some more color...

our chalkboard wall, the white wall is going to be magnetic

and a crazy cute baby

Just a little peek...

I'm waiting to post more pictures until we get the room done

a framed in door!!! :)

More recenct Studio pictures

"The Studio" sounds like a good name for this room, doesn't it?

So here is Travis working on it last week.

My window!!

I would have loved to have lots of windows in there, but my wall space is too precious so just one nice big window will do.




Next is the electrical and pouring the cement floor.

Here is the inside, YAY!

A couple questions answered

I just wanted to let those of you who were concerned about Sydney from a few posts ago, don't worry, I don't remember what the problem was, but I guarantee you that within 10 minutes she was perfectly fine. That wasn't the first note that she has given me like that and I doubt it will be the last.

And about our garage(the room behind it actually, I don't have a good name for it yet) Travis re- roofed it last summer and he hand mixed and poured the footings himself within the last month or so.

Gretchen - 14 months

more remodel

This picture really is worth a thousand words to me, I really hesitated taking it because it makes me remember something that I would really rather forget. But, here it is.

It is pretty hard to see but what happened here made me very upset, I'm going to make a long story short, I hope.

We started our remodel adventure almost 2 years ago with our kitchen and bathroom, and at the same time the siding on our house was redone. I was pregnant with our 4th child and was homeschooling our oldest 2. It was a very busy time , but Travis and I learned a lot and had some fun together . We were without our kitchen for, I think, about 3 months, and the bathroom for a few weeks.

Around the same time we started also working on our garage and a small room that was behind it. I had big hopes of making a "bonus" room out of it. As we've stuffed more kids into our house it has become smaller and smaller, and add our school stuff, well, we're a little cramped.

I have , very patiently, been waiting for my room and for the last few weeks it has been the object of Travis' attention when he isn't at work. The room has a dirt floor and the roof needed to be raised about a foot and a half, Travis was doing this himself , very very slowly. I'm not complaining that he was working slowly, I just thought that raising a roof by yourself wasn't the best way to do it. Travis had the roof raised so close to where it needed to be when I heard a bang outside, the whole roof almost fell , it was hanging sideways, after all that time and work, well, I was really upset.

Then we(I) called for help, finally! Travis' brother , my brother and our brother-in-law came and helped get things put right. Not only that but they started making it look like a real room!

So, I'm not upset any more, but very excited, we even went out today and bought a door and window.

Moral of the story: ask for help when you need it.

Garage/shop pictures

I guess these pictures don't really show a lot, but here is my room behind the garage. It has a dirt floor and is half rotten and needs to be raised about 2 feet, but it's all mine! :)

A remodel update

Just a couple pictures of what Travis has been up to lately.

This is our garage, looks pretty good, huh?

Enjoying the weather

Travis has been spending every spare minute working on the garage, I'm glad because I would like it to get done, but it's really tiring too.

Ryan, the best big brother in the world, giving his sisters a ride.

I was standing in the kitchen tonight and this is what I heard.

Sydney: "Mom, in my mind you look like a Chinese lady with really dark brown freckles."

Ryan walks out of the bathroom: "If someone asked me what hand to cut off, I would say the left one, because my right one is too valuable."

I just have nothing to say.

My sister's house

We went to my sister and brother-in-law's house a couple weekends ago to celebrate their 1st anniversary. Time flies!

They have a great playground and cement slab in their backyard.

Yep, that's my Mom!

Sydney and her cousin Brianna

2 fat babies



We have officially started our 2009 remodel season. Travis started tearing down the rotten garage wall on Memorial day.

We even put Sydney to work. There is one girl who isn't afraid of a little hard work.

Painting projects

We have an odd space in our kitchen that we hadn't painted yet.It was an old ironing board in a cabinet in the kitchen. When we first moved in one of the first projects I did was to take the ironing board out and I put shelves in instead, it became a medicine cabinet.

When we redid our kitchen we painted everything but the front of that cupboard. I told Travis that I really wanted to paint a chalkboard there.

He wasn't that into it, but eventually I wore him down, and here it is.

The kids also had some painting fun; since we went to see the tulips I thought they could paint some.

Ava had fun with finger paint.

Sydney's Ryan's mine


Ava took care of using up the leftover paint.



I was so proud of Ava she was trying to write her name and she did this A perfectly!(She didn't get any farther than that, maybe because I made a big deal about it and took a picture)





We got this ice cream ball (I don't think that is it real name) last year, but hadn't used it until now.

You just add the ingredients in the top and put ice and rock salt in the bottom, let the kids jump on the trampoline for 15 min(or however you want to shake it up) and you've got yummy ice cream!

The recipe book tells how to make all kinds of flavors , I think coconut is next.
They are actually selling these at our Costco. I love Costco!

Getting ready for baby

Only 1 week left!!

Just over 1 week until the baby is due! Here are some pictures

Our precious new sink, It doesn't look that impressive here, but I like it, even though it's kind of hard to reach the faucet with my big belly.

It will look better, too when we get the back-splash and window trim done.

We are always so late getting our pumpkins, I finally took the kids on Tuesday, there weren't that many good ones to choose from.

And here is Cutie Pie blowing bubbles.

Travis took a break from the house last weekend and worked on the garage roof.