It has been awhile......

I guess time flies when you are busy.... School started since I last posted and here are our cute girls ready to go on their first day. I love having them all with me all day (Maddie is in all day kindergarten). They all love school, have great teachers, and work really hard to do well.
Around the house we have made some progress since the end of August.... slow, but steady right??? We are getting sick of always working on the house, but it is starting to pay off. I have a working kitchen - it is not all finished, but it works and we can cook. It was starting to get cold in the mornings having to get our cereal outside so we were all grateful for the chance to stay inside to get our milk, and it is really nice using real dishes and not plastic and paper for everything! The small things...Here is the picture of my hood above my range. Yes, it is blue and I love the way it turned out. You can kind of see in the corners of the pictures the cream which is the rest of my cabinets color. They don't have doors or shelves yet, but they will be soon (at least the shelves!)

My double ovens that work.... I have had lots of people come in and laugh that I have two ovens, I'm not really known for my cooking abilities and don't use one oven very often, but there are two reasons - 1. the looks and 2. I am having Thanksgiving at my house this year so I'm am sure I will use both of them on Thanksgiving and Christmas!

We have an island in the middle of the kitchen and Ryan built the countertop out of cherry. I love having the island and I like the look that cherry gave the kitchen with all of my painted cabinets. I'll have to take some pictures a little farther out now so the full effect can be seen.

And this last weekend was fall break for us so we had 2 days off school. We had planned to go to Vernal for the weekend, but ended up just working on the house all weekend. We painted all of the moldings on the main floor (pain) and then moved our bed upstairs into our bedroom, moved some furniture out of my sisters shed into the house, I painted the piano black, and then the girls and I got a few decorations out. We still have quite a ways to go, but the house is liveable now and we can be upstairs - I was starting to feel claustraphobic in the basement!!! Here is our living room with a little bit of furniture - nothing on the walls yet - but that will come. You can still see all the dust on the furniture. My niece Whitney and I washed our wood floors 4 times in one day (Friday) and I woke up on Saturday and they were dusty again..... it will take awhile to get rid of all the dust.

Now it is on to the bathrooms upstairs and back to the outside to get it finished up before winter sets in.

The Red Farm House

I have always described this house as the little red brick house on Ryan's parents' farm and I wanted to keep it as a red house so we painted the siding red. I love the color and how it looks. We saw a house in North Ogden that was a great red color (red is kind of scary to pick out sometimes) and Alan Smith jumped out of the car and asked the owners what color they used. They were very nice and even went and got the paint bucket so I could right down exactly the color and paint formula. As you can tell the entire house is not finished, but we decided to paint as we go along so that it isn't quite as overwhelming of a job to paint the entire exterior of the house.
Sheetrock is all finished and the inside is starting to look like a house again. I painted the ceilings while Ryan was at scout camp - I rolled it all and my arm was killing my by the time I finished - Ryan got home about 20 minutes later. Pretty good timing on his part! Then we spent the next couple of days and have all the walls finished up. We just have a few touch ups left to do. I was going to do a bunch of fun different colors, but ended up just getting it all painted and I'll go back after we get moved in and make it more interesting. We were able to even uncover the piano this week. Morgan has been practicing up at my work because it was such a hassle getting to our piano.
The concrete is finished - Yeah - I have even been parking in the garage the last few nights! Above is the walkway to the back basement patio with stairs that go back up to the back yard. Our deck stairs will come to that landing as well. Below is the driveway. The girls have been loving it. They have been riding their bikes everyday. We have never had a driveway that they could ride on. In Perry it was way to steep, and this one was small before so they are getting good use of all the concrete!
Yesterday we started the wood floors. This is the west wall of the big room, we probably got about half of the room finished. Morgan was walking around saying, "it is so nice to have a smooth floor", kind of sad when your kids have to walk around holes in your floor and always wear shoes if they are inside! We will hopefully get the floors finished up this week. Ryan is kind of pulled in different directions at this point because everything that needs to be done he has to do it, the siding, the floors, and mainly the kitchen. So we just kind of hop back and forth between each of them and decided that everything is progress. Our goal is to have a working kitchen by October 1st (Morgan's b-day)! Hopefully that works!!

Progress Today

I told Ryan this evening that today has been the first time in quite awhile that I have been semi excited about the house. It has gotten a little overwhelming and just plain old the last few weeks - which is probably why I haven't posted any pictures. You can only be so excited about constant messes and dust. But today we had some fun progress....the first wall of siding went up. Yes it is the smallest wall with siding, but it was at least started!

