We're Here!

Praise the Lord, we're back in our house. It's wonderful to be back home! The girls were SOOO excited to sleep in their own beds. We're still getting unpacked. (I foolishly thought we'd be unpacked by now - I really underestimated the time it would take to declutter while unpacking and the time that life takes away from unpacking.) :) It'll come though and mean while we're rejoicing to be home and loving the updated features of our house. God is so good. Thanks for your prayers!



We are getting to buy new living room and dining room furniture - so that's fun.



Here are some photos for you.




This was our family at the 4th of July at my parents lake cabin. Notice J & her cousin in the 2nd photo. They are so cute together. After the picture taking they took off impromptu dancing together in the yard. (Didn't get any photos of that though.)



Here's a good look at the kitchen cabinet doors. Did I mention I love my new kitchen? :)



Our den - hopefully it'll be decorated by furniture soon rather than boxes & a mattress. :)



The living room & dining room. What a job - those two big bookcases are about full and most of the boxes on the floor are boxes of books. I was walking around one day this week and kept thinking "Hello - my name's Tina and I'm a bookaholic." :) I hear it's common among us homeschoolers, right?



Again, the kitchen. It's pretty much in order - may I mention again I love my new kitchen! :)




Benny's settled right back into life at home. I think he's just glad that we're now at one home and not divided between two places! (By the way, turned in the rental keys yesterday. Yeah!)

Have a great weekend!

We're Moving Back Home

Just a quick note to let you know it's finally here! The house is finished and it's time for us to move back home! The girls and I have packed and moved a few boxes the last couple days, we've gotten the front bathroom all set up and all the kitchen shelves & drawers lined. Today we plan to celebrate the 4th at the lake with my family. Tomorrow we've rented a moving truck and have some friends coming over to help us move the big stuff.

Meanwhile, here are a couple more photos of our cabinet doors in the kitchen & our new kitchen & dining room light fixtures. Oh - here's a photo of our bench seat too. (I don't think you were able to see it well before.) Actually, as I uploaded the photos I realized that I must not have taken a photo of the cabinet doors. Thought I had - anyway, you can see the doors under the window seat and that's the style (just bigger) or our cabinet doors.






Happy 4th of July!

Latest House Pics

Wednesday night after the puppet performance, we went to the house to write on the floor since we knew carpet & hardwood would be going down in the morning. Here's what our family wrote in the hallway where we were sheltered during the tornado.


Here's in J's and Ra's room.




K wrote the same reference with her signature under the carpet in her room.

A previous post showed what L (& K) wrote in L room.

Here's our new backsplash & kitchen color.





Here's our new dining room color & hardwood floor.



Here's our den with the tile at the back door & carpet in the rest of the den.


Our bedroom -


K's bedroom -



L's bedroom -


R & J's bedroom -


the hallway -


Our new front door (and a very excited J who's glad her house is starting to be more home-like) :) -


We love the hardwood & carpet. The girls are actually excited to go over there now - esp. since we're hoping to have electricity (and air conditioning - yeah!) this weekend or the beginning of next week. I didn't realize how much more homelike it would feel when the carpet went down. J summed it up as she looked at me and asked "Do I not have to worry about walking on nails?" I realized yep, that's it. It's beginning to look more like a home & less like a construction site. We're guessing that we'll be moving in one of the first two weeks of July.

Have a great weekend!

House Photos

Finally, some photos of the progress on our house.

All the carpet's being replaced in the house, so one day we set the kids loose with markers and told them to enjoy. Here are some of the results:

Home Sweet Home just past our entry way and welcome at the hallway entrance.




Welcome to K's room and all kinds of art work in R & J's room.

L's carpet was already up so she wrote Psalm 34:4 on her floor to go under her carpet: "I sought the Lord and He answered me. He delivered me from all my fears." K also wrote a sweet "I love L" on her floor.

Okay, here's the rest of the house. For quite a while, this was our den. That's our trim on the floor there. (For the record, it got put on last week.) :)

Here's R & J's room. The photo doesn't show it very well but it's a really pretty light blue.

Here's L's room. It's a beautiful bright blue.

K wanted to leave her room the way it's already painted since it's so perfect for her.

All the girls have magentic paint on the front of their bedroom doors (painted over with white so it looks good) and chalkboard paint on the back of their doors so they can enjoy. :)






Both bathrooms and the hallway are this beige color. (Again, hard to tell in the photo but it's pretty.) :)


Our contractors are great. They used to have a cabinet shop and custom built our cabinets here in the garage. Here are photos of our cabinets in the different stages of being made & finished, sitting in our living room, being installed, & finally installed like they are today. I'm really excited about the changes. We now have a little bar the kids can pull bar stools up to and a window seat, which I love! Also they laid the tile Friday & Saturday, so you can see that in the last photos.


And here's the front of the house with new siding & shutters.

That's all folks. :) The painters are scheduled for today to paint the front of the house. I'm about to head over there to paint the touch ups in the back of the house. The carpet & hard wood is supposed to come in the end of the week. (Thus we're going crazy trying to get as much done as possible before the flooring.) Please pray for us. All this working on the house is really getting to the kids. Their fun meter has been met and they're really fed up with it.

Have a great week.

The House This Week :)

We have new windows throughout the house. Yeah!



It' so nice to have light in the house after 2 months of plywood over some of them.

Also, L now has sheet rock instead of panneling.


The sheetrock finishers are still working. (They're also resurfacing our bathrooms where we removed the original 1978 wallpaper - along with some of the wall.) Hopefully they'll be done and the window trim inside finished the first half of next week - then we'll be able to start painting in the back of the house. (They're painting the front of the house and we're doing the back. The part we're doing wasn't really damaged but needed updating and now is the perfect time.)
From what I understand, they'll start building the cabinets soon. Also, the doors are here (not sure when they get put on) and the siding should be pretty soon.
I'll try to post pictures as the house progresses. I'm really excited that soon we'll start seeing the fun parts inside (the new kitchen, etc.) :)

Our house has a new roof. Thought you guys might appreciate an after tornado picture versus a picture we took today. There's still a good bit to do but, as you can see, it's coming along. :)

The science fair projects went well. K & La had a great time trying out different insulations to see what works best. R & S had fun finding out if different substance are acids or bases. J & I found out that science experiments don't always work. :) They put out jelly (& later chips) on plates and then some on plates with different things on it to find out what ants don't like. No ants would participate - so we figure they must not like the plates we used and/or the jelly. (One chip fell off and they liked it.) :) L will do her experiment the beginning of next week. (She's testing to see if a plastic bag on your hand will keep your hand warmer than a mitten.)

L went to a Word of Life competition with the church and did very well. She competed with the puppet/drama team and also in the poetry competition and the Bible Quiz Bowl. She'll/the team will continue on to nationals in July with everything but the drama. She had a great time.

Have a wonderful time of worship tomorrow.