November

 That time of year when they bring in animals to eat the fields...some years its horses or cows, but this year it's sheep, so we went on a walk to see them.

 Megan's birthday party

 Clara joining me for coffee...although this day I gave her Ovaltine instead...

 Britton wearing uncle Ben's boots.

 Because of the holidays, there were a couple of days at preschool that Gwendy only had a few kids so she said that Clara could come over. Clara loves preschool but most of the time Gwendy has a pretty good crew this year (10-13 kids) so only Britton goes, but that's a great problem to have!

 I took these pictures last May...but a last minute decision was made to pour the sidewalk on this side of our house before winter, so that meant that the big Elm tree in the back needed to go and ASAP.

 I hate to remove trees around here, but this one needed to go (old, multiple trunk, big branches hanging over our house dropping branches, etc...), and the two in the front yard need to go but Cary and I are still fighting about that. ;)
So anyway, John Paul and Dean started taking limbs down, Cary and I just happened to walk outside while they were cutting one down and I'm being totally serious when I say a big branch was an inch away from hitting the corner of our roof and the A/C unit when it came down.  They didn't cut anymore down since the rest were directly over our house.

 Phil Faber took the tree down with his big equipment that took a lot of maneuvering to keep it from falling on our house...it really wanted to fall on our house. :D Now our yard is torn up from the tree and the machine, but the sidewalk on that side of the house looks really nice. I'm excited to plant some new trees too.

 I wish I would have had Cary stand by this trunk and root ball, it was huge.

It's going to get worse before it gets better. ☺

One year later...

This post is about my house, and might be really BORING for most of you. I'm kind of a weirdo who likes to see people's houses, how they set up things and how they organize. I've always taken pictures of my living space(s) ever since college, I would even take pictures of my dorm/apartment rooms. ☺

We've been in this house a year now, so I ran through the house taking pictures. Looking back on pictures helps Cary and me see the progress we've actually made, since sometimes when your project to-do list is so long, you forget the stuff you've actually done and you start to forget what the house looked like to start with. Of course, a lot of the work done in the past year was in the walls and under the house like electrical, plumbing, etc...

We still haven't done much decorating, especially in the kids rooms, but it's something they are really wanting to happen in their rooms, so hopefully we can make that happen soon.

Girls room

 The only thing we've done in the girls room so far is rearranged the closet shelving. This closet is very wide (it extends at least two feet back from the closet doors), but it's very narrow. Standard closets are 24" deep minimum, and this closet is 19", making it very hard to use the space, but for now this is working better than the old set up was.

 You can see how far it goes back,  I had Cary build shelves so that the space was a little bit more usable.

Boys room - I usually have the kids clean their rooms before bed, and this was the damage from one morning. ☺

 We've not done anything in the boys room other than change the light fixture. I'm hoping to paint and get Aidan's flag hung up soon.

Kids bathroom -

The grout was coming out in chunks, so we were going to re-grout, but then we found out the flooring underneath was done wrong, so all the tiles lift up, so we'll have to re-do the floor which is going to be a big job that we're saving for later. ;)

Our bathroom

The office is such a calming retreat to work in, don't you agree? So maybe Cary has a point that I'm a hoarder if you look at this room....However, some of these shelves our housing his tools and equipment to do our house projects. We don't have a shed or garage, so this room is doing double dute right now.

 Our room- I know almost all of the curtains in our house are too short! I'm working on it...someday.

 We haven't done anything to our room except drill a hole in the wall to dig out dead mice, Cary ran a beautiful duct through the corner of the room, we stole the closet doors for our utility room, and I ripped out shelves in the closet to use in the girls room. ☺

The entryway still looks the same...

 except that we decided we don't want a door here, so we finished putting the trim around the pass through.

 Here are our old closet doors...now we have a utility room and I don't have to worry about kids playing with the water heater settings and A/C coil.

 The laundry room - my favorite room in the house! It's still not finished, so I'll do a separate post when it's done.

Cary was so worried about cutting through that wall, and then he was worried about how he was going to install the bi-fold doors, and both of those projects took about 2 hrs each. Filling in nail holes, sanding down trim and moldings, and painting has taken over 3 weeks and we're still not done! 

So that ends this year's tour. ;)

Halloween and Terrible Threes.

Clara fell asleep on me one Saturday afternoon and that's worth documenting as it's a pretty rare thing these days. 

(Stolen from Janille)

I love fall, and I love the harvest, fall stuff, but I really dislike Halloween. 

 I don't get the blood, gore, death, and grim aspect of it, and before I had kids I just pretended it didn't exist altogether.

Well, now my kids want to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating, and we did last year and we did this year. So I guess I can get behind cute kids in cute costumes and candy. ☺

 (But if it were up to me I wouldn't do it. Party Pooper!)

(Stolen from Janille)

That said, we went Janille and her kids, and some other kids and my kids had lots of fun. Aidan was a soldier, Clara was princess Sophia, ;), Ella was Cinderella again, Britton was Mike the Knight, but he didn't actually want to wear anything that wasn't part of his original clothing. I had been painting all day so I was wearing my painting clothes, I guess that makes me a painter? Or just sloppy? :D

 These two spend a lot of time together lately. ♥

So far, my kids don't really have the "terrible twos", we have the "terrible threes".  I don't remember Aidan really having a "terrible phase" other than the "I'm a preemie and a newborn phase" and that was pretty bad. :D
Ella underwent a personality change around 3.5 yrs old, and Britton seems to be doing the same thing. Seriously Deja Vu. Here's to hoping his teenager phase is a little shorter than Ella's was. ;) (is hers over?!?)