House... What we have done so far

A lot of people have been asking me about the house to see pictures.  Here are lots of pictures some with the before and now picture, and others of just the origional because we haven't done anything.  I posted some at the beginning so it might be a double, so bear with me.

Before: Front of the house
After: not picture, My dad chopped all the weeds down,
and put up a dirt brim to keep the water from going to the basement

Outside, We have only mowed.  As you can see it needs A LOT of yard work. 
It's a panorama picture so it doesn't show the weird angle of the yard from living on a circle
It is bigger then some and has a short steep hill from sledding in a year or two.

Bathroom

Dining Room

Kitchen

Living Room

Now the Basement... The basement was all put aside (except the laundry room) until we moved in.  This will be our next main focus (Until we finish finding cabinets for the kitchen so we can paint them).  We are going to start with the office to do lots of painting, and can double as a Guest room until the Guest room is finished.  Right now the Guest room is storing EVERYTHING, so it's pretty messy.  It will be nice to have an office so I can organize my other side of the brain :)  Then we definitely need to tidy up the bathroom so our guests have a place to go.  Next the livingroom/all/stairs/guest room/ ceiling... ect.  As you can see from the pictures, we still have a lot more work to do :)

this and the next picture are of the room we will be turning into an office
Ceiling and walls need painted and floors laid down are the top priorities.

Our very sad looking downstairs bathroom
We can only imagine how much work this is going to be...
Good news!  The toilet works though (if you don't mind an open creepy ceiling above your head)

Stairs... yep, lots of work too.

The downstairs family room... the carpet as been ripped out.  It was the first
thing because it smelt so bad.  As you can see we will need to tear out the ceiling in here, paint, base boards,
flooring... you know the usual :)

Although it is a lot of work, we really like the house! I  will be really excited when the cabinets are finished so I can organize my kitchen; and when we build some book shelves so I can get rid of my boxes of books lying around.  Once those two projects are finished, upstairs unpacking will be done.  We are so grateful for being able to get this house and all the help we have had from family and friends. 

Brady

We finally got internet in our new home, so I can blog.  I will put up some pictures on the house soon.  For now, It's Brady time.  He has GROWN so much!  And today, he has been doing the little-est cute-est things EVER!  I am sure by 7months he will be crawling.

With the new house, he has mastered scooting.  It took him about a week to get used to the wood floors, and by then we had laid some area rugs down both don't phase him.  He has gone from room too room following me.  It is the cutest thing ever!  He can crawl about 4 "crawls" then plops and scoots because he is SO much fast that way.  He is such a big helping in finding every little thing on the floor, and LOVES all the little carpet pieces and tearing the plastic strings.  Here are some things I have captured him doing today... all happens within 1 min of putting him on the floor, all places are about 15ft away.  

Got this out for his cousin the other day, Brady's toys are behind that.  I guess he didn't like the ones I put out for him. 

The Bathroom is his FAVORITE place to go to! He must like the monkeys.

This is his favorite place to pull at the carpet.  He is doing his morning planks. He also loves to do the yoga pose downward facing dog, and rock back on his hands and knees to put himself to sleep.

I went out to bring in the groceries and kept the door open.  I walk up to Brady by the door saying "mamamamama"  LOVE This little guy!

Freedom!

We also got a new rug for the back door and I hadn't taken off the sticker yet, Brady found that and took it off for me.  This was his first time scooting to the backdoor which is by the stairs, I guess I have to get a gate.  He is a busy busy boy!

Brady- Almost 6 months

 
Wow, Brady keeps learning new stuff each day!  I have decided this is one of his most exciting months yet, besides being born of course :)

* He can scoot forward now!  The first few days he would ONLY scoot to get to car keys, but this afternoon is was so fun watching him try to play with a small ball, only for it to roll away from him and then for him to try to chase after it.  It's funny because he looks to see how far it is, then searches around for a toy closer to see if it's actually worth going after the farther toy sometimes it is, but not all the time.
*  He has mastered sitting and playing with toys, but isn't able to move to that position by himself.  Mom loves it when he does because she can get a lot more stuff done when he plays for 30-45min by himself. 
* He got himself a high chair and defiantly misses his freedom of twisting around in his bumbo.   He goes "What, I can't move in this thing?  I am done eating" and wants to get done as SOON as he is finished instead of sitting at the table and chatting like usual. 
* When taking a bath is favorite thing to do is take the rag and shove it in his mouth as FAR as it can go, then keeps it in there while he splashes around.  He now gets his own rag while I use another for him.  I will have to get a pic of it...
*  Brady does NOT like nap time any more, mom doesn't appreciate that very much
* He has mastered jumping... my videos won't download of him jumping or scooting :(  sorry
* He still loves being outside
*  I think his favorite toy is his friends.  After I go running with my friend, we let our kids play together for a bit while we stretch and drink water, Brady will play with this big block toy for-ev-er and be completely content. 
*  HE is a big eater and will eat a 4oz jar of baby food for each meal
* He loved playing with people, and will give almost anyone a smile if you show him a little attention. 
* HE holds his bottle (I think mainly because mommy is to slow with giving it to him, and keeps taking it out because he hasn't learned about the importance of bubbles yet)
*  He is working on getting better with pulling himself to a standing position and standing at the couch
* he gets on his hands and knees so easily and loves to rock back and forth, and sometimes hops with both his knees forward.  He hasn't figured out how to move his arms without toppling over yet. 

