A Flurry of Activity

This morning Jeromy woke up early to meet the plumber at the new house. He called me at work to tell me that he expected a lot to be finished today. Here is what I found when I arrived this afternoon.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but the roof shingles are now completely on.

We now have our front door!

We also have our side door in our laundry room!

This is the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom.

The hook-up for our washer and dryer.

Jeromy wanted pictures of the plumbing, so I took this picture of the hook-up for the toilet in the master bathroom.

My sister, Laura, pointed out that I had not posted a picture of the back of the house. Since the backyard is now graded and I can get into it, I took a picture.

Yes...Another Update

I forgot to mention yesterday that we now have garage doors. We think they may have been up on Monday because Jeromy thinks he saw the rope they are using to pull them down. Yesterday, we actually saw them, but they were up. Today, when we arrived they were down, so Jeromy took some pictures. Also, the shingles have progressed to the front of the house. Here are the pictures Jeromy took:



We also went to the Lighting Gallery to pick out our lighting fixtures. They will probably get back with us tomorrow with a quote. If we have gone over a budget, we will have to go back and reevaluate our choices. Hopefully, we are okay and that won't have to happen. We also went to Carpets by Otto and discovered we are still over budget there. However, we have decided to stick with our original choices.

Small, but Exciting, Changes

Today, I had open house until 8 pm. While there, I talked to Jeromy and he mentioned that he had gone to the house with Kelly and the kids and that there were some changes. So, after open house, I picked up Jeromy and we went over to check it out. They had put the shingles on the back of the house. But, we did not take any pictures of that. Here are some pictures that we took.

This short wall is called a "knee wall." It is part of our future cabinets in our kitchen.

Behind that piece of cardboard is our new fireplace.

Jeromy was very excited to see this license plate as we were driving over to the house. He was like a little kid.

Our Baby's Latest Picture

Okay, I know I'm a little late on this. On Monday, we received a new picture of our little girl. But, then I lost it. (I know how stupid) I remembered putting it in my purse and I thought I had put it somewhere so it wouldn't be bent. I searched my entire purse and could not find it. I looked in the books (which were in my purse on Monday) that Jeromy and I had taken with us (it's usually a long wait), but they were not there. Well, after emptying my purse, I resigned myself to being a loser who lost her baby's picture.

Then, yesterday, I was looking in a little notebook for the information that I had about the counter tops we are considering and there within the pages was the picture! So, I don't feel like such a loser any more. Here is our little girl:



She currently weighs 1 pound, 5 ounces (at least that is what she weighed on Monday). According to the ultrasound tech, that is just perfect. By the way, that is her leg in front of her face. You can see the joint for her knee in front of her nose and, if you look carefully, you can see her little foot hovering over her forehead. She is very flexible!

We may be a little partial, but we think she's adorable!

We Have Windows!

As we were heading to the other side of town, we recieved a phone call from my mom saying that Alex's bus goes by our new house. He was very excited because he had noticed that something new had been added to our house. So, after our errand, we headed over to see what was new. We were surprised to discover that our windows had been put in! Here are the pictures I took today:


The window in the great room:

The window in the baby's room:

Jeromy standing in front of the sliding glass door that will lead out to our patio:

A view of our fireplace from above. It is easier to see the shelf which is about nine feet from the floor.

First Day of School!

Today I had to go back to work! Unlike the rest of the district, only the freshmen came to school today at our building. Due to cutbacks in previous years they had to do away with freshmen orientation. To make up for this, the school has made the first day of school freshmen orientation day. It is a long tiring day!

We are with the kids from 8:00 until 2:25 with no breaks! I was exhausted by the time I arrived home.

Even so, I was able to run errands with Jeromy where we chose our carpeting for our new home. I actually think we made some very good choices.

A Day Late

Yesterday I didn't have time to update on what happened with the house. Here are the pictures:



This is the frame of the pan ceiling in our bedroom.

Our fireplace is finally framed!

In Other News...

Today was my first day back at school. It was nice to be able to see everyone! I'm not looking forward to getting up early every morning, but it won't be too bad. The baby is due at the end of first semester and first semester always goes quickly. I'm hoping that school will help these last few months go by quicker.

After all the activities in today's other post, Jeromy and I stopped off at the new house. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had almost finished framing the roof of the house. Here is a picture from the outside of the house:


This picture was taken from the inside of the house from the second floor.

It's a Girl!

As you can tell from the title of this post, we now know that our little one is a little girl! This afternoon we went to another appointment at Toledo Hospital for a doppler sounding and hoping we would learn what we were having. Within moments of arriving we learned that we were having a girl. We have not chosen a name as of yet.

