First off I need to let everyone know that my baby turned 2 a couple of weeks ago. It's so bittersweet for me that he is getting older. I love watching him learn and grow, but I have realized that I no longer have any babies, just a toddler and a preschooler. Knowing that we are 90% sure we are done having children, it's a little sad. Donovan sure keeps me going though. He is FULL of energy, and he knows how to push all my buttons. He hardly ever listens to me and often runs the opposite direction from me when we need to be going somewhere, and he will often hit or bite me for no apparent reason at all. I love him SO much, but I just wish he would get past this phase and just be the loving, fun little boy I know he is! He's my miracle baby and I love him like words can't describe, and I am so grateful for him. I love his smile, it's still the same cheesy smile he gave me when he was 5 weeks old and in the hospital, only now it is full of teeth. He's a big ball of energy and I look forward to what he brings me over the next year!! Happy belated birthday little man!!
There was no stopping for a smile while he ate his cake. Believe it or not he is actually saying CHEESE while he eats. He's gotten really good at that. He will say cheese, but he won't look up or stop what he is doing no matter how hard I try.Well next is Easter, which also happened to be Donovan's birthday. We had a great Easter weekend. Jeff worked a lot the week leading up to Easter, so I made him take a break and we went to Cardston for a night. I knew there was no internet there, so we would get his undivided attention and he would get the break he needed. I am so glad we did because it was so much fun for everyone. The kids love playing with their cousins and a few of them were also in Cardston that weekend, so we did a mass egg hunt on Saturday afternoon. We had something like 150 eggs for 9 kids, or something crazy like that. It was nice that all the kids got to hunt for eggs and we didn't worry about some kids not getting any. We came back home for Easter Sunday and had Easter dinner at my parents house, along with another egg hunt from the Easter bunny.
Do you think he has enough eggs in that basket? He can barely carry it, and he hauled that basket around everywhere for at least 30 minutes after the egg hunt!
We finally got our house on the market. I spent a lot of time getting this house ready to sell. We had 2 years to finish it all and go figure, all the little things still have to be done 2 years later. I painted all of our door casings white to match our new baseboards, which were finished only a couple of months ago themselves. I didn't think the painting the casings would be a big job until I started it. I got one done in 2 hours. I then counted how many I had left and 16 became a REALLY large number. After finishing all the other small touchups that were never completed and with a whole lot of organizing, the house was finally in selling condition. It was SO stressful to me. I think for 2 weeks straight the kids didn't have a mom. I became the mom I swore that I would never be and I had my kids watching tv for hours at a time. I still feel guilty about it, but I am so grateful that the kids love me unconditionally.
I think the most exciting thing to have done is our under cabinet lighting. We had all the wiring done by our brother in law before we did any of the kitchen, but never got him back to finish it for us. I finally asked him to come back and he did, so willingly too. I am very grateful to him for that because it was definitely something I could not have done and it would have cost us a small fortune to hire some one to do it for us.
I do want to say, I learned a lot from this house. I learned that I NEVER want to do home renovations again, which is the reason why we are having our home builder develop our basement. It is just not worth the stress and it will be SO nice to move into the new house and not worry about that.. I learned that no matter how pretty you make a house, if you ever saw it before it was pretty, you don't forget those images. They replay in my mind all the time and even though our house couldn't be more designed to my taste, I just can't forget where it started and that haunts me. I also learned that hardwood and children don't mix! I HATE hardwood. It is so high maintenance because it is so hard to clean and keep clean, especially the dark stuff we have. Never mind the scratches hardwood gets, the cleaning is enough for me to never want it again. I also dislike stainless steel appliances, sure they look nice, but they are so not practical. I hate seeing fingerprints everywhere.
Here are a few before and after pictures, just to show you what we did. Most of my before pictures are on my old computer, so this is the best I have right now.
This picture shows our beautiful Royal blue counter top that we were happy to remove.
My finished kitchen with granite and stainless steel appliances (love the granite, hate the stainless steel appliances)
This room was pee stained carpet when we bought the house, we replaced it with hardwood.
The hardwood we added compared to the ugly hardwood we had in the beginning.
Our gorgeous, HIGH maintenance hardwood and new baseboards that my dad and I did together for the whole house.
Used to be carpeted as well, also pee stained.
Now beautiful hardwood like the rest of the main level.