I LOVE being his mommy and watching him grow and learn.  I continue to be amazed with how quickly they learn and grow.  We think he is the CUTEST thing on earth!  (We are betting that he will be crawling by the time we move into our new house in 2 weeks)

Wood Floors

our new restored kitchen floor!

Right: Sanded kitchen Left: the warn out brown kitchen and not so warn yellow kitchen

Pre/post sanded living room floor

This is what the bedroom and living room floors look like finished. 
I can't wait to add the new baseboards!

Last Thursday Will took off work, and we sanded all of our upstairs wood floors except the dinning room.  It only took us 6 1/2 hrs with both sanders running almost the whole time.  We are so grateful for my mom watching Brady so we could spend all day working on it.  On Saturday Will started early and was able to finish 3 coats of Polyurethane.  We didn't want to stain it, and LOVE all the different colors in the wood that have shown up.  We both thought the kitchen floor was hideous, and I was tempted to top it with tile or something else; it has become our FAVORITE after sanding and coating it!  I am so excited to paint the kitchen cabinets white and have a nice shining NEW kitchen of my own to cook in again!  Hopfully withing 2 weeks we will be living in our new place.   My mom and I have been going over 3-4 times a week during the morning to work on it, while Will goes after work and in the evenings.  It will be much easier to work on it without having to drive over each day. 

5 Months Pictures

Brady loves to shove anything is his mouth as FAR as it can go and coughs from choking himself each time... He must like it because He never learns.

I can never get a picture of this little guy smiling when the camera comes out

Grandpa always has the funnest toys.  Box and helmet.

No mom, I was not slobbering all over Grandpas helment

He finally learned how to use this thing and LOVES it! 

Family Pictures!

A friend from high school (Calli Elizabeth Photography, find her on Facebook)  took some family pictures for us a month ago!  We LOVE them and are so excited to move in and put some prints up!  Here are some of my favorites...

Work work work

The house is slowly coming along.  We finally finished some plumbing stuff in the bathroom, and just need to instal a new vanity.  The upstairs is about 3/4 of the way painted;  we pretty much have a little bit of trim left, then the kitchen and all the closets (We aren't doing much with the downstairs until after we move in).  The fresh coat of paint on ceilings and walls has been helping with the smell and looks great!  This weekend we moved out the few mismatched cabinets and found a place where the roof was leaking, which should hopeful be a quick fix.  Hopefully by this next weekend we can get the painting finished and wood floor sanded and refinished.  I am so excited to see how the floor/pain/baseboards will all look!  I think I am going to paint all the cabinets in the kitchen white... eventually, and move some stuff around in there.  It's exciting to have a separate kitchen and dining room, and some more space!  We are learning a lot with this new house.  The last house was mainly paint, drywall, and some tile.  This house is a little bit of everything.  I think the biggest thing I have learned is how much a fresh coat of paint on the Ceiling AND walls can change the house.  I am also learning to buy what I want the size that I want, and not worry about price.  There have been a few times where I bought something because it was a good deal, and ended up being too small, or not the exact thing I wanted, so we took it back.  I have also learned it is OK to take tools and other stuff back that just isn't working to get our money back, instead of just not using it and throwing it aside.

Brady has finally learned to JUMP!  He has one of the johnny jumper things and hasn't really loved it.  He would play with toys in it, then fuss after about 5min.  This Sat. while we were at the house he learned to jump!  He jumps high in it too!  It was so fun to watch him jump and twist around.  He has been much happier playing on the floor.  Although he can't scoot forward, he is a pro at scooting backwards, rolling, and turning 360 on the floor where he can usually get anywhere he wants (except 2in in front of him).  He is getting close to crawling too and loved to get on his hands and knees and rock back and forth; sometimes he just gets up on his toes and hands, it's pretty funny.  Unfortunately I don't have very many pictures of any of those, I guess that should be my project this week.  We are very happy that we can still hand him off to people and he will play happy with them (unless he is hungry, that's another story)  He is getting so big and we still love him!