After our appointment, Jeromy and I headed to Babies R Us to register. It was very fun, but we had a lot of hard choices. I think we did a good job!

This is getting really exciting!

World Pulse Festival

Yesterday, at 7:00 in the morning, I met Michelle and the Pioterek family in the parking lot of the church office for a fun day listening to music. We all climbed in the church van and headed to South Bend, IN for the World Pulse Festival. It is a free concert that is held every year in August. This year the concert consisted of a group called C3 (a heavy metal band), Mandisa, Skillet, TobyMac, and Casting Crowns. It was a beautiful day, very sunny (we were all burnt in some way by the end of the day).

I enjoyed every act. My favorite act was TobyMac. I have never seen him in concert and he did an awesome job! It amazes me how he never stops moving or singing.

Another Hard Day of Work

This evening my mom and I went by the house to check out the progress of the framing of the roof. It looks like they are about done with it. Here is a picture from the street:


Here is a picture of the attic and the new walls and roof surrounding it:

After exploring the upstairs, we returned downstairs and Alex and Elena went out to climb on the dirt hills.


While the kids were outside, Mom and I sat inside on the landing and talked. At one point, we decided that the kids were being really quiet. But, we decided that they couldn't get into too much trouble. Then, we heard them call for us. We went to the window and saw Alex and Elena climbing back over the dirt hills with their arms full of corn.


The funny thing is that when they first starting building the house, Alex kept commenting on how we could always have corn. Jeromy and I talked about it and he felt that as long as it was edible that was okay. We would just go around the corner to the market that the farmer runs and pay him for his corn. We thought this would start next summer, but I guess we will be doing it this year.

Busy! Busy! Busy!

As you can tell from recent posts, the construction team for our house has been very busy. We also have been busy getting things picked out for the house. We have had very stressful moments dealing with paint color choices (I'm still working on that). For the last two weeks, we have been picking out all of our appliances. I think we have that finalized and only need to order them at this point. This past week, we have chosen our front door and sidelights and worked with the cabinet company to finalize all of that.

Today was a very busy day! We drove out to Holland, near the airport, to work with a company to pick out the counters for our bathrooms. On the way back from the middle of nowhere we had some time to kill so we stopped at Menard's to look at lighting. We were able to find a few things we think may work (no purchases were made). Afterwards, we went to Sylvania (well, actually we were in Michigan) to choose our tile for our master shower and bathroom floor. It was very easy! The woman that our builder works with is an expert and did all the work for us. I think it is going to look great!

Now, all we have left is picking out the carpet and laminate for the rest of the house, the counter tops for the kitchen, lighting, and finalize paint colors. I think that is everything. I'm not sure.

Yesterday and Today

Throughout yesterday and today, the construction workers have been working very hard on the framing for the roof. Here are some pictures Jeromy took yesterday:




Now, here are a couple pictures from the outside of the house that I took today:

Yet Another Update about the House

Today they began to put up the walls of the second floor. The roof will definitely be on by the end of the week.

The view of the house from the street. I took this picture earlier in the day when they were still working.

I returned later in the day to explore the upstairs. This is a picture of the baby's future room from the hallway.

This picture was taken from a corner of the baby's room looking back into the rest of the second floor.

They Have Begun to Build the Second Floor

Once again, we traveled to Dayton this weekend. This time for a wedding. When we returned we stopped by the house and discovered that they had begun the second floor. The floor is down. Here we are standing in the baby's room:

We're hoping by Tuesday to find walls up.

The First Floor is Framed!

Here are some pictures that Jeromy took today of our new house. Most of the framing is finished on the first floor.

View of the house from the street:

Front door (the window to the left is the study, the one on the right is in our walk-in closet):

Me, standing in the study. That is the garage beyond the study.

View into Great Room and Kitchen. I think we are going to have a beautiful view of the backyard.

Looking from the Great Room through the Kitchen and into hallway which leads to the laundry room.

Standing in Master Bedroom looking toward the Master Bathroom and Walk-in Closet.

Once again, window in Great Room. Imagine grass and a pool and we will have a great view into our backyard.

Standing in Kitchen and looking out the door which will lead out to the back porch.

Looking from Laundry room through the rest of the house. Similar to the picture posted yesterday, but now with walls.

Pictures from our Vacation!

Okay, I know we went on vacation in June to Hocking Hills, but I never posted pictures. Here are some pictures of that vacation. Isn't it beautiful?