Six Years of Home-Making

We're coming up on the sixth anniversary of the purchase of our home, and I thought it'd be fun to do some photo comparisons* to see just what's changed.  If home improvement projects bore you, consider yourself forewarned.  This is one of those posts that is really more for us than for any of you guys--we've sacrificed many a date night in the name of home improvement, and these kinds of posts can help us feel better about all that.  (Sometimes.  Other times, they make us--okay, me--gnash teeth in frustration over how slowly this whole ordeal is going. . .)

Front Yard

I'm taking artistic liberty here.  The truth is that right now, under cover of snow, the front of the house is basically identical to that first picture.  Most of what we've done in the front has been minor landscaping--adding a flower bed, planting some bulbs/shrubs/perennials, and seriously abusing the front lawn (we had to dig trenches to lay sprinklers and to replace a water main.  Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, as they say.)

Back Yard

Okay, these photos really don't do justice to the blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into this space.  Our sweet, sweet neighbors endured three long summers of our noisy, smelly tractor as we installed two new retaining walls, a raised brick patio, two new fences, a sprinkler system, and a foundation for the "man lair".  But what really stands out in this picture is the luxurious new lawn, which took less than 4 hours to install.  Oh, the irony. 

Kitchen

Like the front yard, there's not much visible change aside from filling it up with "stuff".  Some re-wiring, some new lights, some repair work on the ceiling, and a fresh coat of paint.

Living Room

  

Again, not much change here either, aside from the new furnishings--just recessed lights, some fresh paint, and some more behind-the-scenes stuff (wiring, insulation, etc.)

Master Bedroom

Just some new paint and a trip to IKEA, along with the rewiring treatment that the whole house received.  (I took this picture right before Ben was born, after I'd gone through a wild flurry of "nesting".  Hence the cosleeper and overall tidiness.  I don't have a more current picture without the cosleeper, probably because my room hasn't been this clean since, nor have I had the time/energy to update anything else in the room.) 

Big Bedroom

Another room by IKEA.  (The red dressers, by the way, are Elizabeth's contribution;  for reasons still unknown to us, she asked for a red dresser for her birthday one year.  We got two kid-sized plain wooden dressers and the girls helped us paint them BRIGHT red.) 

Little Bedroom

It's not in the picture, but Jared built a shelf system in the closet of this room, right before Anna was born.  (And I mean RIGHT before--I started going into labor as I was painting it!)

Main Bath

Yes, these pictures were taken from the same spot just outside the doorway.  See where Elizabeth is standing in the first picture?  That's where the new back wall of the bathroom is.  Yep, it's much smaller now (you'll see why below), but there still is a tub/shower, to the right of the toilet (we stole the space from the built-in cabinets in the hallways plus the shower in the master bathroom). 

Master Bath

Paving the way for a new master bathroom.  This picture actually represents a pretty significant improvement;  there was water damage and rot under that pink shower, and we swapped/borrowed some square footage from the main bathroom to transform our closet-sized 3/4 bath into a full bathroom with a little more elbow room. (See that window on the right?  That's the same window just over the toilet in the "before" picture of the main bathroom.) 

Basement

Wait, wasn't this post supposed to be about home IMPROVEMENT?  Forget the eggs/omelets analogy;  this is more like a tornado hitting the henhouse.  Our basement right now is at the same point our yard was at early last spring--the point at which it really couldn't get any worse.  (Actually, contrary to what the pictures may lead you to believe, it's gotten a little better:  we no longer have trenches chiseled in the floor, and we've even gotten our washer and dryer hooked up down there.)  Again, the pictures don't really do justice to the amount of work that's gone into the basement, especially the "innards" of the house down there:  in addition to the rewiring that I've mentioned a million times, Jared has also installed a water softener, swapped out our enormous old boiler for a small high-efficiency boiler, and re-plumbed most of the house, from the vents in the attic down to the drains in the basement floor.  (Yeah.  I know.  Sometimes I feel like I'm married to the entire crew of This Old House. . .)

Our Family

And if you're wondering what *I* was busy doing while Jared was building, here's your answer:  in addition to creating a couple of people from scratch, I've been doing all those little things that keep our home running  and help make things like family portaits happen. . .along with shooing our little darlings away from the miter saws, grout buckets, and framing guns while Daddy worked.  (This last job is proving especially challenging with Ben, who really wants to be on the business end of all those cool-looking tools.  The girls used to love helping Daddy when he did quieter jobs but would run away when he turned on something noisy like the tile saw;  when Ben hears a noise like that, he runs TOWARD it.) 

