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. :-)