Slow Progress

Before I get to house updates, I thought I'd embarass Marc with a photo (since he's seeing me posting this right now and telling me not to show him looking like a dork). One night while I was gone Marc and Jake were having fun making silly faces at the camera. Jake was taking pictures of Marc: And Marc was taking pictures of Jake...I just thought this was too cute of them. They had a ton of silly faces, taking turns back and forth. I'll spare you...but seriously, how cute!
With the house we've been moving more slowly on it because we've had other stuff going on...plus I had PMS and proclaimed one emotional day that I was done doing another lick of work on the house. Funny how a couple days later I saw no problem with getting back to work on the house...hmmm

So Marc and Kenneth took out our window in the family room, and put in one that's half it's size (This is so that we can bump out the wall to make the kitchen bigger). It just so happened to be one of the hottest days of summer, and since the wall had a gaping hole in it for most the day, we weren't running the a/c...lots of sweating on this day:)

The new window is in, but all the finishing work on it isn't done, so I'll post a picture when it's complete.

Also Marc's been doing a lot of electrical work...there was very little overhead lighting in this house, so he's been running electrical for the bedrooms to have ceiling fan/lights. This is our 3rd bedroom:

And my Uncle Gene came over on Labor Day, and they labored...up in the attic during the hottest part of the day...at one point we'd stopped hearing their movement overhead and wondered if they'd both passed out. Do they look delirious?

They ran electrical for the chandelier over our dining table and put a switch in the wall. These things are taking many hours of work, but like Marc says, it's not too impressive. An entire day of work and all you have to show for it is a lightswitch on the wall...nobody normally would notice that kind of thing...but I do! I've felt like I live in a cave at night, and now...we have light!!We got a new dining table (don't worry, I'm not keeping those chairs:) Got to find new ones. But I'm so excited about having a pretty table. Poor Jake is confused why all the sudden he's been threatened with time outs for banging his silverware on the table, when before I couldn't have cared less. I also am working on painting the walls...this room has a greenish/grey.

Here's me grouting the tile floor in the master bathroom.
I've made very little progress in the bathroom since then. I've kind of been at a standstill because I wanted to paint the walls before putting in the vanity and backsplash. The owners before us painted water based paint on top of oil based paint, so it was peeling up. Some of it came off really easily, but a lot of it is coming off inch by inch. So hopefully I'll get it figured out soon. But we placed the vanity in there because I was sick of having it in our entryway:)

A Snapshot of Our Last 2 Weeks with Renovation

Last week we worked in Jake's room with 2 things: running electrical for a ceiling fan/overhead light, and framing in a closet.
There were old looking floor-to-ceiling doors on this closet when we moved in. So we framed it it in to be a standard height.

I got to use the nail gun that's used in construction...that is one heavy duty gun. I felt very manly...until I saw a spider and screamed.
Here's the point it is at now...we just have to mud it and paint.
And this week we decided to demo our bathroom. We gutted it on Monday. Tuesday I prepared the floor to tile and began tiling it...finally, I'm actually doing something I already know how to do! There's always this huge learning curve on every project we are doing...it was nice for once to already know what I'm doing:)
I sent Marc to the store to buy us a toilet...thinking he'd just get a regular $100ish toilet. He came home and very proudly announced he got the toilet with the highest rating for flush power. What a man.

Wednesday we put in the toilet. Yesterday I finished laying the tile. Today I rested:) It was very much needed. But this weekend I will grout the floor and then we'll get our new vanity in.

As for the kitchen wall change project, that got put on hold temporarily...it's going to be a bigger project than we even thought (and we already thought it was big). But we're preparing to do it.

Summer Fun

We've been having a fun summer so far...We do a lot of stuff with Luke, which Jake loves...and we see lots of other kids between mom's club and a craft club that I started weekly at my house.

Here's Luke, Jake, and Jake (that's what happens when you choose the #1 baby name:) at the beach. The other Jake is Luke's cousin, but is in our ward and in nursery with Jake...so they have become buds too.

Here we are at Buccanner Bay...this water park that they built nearby.

This took a little forcing...I got a little embarassed at what people were thinking of me when I pried my screaming child's fingers off me and pushed him down the water slide. I just knew he would like it if he did it once...and sure enough, I was right...he must have gone down that slide 30 times while we were there.

At the movies for Toy Story 3

We've gone to a couple Angel games this summer. After the first one where Jake saw the fireworks show...it's all he could talk about. I mean literally...he would talk about it every hour of every day for a whole month. I even recorded it on my phone, and he watches it constantly...it's always my back up plan if he's being cranky when we're running errands...give him the fireworks show on my phone...and I won't hear another peep:) His obsession with it has seemed to calm down a little since we went to a game again last week, and finally satisfied his addictive need to see fireworks again.

I got a slip n slide and a splash pool for our backyard and we've been having lots of fun going out there.

Jake likes to drink the water

His other obsession right now is Hot Wheels cars. He must always have several gripped in each hand...and LOVES to play with them and make them race around.

more Toy Story

Playing with cups in the sink...now I just need to teach him how to load dishes in the dishwasher...hmmm

This is at his cousin's birthday party with Tarin and Sean

I was on the computer and thought Jake was quietly playing with cars in his room...wrong! I should know by now to never trust him when he's being quiet:) I found him squeezing Desitin into the holes on the Lego box...and smearing it all over himself too. That was fun to clean up...

And now for the house update. We got the wall finished. This is the entryway when you walk in the front door.

Here's the french doors closed...all I need to do is put the door casing around them.

We've got the ceiling finished and the recessed lighting done in the family room.

And here's our next project that we're beginning. We are bumping out this wall to be even with the wall the french doors are on. That will make our kitchen a lot bigger. We're going to have to change the window that those oh-so-beautiful blinds are on because the new wall will run into the middle of it. So we will be reframing it for a smaller window. So here goes another wall change!