It's been an incredible six years, building our family and our home.  Six years of elation, exhaustion, and everything in between. . .here's to many, many more!

*Note:  If you believe for one second that these "after" photos are a fair representation of what our house looks like on a daily basis. . .well, just drop by for an unannounced visit sometime so you can be set straight.  The girls' room, in particular, has been that tidy for approximately three cumulative hours over the past two years.

November Recap

We broke in the new fire pit by roasting hot dogs and marshmallows on our patio one night.  (Oh, the patio.  We put so much into that thing that you'd better believe we're going to use it for as much of the year as we possibly can!)

Just a few weeks later, the first big snowstorm of the season rolled in.  The girls have reached another one of those milestones you never read about in parenting books:  the age at which they spend more time actually playing IN the snow than they do getting ready to play in the snow.  They must've stayed out in the snow for an hour on this particular day.

  

Our piece de resistance:  a snowman that we left on the front porch, a la "Snowmen at Night".  The girls tried hard to trick Jared into answering the door and discovering the surprise, by "doorbell ditching", but he just wouldn't fall for it.  

 

Our school held a special Veterans' Day assembly.  Pictured above are the military folks from my neighborhood.  The woman on the far left is one of the first people I got to know when we moved here, since we were pregnant together and just a few weeks apart--her little girl is in kindergarten with Anna now.  The short white-haired gentleman in the middle is a World War II veteran who sings "Unforgettable" to me every week at church choir practice.  

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, stomach flu hit our house.  Four days later, just as I was thinking we were in the clear, Jared left for a week-long business trip. . .and two hours later, I got sick.  Thankfully, with a little help from neighbors and family (thanks again for the dinner, Sarah Jo!), we muddled through.   

Jared came home the day before Thanksgiving, which we spent with the Olson clan.  The baby production has slowed somewhat in recent years, and as we sat down to our Thanksgiving dinner I realized anew that the swarm of toddlers that had kept us so frantically busy in the past has matured into a charming group of little people who are all old enough to a) feed themselves, and b) engage in conversations, both with each other and with the adults. 

 It was so fun to eavesdrop on the "kiddie table", and it was even more fun later in the evening to get a chance to chat one-on-one with some of the kids (especially Oliver and Lael, since we don't get to seem them very often. . .as well as Fiona, Bronwen, and Sinead, since we won't be seeing *them* very often for the next 3-5 years as their family is moving to England!  I'm beyond excited for their family--what an opportunity!)  

Anyway, we do still have enough of the small fry to keep us on our toes.  Anna is one of the in-betweeners--not quite big enough to run with the wolf pack, but too big to hang out with the babies.  She was quite happy at Thanksgiving, though;  she and Henry had a nice chat over dinner, and she relished all the food.  (She must be going through a growth spurt right now;  the kid is hungry every 20 minutes!)  

Thanks to a week of unseasonably warm and dry weather, cleaning up the yard for winter was a pleasure.  When it was time to rake up the leaves, we positioned the pile right at the base of the slide.  (Why, yes, we ARE the coolest parents ever.)

 Here's Elizabeth diving off the end of the slide and into the leaves.

 

Anna was delighted with the leaf pile--afterwards she went inside and wrote a note to Elizabeth:  "Dear Elizabeth, thac you for maceing a big lef pieol.  love Anna"

It took awhile before Ben was willing to jump in--instead, he sat on Jared's lap and egged on the girls with his shrieks of delight. 

On the home-improvement front, we're still waiting on the counter top for the new main bathroom.  No counter top means no sink and no mirror, which means we brush our teeth in the kitchen and do makeup and hair while looking into a hallway mirror that's roughly the size of a smartphone screen.  This has not been without consequences:  I think I even scared a door-to-door solicitor into a lifetime of bachelorhood.  I'd taken a bath (this was before we had the shower tiled), and was of course interrupted three minutes into it by a mischievous toddler, then hurriedly got dressed and blow-dried my hair, all without looking in a mirror. . .A few minutes later the doorbell rang.  I answered it to find a kid of maybe 21, selling home security systems or dishTV or some such thing.  He seemed a little startled and prefaced his spiel with an apology about "getting me at a bad time".  I went through my usual routine of smiling politely and then firmly but kindly declining his sales pitch and wishing him a good day.  After closing the door, I glanced in the hallway mirror and realized I had streaks of mascara running down my cheeks and hair sticking up liked a fright wig.  Poor guy.  