The cement guys showed up and they will be pouring the back patio and stairs in the morning. I have been the most anxious for our cement to go in... I am hoping it will at least help to clean up the look of the outside of the house.
This is just a picture of the first piece of siding going up... I was excited! Ryan thought I was dumb! The sheetrock was also stocked today so the sheetrockers will be here in the morning to get started on that. The last of the really dusty things to do. I am excited for tomorrow!
And then just to add to the busy-ness around here I decided to take a new job last week. I will now be teaching 2nd grade this coming school year. I am excited, but have a ton of work to do between now and August 28th!

The House

The wall between the old and the new coming down. This was probably the worst day of this whole adventure so far... it was beyond dirty and dusty. Ryan and I were both black from the mortar on the bricks and all the dust. It took 4 trailor loads to the dump just to get rid of all the stuff we ripped out. I don't think I have ever been as tired as I was at the end of this day.
This is our current living area in the basement. We have a blanket hung at the bottom of the stairs to try to keep some of the dust out and we have one chair and two camp chairs that fit in the space. Ryan eventually pulled out his foam mat he uses for camping so he can lay down sometimes to watch tv. We were able to finally get the thermostat for the air conditioner temporarily moved into the basement so that we can use the air conditioner - it got a little warm for awhile.
This is standing at our front door looking straight back. The opening to the right has been framed in for our bedroom that will be on the other side of that wall. Morgan has to uncover the piano to do her practicing - she gets annoyed each day when I remind her to practice.
This is standing by the back wall of the addition looking towards the front of the house.
Our kitchen will be in that back corner. The walls were all insulated this last Tuesday. Those are my ovens sitting in the middle of the floor - We have had them for a year now just moving closer and closer to where they will be permanently!

A Few Fun July Activities

The Stewart family went to Island Park together for 3 days in July and we had a great time. It has been awhile since we have been able to do this and I'm glad we were able to get together. We went fishing one morning and actually caught a few fish. Ryan caught one and Morgan caught two. She was so excited.
While playing in the River by Mack's Inn. Ryan and the girls in the kayak. The were actually pretty good at cruzin around!
The whole family (minus Kathy - she wasn't able to come) at Mesa Falls. It was a beautiful waterfall.
A bunch of little girls trying to raft. They pretty much just turned in circles. Between my sisters and I we have 10 girls from 9 years old and down and only one 6 year old boy....He is a really good sport to hang out with all the girls!
The 6 year old's plus one 8 year old

We had bought a bunch of plastic while our roof was off the house incase it started raining and we decided to turn it into a slip and slide in the backyard on one of the hot afternoons. The girls had a blast and played for hours - I'm afraid it wasn't to kind to the lawn....
Here is Maddie with her new "ruffle pants" I think these are my favorite project I made for the girls this summer.
Fourth of July activities at Grandma's house. We watched the parade and then walked down to the Perry Park to play all the games. Here all the little cousins after the parade!
Our kitchen was taken out on July 3rd so since then - this is what I have been cooking on.. a grill and a camp chef. We have them out on our new back deck along with our fridge, freezer, a table for the toaster and all the paper products, and our table to eat. It has been quite the adventure. I can't say we have had very many good meals - but we are not starving. I have to admit it is getting a little old. We are going on one month without a kitchen and I'm guessing it will be at least one more....

It's been awhile.....

I realize it has been awhile since I posted and I have lots of pictures - but we have been under a little construction around here and things aren't quite as convenent as they usually are.

My kitchen came out just over two weeks ago, I now have my "kitchen" on our back (unfinished) deck. It consists of our microwave on a table, our camp chef, our grill, a box with some food in it and lots of paper goods. The fridge is still plugged in in the front of the house so we at least can use it. If I need water I have to use the outside spicket, and I try to use as few dishes as possible that have to be washed. If I do have to wash any dishes, my sweet sister in law lets me come next door and use her sink. I never realized how often you use a kitchen sink. I also really miss my kitchen counter - I have no where to walk in and put anything down...old habits are hard to break. Maybe after this I will not have a pile of stuff on my counter.

This last week the wall between the old and the new came down. It was a very long day and Ryan and I were both wondering what we were thinking when we decided to do this. Everything is dirty and dusty and not easy to get around. But we got through the week and we think we are on the downhill side of the project. So this is where we are....

* Roof is at a manageable amount to finish up - love the shape of it and the color!
* We are living in the basement - a little cozy, but we love each other right!!
* Exterior cement should go in this week - I am very excited for this to help clean up the outside a bit.
* Plumbers, electricians, and HVAC should all finish up this week.
* The framer (Ryan) should finish this week also

It is all starting to take shape and I am so excited to put everything back together! I'll post pictures as soon as I figure out how!