Monday, June 11, 2007

selling rabbits?

Ok...so maybe not...

Here's the "Sale Pending" sign at our (soon to be) house:



We've had some baby rabbits living in the flower bed outside our front window. When we looked out last night, the Mama rabbit was nursing the two babies (who are getting very big). How cool! I tried to take a picture, but accidentally took a video. If you'd like to see it, just click here. You'll notice a set of legs on the right of the Mama. There is also a set on the left very close to the Mama. Here is a (blurry) picture of one of the babies with the Mama:

Saturday, June 09, 2007

closing and decorating

We have a closing date! We are set to close on the 22nd. We are ready to get there and get started on the house so we can move in! At the moment, we are planning to move the last weekend in July, so we'll have several weeks to get things done.

On the decorating front, I am now leaning toward going all hardwood if they can be refinished. Every time I go over and look at the wood floors (I was there yesterday), I think "I just hate to cover this up with carpet." So...as of right now, I'm in the market for rugs. :)

Also, I am still debating about Nathan's room and our room. Below is a picture I found online (HGTV's Rate a Room). I'm thinking about going with something like this in Nathan's room. However, I don't know that I want to put up chair rail, so I'd have to do something different there. I could put up a wallpaper border, but I'm not sure if that's what I really want. I want it to look nice, though. What do all you decorating divas think?



Oh yeah...and what would you recommend for the ceilings? They're all painted ceilings. I'm thinking of just painting them all white, but I don't know if I want to go with the same color white as all the trim or something different for a little contrast. (There is currently no crown moulding.)

Thursday, June 07, 2007

master bedroom indecision


I really just cannot decide about the master bedroom, so I need some help. Here is a picture of the quilt that is currently on our bed (ok, so it's part of the quilt...the bed wasn't made and there was laundry sitting on the rest of it). I hope to one day get new furniture and bedding, but this is what we have to work with right now. Anyway, I had thought about going with a mid-tone blue, but the more I think about it, the less excited I am about blue. So...what would you recommend?

Monday, June 04, 2007

paint colors

Here is what I am thinking at the moment (all thoughts appreciated - especially from those of you who are gifted in this area...I'm not):

Living Room - a non-pastel golden yellow, to make the room bright and coordinate with the couch/chair fabric

Dining Room / Kitchen - a sage green, I'm a fan of this color in general

Hall - a neutral beige

Nathan's Room - a lightish denim-y/smokey blue (Erin, you made a very good point, but I think it may be ok with other colors around the room...like red accessories.)

Caroline's Room - butter yellow, I'm trying to find a color here that has a chance of going with whatever she gets when she gets a big girl bed one of these days...so maybe we won't need to paint again

Our Room - blue, a deeper shade than Nathan's but maybe the same color...this is the one that I am most unsure of at the moment

Bathrooms - same as the hall, a neutral beige

Playroom - no paint yet (it's currently old fake wood paneling)

Computer Room - current white wood siding walls stay white, old fake wood paneling to get a deep navy-ish blue or maybe a burgundy-red (Matt really wants a dark color somewhere in the house)

All Trim and Ceilings - some kind of white, I need to see what color is currently in the computer room and see if I like it enough to use in the whole house, otherwise, a warm slightly beige-ish white

Friday, June 01, 2007

the latest on the house

We are in a holding pattern on the house. There are a few things that need to be cleared up with the title, so we're waiting on that to set a closing date. Basically, the lady died about a year before the man and her estate was never quite settled. So...they have to get that all straightened out so we can get a clear title. The current guess is that it is going to take about a month to do that.

We had our main inspection, and everything looked pretty good...well...as you would expect for a 47 year old house. There are a few things that need to be done/fixed, but not too much. We also wanted to get an electrician in to give us a price on updating the electrical. We have done that. It's not something that is necessary, but would be good to do. We had planned to do some sort of work on the electrical when we made the offer. Also, as a result of the general inspection, we wanted to have somebody look at the HVAC. That happened Wednesday and we're still waiting on the estimates for what needs to be done. It looks like it's in a little worse shape than we had expected. Depending on the estimate, we may look to add an addendum to the contract to compensate. We'll see.

