Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas to all!

Thank you to everyone for cards, gifts, calls, and wishes to us. We had a wonderful holiday break, were overly spoiled, and extremely stuffed. Here are some pictures of our busy week.

Hope your Christmas was just as good!

Post-Christmas Update

Merry one-day post Christmas to all!!

We headed out to the house today to check on the progress of things. I realize it's been awhile since our last post - LOTS of progress since then!! The busy builders have been moving along. We now have siding going up, roof tarp, rough plumbing done, water lines in place, windows all in. Basically, the house has all the bones - it's just adding the layers that comes next. We bumped into the roofing guys on our way in - apparently, we'll have pretty black shingles done by Monday. It's all pretty exciting!!!

Here are pics taken from today. Click on each so you can see the detail (sorry, I took as many as I could from all angles). Hopefully, you can see which room is which.

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! I'll post another post above to share some of the pics we took of our VERY spoiled day yesterday. Love to Gretchen's family back east - I miss you guys!

Standing in garage nook

Standing in kitchen nook/seat

Family Room - Looking upstairs, kitchen below

Standing in office - kitchen to left

Top of landing: L room to left, E room to right, bonus straight ahead

Standing at landing, overlooking family room

Sunnyside Christmas Parade!

Ryan and I were treated to a kid-free night while Grandma and Aunt Amy took the kids to the annual Sunnyside Lighted Christmas parade. It's a really cute display of floats, tractors, trucks, horse carriages, etc., all decorated cutsey-Christmas with lots of lights. It was FREEZING cold out, but the kids were troopers. Everyone bundled up and watched the show - it looked like fun!!

House Update

We have windows!! Of course, they're in a pile in the front office, but hey - they're here and ready to go. The guys were working on building the stairs on Friday morning when we stopped in, and by yesterday afternoon, they were up - along with almost all of the second floor framing. It's pretty cool - the rooms are really taking shape!! We should have the trusses up by next week and then the roof will follow.

Upstairs hallway/walkover

Family room

Our bedroom

The Kiddos

Thought I'd share some pictures of the kiddos taken just recently. They're so funny!
Ethan is doing well in preschool - he LOVES going to his school and shares his wealth of knowledge from that day. Here's a few pictures from his trip to the pumpkin patch and from their Halloween party (he's the Transformer Bumblebee on the end):

Leah is getting a lot more verbal; we're working on getting her words right and having her communicate better. She's getting there...definitely has a set of lungs. And while we aren't pushing it, we're working more and more on the potty training - yeaaaaah, what fun!! Shoot me now. The girl loves to streak; one minute you get her dressed and two seconds later, she's darting through the kitchen in her birthday outfit.

Speaking of birthday outfits, here's a pic I snapped with Leah sporting her oh-so-fashionable Dora earrings she got from Aunt Jessie for her birthday. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture quick enough of her wearing the matching crown, princess wand, and birthday sash - but she LOVES the earrings! Can't you tell???

Framing Takes Shape

Things are moving right along with the new house; we have framing in place and even walls in others! We're hoping to get out this weekend to snap some recent pictures of how it's looking now - it's actually further along than when these were taken, just last
week (11-21-09):