the walls are up it is starting to finally feel

like we are making progress. The window all the way

to the left will be Grace's big-girl room, and the window next to

it will be a toy room. The pad out front is a three car garage,

without walls! :)

Mark, Grace and I in the basement. There will be a rec room,

2 bedrooms, a bathroom and a storage area down there.

Updates on the new house

Pouring the footings.















Digging the hole.














The footings all poured.

And so it begins...

They have finally started digging the foundation for the new house. It is scheduled to be framed by the 25th of June. Our current house is still sale pending...the first one fell through. We are hopeful that it will go through this time and we are still on track to stay in this house until the next one is built in September. It makes me nervous to have such a long time until closing, but what a blessing to not have to move twice.

SOLD

Well, we put our house on the market FSBO to see what kind of action we could get. It allowed us the whole summer to sell our house before we had to move into our new one. Little did we know we would be so lucky! In 4 days we had 5 offers. Needless to say, we have sold our house. The best part is, we don't have to find temporary housing to live in until ours is built. We have settled on a closing date at the end of September, so we can spend our summer playing here and slowly packing to get ready to move into our new house once it is built mid-September!

To build or not to build?

A few months ago Grace really became a mover and a shaker. With her crawling all over the house, we decided we had better remove the railing leading to the stairs and put in a half wall so we didn't have to worry about any tumbles through the railing. As much as we like our house and the location where we live, the layout of our house allows for a lot of space, but very choppy rooms and a lot of stairs. We decided when we were ready to move, we wanted an open floor plan without steps! After some non-chalant searching, we walked through a model house that was in the neighborhood where 2 of our friends just built. We fell in love with the model. Though I never thought we would want to build a house (because I know what we want is out there somewhere) we couldn't pass up this wonderful opportunity to build the house we want in the best neighborhood we could ever ask for. Hence, we considered building a house. Things fell into place so perfectly we really wondered if we could be so blessed as to have all the signs that we were doing the right thing. Every time we have questioned if this was the right move something great has happened that reassured us this must be meant to be... i.e. we have a great daycare for Grace. When I told our daycare provider we may be moving, she shocked us with the news that they were moving too. I was so afraid that it was going to be too far away to commute to when we found out that they are moving into the development directly behind where we are building! So many little things like this have happened that I feel we must be making the right choice.