So...the short and sweet of it is that we're looking at closing at the end of the month if everything can be worked out and moving at the end of July. (Erin, I'm feeling a bit jealous of how smoothly things went for you!) We still think everything is going to work out...just not as quickly as we had hoped.

The good part of this, though, is that I have a little more time to pick out paint colors and make some other general decisions. Well, we'll let you know more when there's more to know.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

adoption woes

No...we're not adopting! :)

I keep up with a few of the IMB missionaries in Poland because I am interested in knowing what's going on there. Some of you may not know (or remember) that I spent a summer in Poland as a summer missionary. Anyway, one of the couples (Michael and Vicki Shattuck) have been trying to adopt three Polish children for quite a while now. They continue to run into obstacles...most of which seem rather ridiculous. Everyone that knows them and the kids (ie: the kids' case worker, the orphanage, etc.) believe that they should all be together. However, they keep running into problems in the courts. They thought they were going to have things finalized this week, but it now looks like that may not happen. Please be praying for them. Pray that they will have peace as they continue to try to move through the process. Also, pray that God will move things along to finalize the adoption. If you would like more information, you can check out Michael's Blog.

Monday, May 28, 2007

I am so torn

I am so torn about flooring. Let me give you my thoughts...

- I go barefoot all the time so I prefer to walk on carpet.
- Hardwood floors look nice.
- It just seems "wrong" to cover up nice hardwood floors.
- I don't really want carpet in the dining room since I have kids.
- I don't know if I would want to leave the dining room bare if we have wood floors - and does it really make sense to put a rug on the floor when I don't want carpet.
- It would take longer to completely refinish the floors if they're wood and would probably be a similar cost to carpet.
- We have three rooms that will need a different flooring anyway - the carport addition, the back addition, the kitchen.
- Hardwood floors would increase the value of the house (in theory) whenever we decide to sell it...which we expect to be a good bit down the road.
- We don't even know yet how the hardwoods look.
- The one room that has been uncovered for a while looks pretty nice.
- The one room that has recently been uncovered and hasn't had much done looks like it could be nice with very little work.
- If we go with wood, I have to find and pick out rugs (this could be a pro or a con).

Ok. I think that's all my thoughts for the moment. If you have any thoughts or feedback for me, please let me know. I need help deciding this one. As a side note, I haven't really been able to go spend time at the house just looking around and pondering the issue. In addition, we don't know how the floors will look once the carpet is pulled up off of them. I'm just guessing based on the ones that are uncovered that they will look decent. I also don't have any real knowledge about hardwood floors, so I don't know how much it would take to get them looking nice and finished properly.

Nathan's room

Ok. So...suggestions on Nathan's room. Here is a picture of his bunkbed and bedding. On the flooring...same choices as before. Wood with rug or neutral carpet. You can see most of the room in the two pictures. I don't know if the shelves would stay or not. Curtains will not be staying (there are currently curtains in every room, but most will not be staying). The closet is to the right of the window on the other wall.



Sunday, May 27, 2007

the living room

Ok all you decorating women out there...I need help! It looks as if all is going to work out and we are going to close on this house soon. So...I need to get to work figuring out paint colors and flooring. Here is the first room (with many more to come). Please give me your thoughts or suggestions. After I get some input, I'll let you know what I'm thinking at the moment.

This is the living room from the dining room door.


This is the living room from the far side. The front door to the house is on the left and the door to the dining room is on the right.


Here is the chair that will go in the room. The chair and couch are the same fabric. You can also look at the previous post to see what they look like.


This is a close-up of the fabric.


I am going to have to decide whether to go with the original wood floors (and a rug) or carpet (which would probably be a neutral color). Of course, that is dependent upon the condition of the floor. This picture is the floor in the room that will be Caroline's. It has been finished a bit (who knows how much) and appears to have been used as wood floor for a while. The other floors in the house have been covered with carpet (and all but one still is).

