Announcing Ascha Lynn


Ascha was born at 3:41 P.M. on June 23rd, 2008. Both mom and baby are doing well. Ascha had to stay in the hospital an extra day to recieve some antibiotics, but was released this morning with a clean bill of health. She weighed in at 9 pounds and was 21 inches long. She has stolen all of our hearts. Taylor would like to be nose to nose with her most of the time, and even though Aric keeps a little more distance, he is pleased with her also.








We got to come home from the hospital to our new home! Hooray to Jeremy for getting everything moved, and special thanks to Grandma Janet and Grandpa Lyn. Although we need to put some things away, the kitchen was totally assembled and unpacked, and everything is lovely.

Progress Report

Sorry I haven't updated in a few days. The boys and I all struggled with being sick for a number of days, so we stayed at the apartment and out of everyone's way. We are all better now and we've been to the house recently, so here are some new pictures:



Our kitchen is coming together beautifully. I love the flooring and I love how it goes with our cabinetry. I also love the countertops Jeremy scored - we were planning on going with something lighter than this, but he got a great deal and they match everything else really well.



Here is a pic of our two carpet choices. The frieze in the front is what we did throughout the carpeted areas, and the "moon rock gray" in the two rooms behind is the lower-grade carpet we decided to put in the kids' rooms for right now. We're not completely trusting that the basement will never leak again (although it certainly shouldn't after the work that's gone into keeping it dry), so we didn't want to waste nice carpeting should it ever have a moisture problem. The boys really liked the gray carpet and it didn't cost much for now, so if we should ever have to replace it, it won't be such a big deal.


This is our laminate floor choice. It should compliment the kitchen cabinets beautifully. Jeremy, being ever ambitious, decided to lay it on the diagonal, so it's become quite a large project. However, after working on it all day yesterday (this picture was taken two days ago), he's gotten all of the living room and most of the dining room laid. He's hoping to take it down the hallway today, and then all of our flooring (except trim pieces) will be in. It looks great!




The boys are pretty excited to be moving in!!! Actually, in this picture, they're pretty excited that Grandpa has let them play in the back of his truck. He came back out on Sunday and he and Grandma are being so incredibly helpful! There's no way we could be ready to move in without all their help and we are thankful!




And finally, here's one last tribute to the T-Ball season. Here are the "spectators" at Taylor's last game. Aric saw a picture of me on the computer and said, "Look, Mom. There's a picture of you when you didn't have Ascha in your tummy... You were skinny!" Hopefully this is about the last picture I'll have taken with Ascha in my tummy...we're one week away from her due date today. We hope she stays put until the 25th so we can get things squared away with the house, but part of me is definitely ready to have her out.

Bathroom Progress

Here's a picture of our master bathroom. The floor is very dirty and should clean up to be brighter, but you get the idea. These vanities were scored for about 1/3 retail price on Craigslist - they came brand new in the boxes with matching mirrors! We're pretty pleased with how this room is going to look!

The carpet was installed today, along with all of our lights (except the chandelier, which we haven't decided on yet). Hopefully I'll get pics of the carpet posted in the next few days. We're really moving along well! Jeremy has all the cabinets put together and in the kitchen now and his mom is taking up the first load of boxes from the apartment tonight! It's growing very close to moving time and we are all pretty excited.

In other news, Taylor had his last T-ball game yesterday. He

managed to perk up enough to play, and then he hit his coach's pitch every time he was up to bat! We're really proud of him and the great season he had. He was very good at looking alert and staying ready when fielding, which is no small task for a 5-year-old! Great Job, Taylor!

Flooring and the Flu

Our carpet installer is able to install carpet without the door jambs in place, so we are on track for a FRIDAY (as in, tomorrow!) carpet installation! It's very exciting! Jeremy has done all the tiling downstairs in the boys' bathroom and in the laundry room, and he also got the stairs rounded and prepped for carpet and applied "floor leveler" to the spaces in the subfloor and "levelquick" to the areas of cement that needed tlc after removing the old tile grout. Today he's getting our "FiberFloor" (resilient floor - like vinyl - for bathrooms and kitchen). Hopefully he will be able to lay the master bath portion that will butt up to the carpet today, and then we'll truly be as ready as possible for our carpet install. Jeremy's mom has been helping out with cleaning things so that we'll be starting fresh with clean subfloor under the carpet (THANK YOU, THANK YOU!).

I, as usual, haven't been doing much on the house except working on the logistics and phone calls. It's been rainy and chilly so the boys and I have had a quiet week of hanging out inside. Today is supposed to be nicer, and it's Taylor's last T-ball game, so we had been looking forward to getting out today. However, Taylor got a 24-hour stomach flu yesterday. He was fevered and couldn't even keep water down most of the day, but thankfully, after a good night's sleep following a good day's sleep, he's doing much better. He's eating and his fever is gone, but he still feels "wibbly wobbly" this morning. I doubt he'll have the energy for playing t-ball tonight, but we might go watch the game, since it is his last one. We're hoping that the rest of us don't get this bug!