Anyway, here's what the bathroom looks like:
 

And that brings us to December, with all the joy and craziness and family time it brings. . .

October Recap

 October went by in such a blur, I'm having to rely on the few photos I took to remind me of what we did. . .

Oh, now I remember.  We completely demolished both of the bathrooms.

After much discussion on just how we were going to manage this "two for one" bathroom remodel, I offered to take the kids to my parents' house over the UEA break.  We left just as Jared was taking a crowbar to the drywall in the main bathroom.  He proceeded to gut both bathrooms from wall to wall, floor to ceiling.  Literally.  When he was finished with the demolition you could look up and see the inside of the roof, and look down and see the cement floor in the basement.  When we came home three days later, things looked like this:

 

Functioning toilet?  Check.  Running water in the tub?  Check.  It was primitive, but even that much gives us a better arrangement than about 98% of the world's population.

The box from the new bathtub became a new favorite toy--the girls even slept in it one night.  We showed them how to do a magic trick with it by propping it up on end, then going in the front "door" and "disappearing" through the back.  They loved this, and a few days later they set up a magic show in the living room.  "The great Lizlina" performed for a full house.

We did manage to get outside a bit.  Uncle Joe wanted to take Yvey to a real pumpkin patch this year, and luckily for him, we knew just the place.  (In case you're wondering--yes, the girls did dress themselves!)

 

 

 We grew pumpkins of our own this year, but I still let the girls pick out some bigger ones to carve. . .

Elizabeth suddenly loves to ham it up for the camera. . .not sure where that came from.

Anna still prefers a demure smile.

 

That's Anna's bunny pumpkin in the center--she's been obsessed with bunnies lately.  She sleeps with a stuffed bunny, asks for a pet bunny on a near-daily basis, and decided to dress as a bunny for Halloween.  Elizabeth wanted to be something "scary, but not too scary".  She settled on a bat--not a vampire bat, just a cute little black Halloween bat.  And Ben just got whatever Mommy could throw together with minimal time and effort:  a cowboy.  (That adorable handlebar mustache lasted only until he got his hands on a Hershey bar--it was then replaced by a full chocolate goatee.)

We hit up the school carnival and also went trunk-or-treating at Grandma & Grandpa Olson's ward, so by the time Halloween actually arrived, the girls were happy just to trick-or-treat a street or two and call it quits, despite the beautiful no-jackets-needed weather.

And that was our October. 

Oh, I guess technically I did turn 31--but since there's no photographic evidence of it, I don't have to count it. . .right? 

Beaver Pond

 

Ahhh, fall.  The days are getting shorter, there's a crisp note in the air, and the mountains are putting on their autumnal finery.  We took advantage of the weather on Saturday to enjoy a hike with Nonny & Poppa and Kellie, Joe, and Yvey.  

The hike starts with a steep half-mile climb through a forest of quakies. . .

 

Eventually the trail levels out and opens into a meadow. . .

 

. . .Cross the meadow, go through a little grove of quakies, and voila:

  

 Chucking rocks into the pond.

The secret to keeping Anna happy on these treks:  Lollipops.

 Ben, on the hunt for "mo" rocks to throw into the water.

 Kellie went for a short sprint while the rest of us hung out at the pond eating Gobstoppers.

I snagged this candid shot and then when I reviewed it on the camera I exclaimed, "Oh darn, Kellie, you're in Joe's shadow." She said she's used to that.  

After the kids had their fill of rock-chucking--and after tending to Kellie's bee-stung hand (ouch!)  we headed back down the trail.

 

We stopped for another look at the bones we found just off the trail:  a vertebra and big ol' femur from some unfortunate ungulate.

 Ben, waiting to ambush Mommy along the trail.  His new favorite word:  "Boo!"

 Yvey, riding in style on Joe's back.

 Back at the trailhead.

 

Welcome, fall--we're glad you're here!