Thursday, May 24, 2007

calm in the storm

Except that Nathan isn't in this picture, I kinda feel like it represents "normal" life around here.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

no more aerobics

I have officially said goodbye to aerobics. After much thought and prayer, I decided that I needed to give it up. Since I have returned to aerobics, I have felt like I just couldn't give the time I needed to give to my family. It's only three mornings a week, but then, that's three mornings that are lost. I really debated about it for a while, but one thing after another confirmed that recapturing that time was the right choice. So...now I'm going to have to find a new way to be diligent in exercise. We're also going to have to be a little more careful about the money we spend since that little bit of income will no longer be there. I know it's the right decision, though, so I know God will help us work things out!

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

the house

So I've been selected to write a description of the house...this will be interesting.

The basics -- it is 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths. It was built in 1960 and has partial brick/partial vinyl siding (in quite good shape). The carport was closed in to make a second living area, and the back porch was extended and enclosed to make even more space (actually I think the porch was done before the carport). So the total comes out to something like 1573 square feet.

As Jennifer mentioned in the original post, the flooring needs replacing to some degree. It's got old carpet and original hardwood floors, plus vinyl in the main bathroom and kitchen. We don't know if we will keep the hardwood floors or put in new carpet over them. The kitchen has what appear to be original pine cabinets (in good shape), a fairly new range, and a decent refrigerator. No dishwasher, but being the dishwashing person, I am all about putting one in soon. We expect to have the house rewired before moving in, because the wiring (besides the addition areas) appears to be original -- ungrounded outlets, no outlets in the bathrooms, a fuse panel instead of breakers, etc. Doing that will provide some peace of mind about safety as well as allow things like entertainment equipment, computers, etc. to be plugged in, and make sure that the system can take the load that will be put on it. Paint...I think Jennifer is going to love getting to pick colors that are not the beige we've lived with for 6 years of being married.

The back of the property slopes downward some, enough so that the crawlspace at the back of the house has something like 5 feet of vertical room. There are two storage buildings in the back, plus a decent amount of space under the back porch addition to store things. The backyard has lots of plants, some that have taken over their planting beds after having not been tended to in probably about a year. Once some of that stuff is pulled out, it should be a good place to play for Nathan. There is fence almost all the way around - we'd need about twelve feet of chain link on the left of the house to close it off totally in the back.

Front yard area...there is an (unfortunately) rusty flagpole in the yard, which I intend to fly an American flag on. It needs a spotlight to be all-weather, 24 hour, though. The front porch is decent-sized, enough to put a couple of rocking chairs on if we want. Parking space is a little hampered by having closed in the carport, but we should be able to get both cars in side by side and still have room for a visitor. Anything more would end up in the yard.

The house is just down the street from an elementary school and a Presbyterian church. One set of neighbors is what Jennifer would call "cute old people." The location is pretty much central to Warner Robins, so we will be able to get to things without much delay. Sonny's is at most 5 minutes away...

Back to the interior. The front door opens into the living room, which is of typical size and shape for the age of the house (about 10.5' deep by 16' wide). Straight across is the doorway to the dining room and the rest of the house. The kitchen is to the right, separated by little counter-height shelf things. The dining room has plenty of space to have our table (with leaf) and all the chairs and still leave room for walking through. Out the back side of the dining room is the doorway to the enclosed back porch. It's about 15' by 11' and will probably end up being playroom space. It's got lots of windows. To the left from the dining room is the hallways to the bedrooms and bathrooms. The master bedroom is straight down (back left side of the house), and the other two are on the left (front side of house). The full bathroom is on the right side. The master bedroom has a small walk-in closet and a half bath. We are probably going to try to figure out a way to convert the closet space to a shower and have two full baths (at some point), but we'd have to figure out a good way to replace the closet space. To the right from the dining room and through the kitchen is the enclosed carport and laundry room (which was originally entered from the carport). This room will likely end up being the office/utility-type room. The computer, bookcases, sewing machine, and piano will probably all go there. For some reason, it has two doors to the outside -- one at the front and one at the back, both on the right side of the house.

