Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! We love you all. Hope everyone had a fabulous Easter!

Did you know?

I went to lunch today with one of my oldest and bestest friends (anyone know her name...she is not a member of the church...) and when I ordered my steak (we were at Outback!! YUM!!) I ordered it medium rare. My bestest friend was shocked..."I didn't know you ordered you steak medium rare!" Me "Yeah, I realized that I like it better that way and it was okay to have a rare steak."

It was just one of those weird things that I would have assumed she knew about me...Then I started to wonder, am I weird. When your bestest friend is surprised by something, it kind of makes you think about it....

Anyone else a weirdo out there?

My new kitchen

Before

During

After

Coming soon

Anyone want to see pictures of my house?!? I know I want to put some on...I just can't find any batteries at my house and the camera is dead. I promise that pictures will be coming soon....very soon.... We have carpet and hard wood. The house is looking fabulous! We have granite coming Friday. And possibly a move in date of next weekend. I will try and get pictures up this week. Just wanted to let everyone know that it is getting closer!

Progress!!! I NEED OPINIONS!!

So, we are thinking about not putting our island back in...
we are considering putting a peninsula in as pictured here.
We would take out our sliding glass door and put in a single door with windows.
This would use up half of our breakfast room, or eat-in-kitchen...
We would have an overhanging bar thing-y with stools where we would eat most of our meals
and we would set up our dining room with a table to feed guests!
WHAT DO YOU THINK!?!?!

So there is finally Progress in our house (and yes I mean Progress with a capital P)!!

We have walls and ceilings again!!

Destruction part 2

This just made me laugh. The water only ruined half of the carpet and pad on the stairs...Really?

Ruined parts of the ceiling were removed.

Destruction

This is the part of the wall that had to come out leaving our family and garage open to each other. Perfect for this time of year and our freezing weather! Can't wait to see my BGE bill this month!

They had to rip up all of the flooring in the basement.

That is our bedroom with no carpet, and everything stacked on top of the bed. They had all kinds of fans and dehumidifiers throughout the house.

This was the hardest part for me. I just cried and cried when I saw it. The flooring in the basement had swelled from the water and was ruined. You can see it on the door too, the water just soaked into everything.

On the bright side, the workers just came in today and are putting new drywall up!! We came home two weeks ago today and found the mess. Our insurance should be covering all of the repairs. And we will have nice, new carpet and walls, and ceilings!

What we came home to

When we got home from Florida at 9:30 on Saturday night, this is what we came home to. Our washing machine had somehow leaked and water had gone throughout the entire house, and then sat for eight days. It was a stinky nightmare. These are just a few pictures of the initial mess we came home to.

Garage Ceiling that had been dripping and dripping onto the car below.

Can you see the water line? And how it is so warped at the bottom that the wood is pulling away from itself?

When ever we took a step a well of water would erupt out of the carpet...

Those white things surrounding the buckets are pieces of the ceiling that were coming down

Water was literally pouring out of the ceiling fan

This is over our kitchen table.

Florida

December 30, 2010...I was wasting time, as I frequently do, looking up time shares. We were generously given a time share by Jason's Uncle Mike. While this was a fabulous gift, it has also been stressful. We can never use the actual week of the timeshare because it is the first or second week of March, and we are all always in school. With two weeks each year, it is truly hard to find the time to use it. Last March we went to Florida with mom and dad, using two weeks that were about to expire. This year we find ourselves with a week that will be expiring in March. There is no time in March that we can possibly get away.
That is when it dawned on me...I have 13 days on in January. I looked and the most perfect time share opportunity ever popped up. We went to dinner with mom and dad that night and told them all about this week. Asked if they had any desire to go with....
Fast forward two weeks and all seven of us are piling into the van and heading to Clermont, Florida.

We are staying in a single family home at the Summer Bay Resort. It is a three bedroom house with a one car garage. It has two master bedrooms, and a pool in the screened in porch.

16 hours of driving and we finally get there. It is even better than we imagined.

This is our visit with Jason's Grandparents Marmie and Pop-pop

This is the pool that was on our porch. With it's own hot tub!!

Can you see the lake in the back yard?

This is Herby the Alligator. We brought him home as a pet...just kidding.

New Year's Eve 2010

For New Year's Eve this year we decided to have an early ringing in of the new year. We had a countdown to 8pm. We each had a homemade hat, noise makers, and the little crackers present things. It was a lot of fun. We also played Austin's Christmas game You Build Monopoly. We really like the 30 minute version!! Just right for our family right now. I am thinking that next year we will invite some friends over for an early celebration. Anyone interested?

Christmas 2010

We had a marvelous Christmas. There were a few tears...some of them mine. Nothing is ever perfect, and I some how keep forgetting that. But it ended up well. We got up around 7am. Opened and played with presents until around 11:00. Mom and Dad Richards came over and we had a wonderful steak and yummy potato dinner. Then we put a puzzle together and just enjoyed being together as a family.