Cold, Cold, Cold!

I know I haven't updated in a couple weeks but there hasn't been a whole lot to talk about.  The weather has been extremely cold so all activity has been inside. 

Chris completed some small jobs the last couple weeks.  This included installing the thresholds for the bathrooms, hanging pictures in the hallway, and finishing the trim in the hall. 
 

Samantha really enjoyed mimicking Daddy during the picture installation.

The other big task we've been working on is getting the upstairs ready for demolition.  This requires moving a LOT of boxes and furniture downstairs.  Two flights of stairs for each trip makes this pregnant lady very tired!  Fortunately, the upstairs should be ready for demolition by this weekend.

My mom was down over the weekend and helped Chris move the heavy items.  This included 4 bed sets.  Part of the basement now looks like we're going to re-enact the "Princess and the Pea."

 We did get a bunch of snow last week - Samantha had a good time sled riding with Daddy.  

We also collected some of the snow to have fun inside.  Snow painting and eating some "snow cream" were some of the activities we enjoyed.  

Lately, Samantha has been enjoying pretending to sleep - she needs a pillow and blanket and she's a happy girl.  Hopefully this bodes well for moving her to her big girl bed soon!

And I'll end with some cute photos of Samantha (some of her favorite bear's bedtime routine too).

We should be getting some major work done in the next few weeks - we'll keep our fingers crossed!

Baby It's Cold Outside!

Just as most of the country, the weather here was pretty cold too this week.

Of course that meant that all the work on the house was occurring inside.  Chris did a fantastic job building me a new wall between the storage area and the laundry room. 

The rest of the week/weekend was moving stuff from one place to another and going through everything.  We have so many things to get rid of - old cabinets from the kitchen, washer, dryer, sinks, etc., etc.  Just for a visual, this picture is of one area filled with items to remove from the house.

We now have a nice organized place to store all our tools, camping/sports equipment, and small kitchen appliances.  

So while it doesn't look like much, we worked really hard!  The next step is to start moving items out of the medium bedroom (which will be Sam's new room) and the upstairs (which will become the new guest suite).  It will include walking a lot of stairs!

Samantha has been paying more attention to us that we thought...here she is "fixing" her cow ride on toy...

...and building a castle for the princess.

Hopefully we'll be able to get all the upcoming projects completed before the baby arrives!

Happy New Year!

We had a mixed bag for New Year's this year. 

It started out really well with some delicious homemade chicken ravioli and butternut squash soup for dinner (my first attempt at homemade pasta). 

Then we went out to the end of our driveway to watch the "Midnight at 7" fireworks.  Samantha really enjoyed them and kept saying "Fireworks!"

Later that evening, things went downhill quickly.  Tucker went out at around 10 and when he came back to the house, he had a big gash/hole in his head.  So after a quick search for a 24 hour animal hospital, Chris drove him over. 

It turns out that he ran into a post in the back yard while chasing after some animal.  He was running so quickly that he actually put a hole in his head (actually his sinus cavity).  When they arrived at the hospital, Tucker had blood dripping out of his nose.  After a couple x-rays, a scope in his nose (to find the missing bone fragment), and some stitches (and a $600 vet bill), they arrived back home around 1:00.  Happy New Year to us!

He was not himself the first couple days but he seems to be much better now.  He has been on pain killers and antibiotics and will get his stitches out next week. 

One other exciting (scary) piece of news happened on Saturday.  We were just arriving back home from getting groceries when there were a LOT of police cars in our neighborhood.  We didn't know what was going on but while I was unpacking food, Chris told me to get down in the basement - fast!  There was a cop with his gun drawn in our neighbors yard.  From the basement window, I was able to see the cop jumping the 5' fence into the woods behind our house.

It wasn't until today that we knew what happened.  Apparently there was a bank robbery nearby and within a half hour they were able to arrest the two suspects in the woods behind our house.  We're glad that they were able to apprehend them so quickly but it's still scary to think armed men were so close to our house. 

In happier news, we have a new niece as of early this morning.  Baby Grace and mommy are doing well.  Big brother Zack seems to be happy to have a new sister!

As for work on the house, we were a little tired after all the traveling and visitors so we didn't get much big stuff done.  However, in order to finish up some big projects before our baby arrives, we need to do some tedious activities. 

Our next big project is to finish the upstairs for guests.  In order to work up there, we need to move everything downstairs.  In order to move everything downstairs, we first need to get rid of a lot of (unnecessary) things in the basement.  And a little organization would help too!

For instance, here is a picture of our current tool storage. 

Definitely not the best use of space. 

We spent a lot of time removing a lot of the old kitchen cabinets/doors/trim/etc. out of the storage area so that we could re-use the space for actual storage.  My parents may be able to use some of these items for the River House.  We installed some of them in the storage area to help with our tool organization.  We will continue that this week and hopefully can do some real work this weekend. 

Hopefully our new year will get a lot better (with much less drama!).