Lastly, our new house is moving along like crazy. I keep asking them to slow down a bit, but there is only so much they can stall construction I guess. I am so glad that our site supervisor is patient with me and puts up with all my stupid concerns. It's the third time we have built and it's the first time I have actually felt like some one cares how I feel about what is happening in our house. We are starting to feel a little bit of a crunch considering we just listed our house and we are being told to expect a late June possession date.(we were originally told the end of October) We are thinking we could pull off a mid July possession, but we will probably have to sell our house for a lot less then we would like and that's a little hard to take, but I guess it will be worth it for our new house, we really love it so far. Our house is drywalled and the cabinets just went in, and even our basement is drywalled. It has definitely moved a lot faster then I could imagine, but it's exciting that the fun stuff will be starting soon. Hopefully it will look nice once it's all put together. If you have ever built before, you know what I mean. Those dreaded nightmares where you wake up remembering the wall color you picked is purple, or the cabinets you picked were too red, or the carpet you picked is pink. It's hard to remember what it all looks like, but I just keep telling myself that I liked it when it was all laid out, so it has got to look nice once it's all put together...right? Well here are a couple of pictures if you can handle anymore.
I think the most exciting thing to have done is our under cabinet lighting. We had all the wiring done by our brother in law before we did any of the kitchen, but never got him back to finish it for us. I finally asked him to come back and he did, so willingly too. I am very grateful to him for that because it was definitely something I could not have done and it would have cost us a small fortune to hire some one to do it for us.
I do want to say, I learned a lot from this house. I learned that I NEVER want to do home renovations again, which is the reason why we are having our home builder develop our basement. It is just not worth the stress and it will be SO nice to move into the new house and not worry about that.. I learned that no matter how pretty you make a house, if you ever saw it before it was pretty, you don't forget those images. They replay in my mind all the time and even though our house couldn't be more designed to my taste, I just can't forget where it started and that haunts me. I also learned that hardwood and children don't mix! I HATE hardwood. It is so high maintenance because it is so hard to clean and keep clean, especially the dark stuff we have. Never mind the scratches hardwood gets, the cleaning is enough for me to never want it again. I also dislike stainless steel appliances, sure they look nice, but they are so not practical. I hate seeing fingerprints everywhere.
Here are a few before and after pictures, just to show you what we did. Most of my before pictures are on my old computer, so this is the best I have right now.
This picture shows our beautiful Royal blue counter top that we were happy to remove.
My finished kitchen with granite and stainless steel appliances (love the granite, hate the stainless steel appliances)
This room was pee stained carpet when we bought the house, we replaced it with hardwood.
The hardwood we added compared to the ugly hardwood we had in the beginning.
Our gorgeous, HIGH maintenance hardwood and new baseboards that my dad and I did together for the whole house.
Used to be carpeted as well, also pee stained.
Now beautiful hardwood like the rest of the main level.Lastly, our new house is moving along like crazy. I keep asking them to slow down a bit, but there is only so much they can stall construction I guess. I am so glad that our site supervisor is patient with me and puts up with all my stupid concerns. It's the third time we have built and it's the first time I have actually felt like some one cares how I feel about what is happening in our house. We are starting to feel a little bit of a crunch considering we just listed our house and we are being told to expect a late June possession date.(we were originally told the end of October) We are thinking we could pull off a mid July possession, but we will probably have to sell our house for a lot less then we would like and that's a little hard to take, but I guess it will be worth it for our new house, we really love it so far. Our house is drywalled and the cabinets just went in, and even our basement is drywalled. It has definitely moved a lot faster then I could imagine, but it's exciting that the fun stuff will be starting soon. Hopefully it will look nice once it's all put together. If you have ever built before, you know what I mean. Those dreaded nightmares where you wake up remembering the wall color you picked is purple, or the cabinets you picked were too red, or the carpet you picked is pink. It's hard to remember what it all looks like, but I just keep telling myself that I liked it when it was all laid out, so it has got to look nice once it's all put together...right? Well here are a couple of pictures if you can handle anymore.
For some reason this is the best picture I have of the outside....
Obviously the cabinets aren't complete yet, but I am really excited for the kitchen, I think it will be really nice once it is complete.
So this is our nook. If you have talked to me about my house you have probably heard me complain about my beam between my kitchen/nook area. If you haven't heard about it, consider yourself lucky! Anyways, this is ultimately what we did about the beam. We put a coffered ceiling in and I am really happy about it. I think it actually looks better then it would have even if the beam wasn't there. The coffered ceiling just adds a little character I guess. It is actually already drywalled and primed, but for some reason I don't have a picture of that either. Guess I need to take some more pictures of my house!!That's it for now. Thanks for making it this far if you did. Hopefully now that my life has some order to it I will be able to keep up with my blog a little better!!