Other random things: there is a scuttle hole to the attic (i.e., no pull-down stairs). It actually has a coat closet (we don't have one here). There is a window in the dining room (that now goes to the enclosed porch) that has no glass in it. The ceiling vents are circular -- I've never seen that before.

I think that's enough of a book now. Hopefully the inspections will go well and things will move along quickly for us. It's definitely nice to have our offer accepted with no counters -- I feel like we're getting a good deal, and we'll be able to get the main things fixed up before we move in.

Phew. I bet you're exhausted just having read this.

step three: inspections

Our offer was accepted today...with no changes! Yay!

So...the next step is to do all the inspections we want to do to make sure there are no major hidden problems. Depending on how all of that goes, we could be home owners in a couple weeks.

I started to write a description of the house, but it wasn't making such sense...at least not the way I wanted it to. So Matt is going to do it in a little bit.

Monday, May 21, 2007

step one: find a house

step two: make an offer

We have taken this step. Here is a picture of the house we have made an offer on:


This house is not such a fixer upper as the other one we posted. It needs some new carpet/flooring and paint and maybe to be rewired, but otherwise it is livable. Along the way, we would do some updating, but we could very well be in it in a month or two at most.

Monday, May 14, 2007

soccer game

Here is a picture of Matt coaching his Upward soccer team. They are 3rd and 4th grade boys. This past week, the game ended in a 2-2 tie. (The guy in the yellow is the ref.)

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Aunt Architect

Nathan, Caroline, and myself traveled to Atlanta this weekend for Aunt Erin's graduation. Here are a few pictures (the last is Nathan and his second cousin Lydia).




Thursday, May 03, 2007

weight update

So...I haven't been doing the best about what I eat and drink, but somehow I still managed to lose some weight. I have now lost a total of 3 pounds. It's not huge, but it's weight loss. My biggest problem lately has been that when I seem to be eating good I get to feeling bad/extra tired. I think it may be that I wasn't eating ENOUGH. Who knows. We'll see, though. I think I may end up gaining some back this week because I've bene really bad the last two days. I'm not going to stress over it, though. I have enough stress. I NEED to be able to eat what I want. I'd rather be fat and happy than skinny and insane. :)

Monday, April 30, 2007

back to the drawing board

Today we had the house pictured below inspected in view of making an offer (usually this happens the other way around, but because it is a VA foreclosure, things work a little differently). Anyway, I was there for the whole 4 hours while the inspector did his thing and I tagged along. Turns out there are more things that need doing than are worth it for us (HVAC, water heater, roof needed replacing "last year", etc...), so we're starting over again. We were planning on totally redoing the kitchen, most of the bathroom, putting in new carpet, and other stuff to fix it up, but those other things put it outside the range of what we would be able to do and still have the possiblity of getting our money out of it.

In a way, we're kind of relieved. (A little surprising to feel that way, but it's true.) We can start looking "for real" again and keep on saving money. Then we can find something that's in better shape. Fortunately, we don't have any pressure timeline of any sort -- it's just a matter of wanting to stop renting, so we have the luxury of waiting to find the right house.

Tulips from far far away


Erin brought me some tulips when she came back from Europe (specifically, they came from The Netherlands). Nathan and I have been faithfully watering them (after they were planted a bit late). They are just now starting to bloom. Here is a picture of one of the two pots.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

house picture

Here is the picture of the house we are looking to possibly make an offer on:


We went and looked at it again today. It definitely needs a lot of work to be up to our standard of living, but it has potential. What a hard decision this is! In all reality, it may not be available at the moment anyway for our price. We'll see.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

the great exodus

One of the strange things that happens after you have a baby (at least to me) is a mass exodus of hair. It's just crazy! For about a month now, every time I wash my hair, I have handfulls come out. I'm not talking 10 or 20 strands. I'm talking 50 or 70 or 100. Nobody ever talks about these kinds of strange things!

