New Belly Pics

Here are a couple new pics of my belly.  I am 8 1/2 weeks pregnant and feeling great! The past 5 days I have felt completely normal.  Not that before was bad, but I just didn't feel great.  Now I do and I am so thankful.  We are leaving for Mexico on Saturday and I am so excited! It will be a great week off and fun times with our friends, Mindy and Tony.  I then have my first doctor's appointment on Monday, the 17th.  We should get an ultrasound that day which will hopefully rule out my thinking that I am having twins :)  I just never thought that my belly would feel this big at this point.  Not that it's that big but I feel like it is growing daily!  Enjoy the pics and I will update after the vacation.  Love to you all!

By the way, for those of you familiar with my belly button, it used to be oblong and skinny and it is definitely already rounding out and becoming more shallow.  Check it out...

Oops...

It's funny how God's timing is.  It is definitely not our timing.  Anyone have any guesses?........

Yep, we are pregnant.  This is a belly shot at 7 and a half weeks.  I will be 8 weeks on Friday.  Jeff and I are really excited! (Once we got over the "holy crap, what do we do now").   We weren't trying so we feel really blessed to have gotten pregnant so quickly.  It's just that the baby's due March 12th (the first Saturday of the NAIA National Basketball Tournament)...God's timing :)   I have felt pretty good.  I have been having A LOT of food aversions (can't stand cold cereal or craisins).  And a lot of food sounds good one minute then sounds disgusting the next. But thankfully I haven't had any real morning sickness.  You can see below my stretch marks from growing in 8th grade so I am sure I will get some being pregnant.  

Well, I'm off to get ready for bed...I am always tired!

Oh yeah, one of my best friends (Amy) is pregnant also and we are due 4 days apart (she's due March 8th and I'm due March 12th).  It looks like both of our husbands could miss part of the tournament...oops :)

It's been a while...

Sorry to everyone out there thinking I was going to post often.  I really tried hard but just not hard enough :)  Life got busy with moving and re-doing the house so the only free time we had was for sleep!  I was going to post some pictures tonight but forgot that I gave the camera to my mom.  We are all moved in but still "arranging".  I haven't gotten any pictures hung up but most everything else is done.  We love it here!  It definitely is a lot of work owning a home but we are very blessed! I will try to post some pictures this week when I get my camera back.  

Day 3 and 4

We have been working on the house almost every day so "days 3 and 4" don't really do it justice.  But the most recent transformation has been the ceramic tile. Jack, Jeff, and Greg finished the tile on Thursday and then Jeff and I did the grouting on Saturday.  Boy, was it a lot of work! And hard on the knees.  I have a real respect for people who do hard manual labor.  Jack and Leslie came down on Sunday and helped us paint the family room, electrical wiring, and power washing.  It was great! Here are some updated pictures:

The ceramic tile in the dining room and kitchen

This is the ceramic tile in the entry way

Jeff hard at work. 

Have a great week!  We will be painting as much as possible this week.  

This is Amy and Jace who kept us entertained all day long! :) I just love these two!
This is my dad hard at work removing all the tack strips.  He was a huge help!
This is Leslie hard at work scraping the wallpaper off.  She never once complained about the monotonous work.
This is one side of the kitchen when everything was removed.
This is Jack helping fix our wall that was not anchored.  He taught us a lot today!
This is my mom hard at work removing the wallpaper too!  Couldn't have done this much without her.  And Greg is helping remove the old refrigerator. He was a big help too since he re-did his kitchen a few years ago!

This is Jack, Jeff, and Greg hard at work laying the hearty backer board. 

Everyone did such a great job!!!!  

And so it begins....Day 1 and 2

Well, we finally closed on our home.  After a lot of scheduling and rescheduling of the closing, we got the keys Friday, May 22.  It was sure exciting.  And at the same time, a little scary.  No turning back now.  I will be using this blog to update daily (or as often as possible) on the progress of our home.  (This is Jeff's idea by the way...) That way, if we ever sell the house, we can link our blog and let future homeowners know all that we did (before and afters). 