Ascha's due in less than two weeks, which is both exciting and overwhelming to think about. Hopefully after this carpet goes in, Jeremy's mom and I will be able to move quite a bit of the smaller stuff in the minivan so that "moving day," whenever it occurs, won't be a big deal, even if Ascha is around.

Here are a few more pics of the house progress. We have some of our lighting in now and all of our outlets are working, which is nice. Here is the kitchen:





Here is our family room / play room / guest room. I really love this gray-blue color:




And here is our bedroom, which may or may not stay this color, and may or may not eventually get some accents in the same blue as the family room. It is a silvery gray which we chose for both the guest bath and our bedroom. One of the reasons Jeremy liked this gray was because it looked very silvery without looking purple at all... of course, that was on the paint chip. In the guest bath, which has no natural light, it is a perfect color and just what we expected. In our room, bathed in natural light, it is quite purple. I am sneakily happy about this, because all our color choices tend toward the masculine. (Gray and blue in the bedroom, for example). I really like those tones, but once in a while I fantasize about having a feminine color somewhere, and now I have that, at least for a little while. :-)

PS - I finally redid the video posts from a while ago - you can see Taylor's "wind-up" for batting and Aric's silly question in that May post now. :-)

It's a House!

Since I last posted, the walls have been mudded, taped, textured, and painted. What a difference! It truly feels like a house now. Unfortunately, pictures can't do it justice, but here they are anyway:



Yesterday, Jeremy and his friend Adriel got most of these wall cabinets installed in the kitchen (pics coming later), so things are flying right along.



We thought we'd be on track to get carpet in this Friday, but now we're not so sure. The current roadblock is that all the interior doors have to be in before the carpets. We were thinking that would go quickly because we have all the doors we need leftover from demolition. However, every single door we have is in a 2x6-sized jamb, but because we took off all those layers of plaster, our walls now require 2x4-sized jambs. We can either acquire all new doors or Jeremy can disassemble every door jamb, cut each piece down, and reassemble them. With our time crunch / baby race, we're not sure which option we'll choose. Jeremy had been hoping to tile today, but this door dilemma might change his plans.

Jeremy has been going at super-hero speeds, non-stop, since he came home from his last upriver trip on Thursday. (When I say "last," I not only mean the nearest previous trip, but also the "last" in the sense that he probably won't be taking anymore for quite a while. Last year's grain is pretty much gone, so there won't be many trips, and with Ascha nearing her debut appearance, Jeremy will be sticking close to home anyway.) On Friday, he had quite a bit of trouble with different frustrating roadblocks, and wasn't able to truly start painting in earnest until the afternoon. By 10 or 10:30 p.m., he had managed to primer the entire ceiling and all the walls, paint the ceiling, and cut in the edges of the kitchen with our chosen color! AMAZING! Then, Saturday, Jeremy and his mom painted the entire rest of the house. In the morning, he sprayed the downstairs walls white (we figure we'll get fancy down there later - for right now the boys don't care that they live in a white space). Then they painted the rest of the house by hand and got it all done. I am in awe of how quickly they went. Today, Jeremy's mom will do some touch-up painting and give the family room a final coat, and then we'll be done with that massive project. Jeremy's next big projects are tiling, figuring out the door dilemma, and putting together and installing the rest of the kitchen cabinets. We also have our insulating contractors completing the attic insulation today, the electrical contractor completing the electrical tomorrow, and the HVAC contractor completing whatever he has left on Wednesday. Then we'll be completely done with the contracted-out parts of the house, except for the carpet install. It's coming down to the wire, but we are excited and hopeful that we just might make it in before Ascha comes. My job is to somehow keep myself from going into labor at all costs! :-)

Last Saturday, my great friends from Oregon gave me a wonderful baby shower. The kids got to play with a lot of their old friends and had a pizza party, while I got a pedicure and manicure and really enjoyed the company of my friends whom I don't get to see very often. Here is a picture of Aric / batman taking a break from playing outside to help open Ascha's presents. I felt overwhelmingly blessed...thanks to everyone who took part in that fun day!




And here's a picture of our hard-working Taylor helping with the yard work. I wish I would've had my camera out a few minutes later when Dad piled Tay into the wheelbarrow and gave him a wild, bouncy, and very fun ride across the yard.


And here, by request, are goofy pictures the boys wanted posted. Aric tried out Grandma's shoes and Taylor made an interesting face to share with the world.



And here (hopefully) is a video of Taylor batting. We were totally unprepared and unpracticed, but when the coach pitched at the last game, Taylor was able to hit off of him two out of his three at-bats. Pretty fun stuff. You'll notice that mom got a little excited and stopped paying attention to videoing the first time he hit. :-)