Monday, April 16, 2007

the house search

As some of you know, we are in the process of looking for a house to buy. We are looking for an older home that we can fix up. We just found out today that a house we had previously looked at is going back on the market soon. We really liked the layout of the house, but the price was a little too high. Now, though, we have saved a little more money and are hoping that the price will be reduced. The house has four bedrooms, a smallish living room, a decent sized eat-in kitchen, and a dining room (that we would probably use as a play area). Please be praying for us as we may be in the position to make a decision soon.

(I was going to update on my weight loss happenings, but this was much more interesting...or positive anyway.)

Thursday, April 12, 2007

not as well

I'm not doing as well this week as I did last week...at least I don't think so. (I'm not keeping up with what I eat.) One of the problems has been that the penny item from Publix (which I can't resist since it only costs $.01) was chocolate chip cookies. I ate quite a few of them over three days. They're gone now, though. Otherwise, I've been doing ok. I really think the thing that makes the biggest difference is cutting out all the milk that I used to drink. I used to drink 3, 4, 5 cups a day...often chocolate. Most days, though, I've only had 1. That really cuts down on my calories.

Monday, April 09, 2007

losing weight

Unfortunately, I have a lot of weight lose. I am going to give all the sordid details here. I figure it creates some sort of accountability if people actually know. So...in college, I weighed about 135. After getting married, I gained about 15 pounds. I was not really very thrilled about that. However, I soon got pregnant with Nathan. I gained 32 pounds with him and kept about 25 after all was said and done. Ick! Unfortunately, I never lost that weight and even gained about 5 more pounds. Then, I got pregnant with Caroline. I gained 29 pounds with her. When I went back to aerobics, I still had 17.5 of those. So...in case you're not keeping up with my ever increasing numbers, that put me at 197.5. Oh me...oh my... If you would have told me in college that I would EVER weigh this much, I wouldn't have believed you. However...I did.

Well, I am going to chronicle my attempts at weight loss here. I have started back to aerobics and have started to change my eating habits. I actually gained a pound around my birthday. That happens when you eat whatever you want (including a half a strawberry cake). This past week I really got into things. I am not doing any specific plan since that never works too well for me. I am really good at keeping the rules...until I don't. It's all or nothing for me. So, I'm really trying to take this as a "one decision at a time" type thing this time. The things that I am implementing are:

1. Drink more water (both for the water and to cut down on drinking calories)
2. Eat healthy snacks
3. Avoid some favorites...Dr. Pepper, Kit Kat, Twix

I may start really limiting how much I eat after supper since I tend to do a good bit of snacking at night.

Anyway, I am happy to report that despite having a big Easter meal, I lost 2.5 pounds last week. Yay! I know that I don't need to lose too fast (1 pound a week is supposed to be good), but it's nice to see some change.

Easter picture

I put this picture up so that those of you who are interested can see how tall Nathan is at the moment. I didn't put it on the kiddos blog because it really shows how much weight I need to lose. I don't really want to advertise my large size. However, it is a reality. (And this picture gives me more motivation to lose some weight) I figure that those of you who actually look at this blog occasionally love me enough that it's ok. So...here's the family picture full length. If you prefer the closer head shot, head on over to the kiddos blog.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

what do you think #2

These are a little less "normal", but I would still love lots of feedback.




what do you think #1

I would love to know if anybody likes any of these. Any comments...good or bad...would be appreciated...really.




Tuesday, January 02, 2007

pictures are finally up

It has taken me forever, but I finally put some pictures up on Nathan's page. Either Matt or I will try to get a written update posted sometime soon. Of course, that is dependent on what happens with my pregnancy. (Also my excuse for not getting something up sooner.) Anyway, we'll try. In the meantime, use the link to the right to take a look at the new pictures.

family and trees

Here are a couple pictures for your enjoyment. The first is not the best picture, but at least you can see all of us. The second is Nathan's tree that he decorated all by himself. The third picture is our tree all finished.



at the parade

Ryan and Arin found a friend. :)


Everybody watching the parade by the side of the road (the rest of us had chairs).



Arin had enough...enough of that boring parade.

Lydia at the park

Here are a couple pictures of Lydia...Matt's cousin's daughter...at the park at Thanksgiving.