Here's what our plan is for the house:

1. Gut the kitchen (new cabinets, countertop, sink, floor, appliances)

2. Refinish the hardwood floors

3. Replace the kitchen and dining room floors with ceramic tile

4. New carpet in the family room

5. Paint almost every room

6. And any kind of yard work we can fit in this summer...no set plans yet

7. Repair the chimney where an ineffective repair in the past caused a water leak.

8. New sliding glass patio door

Well we didn't waste any time on starting the work.  Friday, I went to Sherwin Williams and got a lot of paint supplies.  Then I went back and tested out the colors I had picked out. I liked 1 out of the 4!  Good thing I got the sample size.  But I think I have all my colors picked out.  I will be doing a Pale Earth in the living room and kitchen,  Kilm Beige in the dining and family room.  And probably Kilm Beige in another bedroom.  I will be keeping the other room the blue for now.  But our master bedroom - I haven't decided yet what to do.  I want to do some sort of tan since we have dark brown comforter with aqua accents. It should look really nice!  

So this past Saturday and today (Monday), we have got quite a bit done!  I spent most all day Saturday priming the living room.  Later that night after Jeff got back from a recruiting trip, we started taking down the cabinets.  We got all but 2 cabinets out!  Then today, we had a ton of help!!  My mom and dad (Scott and Teresa), and Jeff's mom and dad (Leslie and Jack) came down and REALLY helped us out.  And our awesome friends Greg and Amy (and Jace) came down the street to help us too!  We feel so blessed to have awesome friends and family! Thank you everyone! We really could not have gotten this far without everyone.  

Today, we got all of the cabinets out, ripped up all the old ceramic tile, scraped the wallpaper off until we couldn't stand to see that darn scraper anymore, ripped out the old carpet, removed all the tack strips and staples, laid some mortar and hearty backer for the new ceramic tile, fixed one of the walls in our kitchen that was not even anchored in, fixed an exterior light, and still had time to have a wonderful lunch (thanks to Amy!) and a great dinner (thanks to Jack and Leslie!).  After everyone left today, Jeff and I went back to Lowes (for the 5th time today...no kidding) and got all the ceramic tile and hearty backer board we would need to finish off all of the ceramic floors.  Then Jeff worked until 9:30 tonight to get the hearty backer board measured. Jeff is such a hard worker!  So it's now 10pm and we are EXHAUSTED!  

To top it off, I have an online anticoagulation course to do for the next 5 weeks.  What great timing.   I guess I just have to keep in in perspective. Thankfully we are still staying in our apartment for the month of June so we don't have to live among a mess!  Here are some pictures to show everyone what's going on:

This is the kitchen window to show the wallpaper.  We had 3 different layers of wallpaper!!!

This is the living room before I primed everything.  We will hopefully be getting a new ceiling fan. 

This is the kitchen cabinets before we ripped them out.  The were not in bad shape but the other side of the kitchen only had 1 cabinet and a lot of empty space.  So we are redoing it to make the kitchen more efficient. And we will also add a dishwasher since there was not one. 

This is Jeff ripping out the cabinets

This is the living room after I primed it. I will post more pictures...

We ARE......

BUYING A HOUSE!!!!  And we are very excited.  We should be closing on our house this Thursday. We have a lot of projects we will be doing on the house such as: refinishing the hardwood floors, gutting and redoing the kitchen, redoing the kitchen and dining room floors, painting, and then a few other maintenance issues.  But it should be a fun project for our first house!  I will post some pictures once we close and then I will be able to show before and after pictures.  I am starting an online course in a couple of weeks for work.  It will last 6 weeks so it will be a really busy time!  We are planning on staying in our apartment through the month of June so that we can work on the house but not have to live in the construction zone.  Hopefully we will be able to finish most of it before we move in.  I'll keep you all posted.