Sheet Rock and a Fun Work Day

Here's the "finished" product - I'm standing in our dining room looking at our eating bar and back into our kitchen. It's so exciting to have all the walls up. Over the next week or two, we'll be having them mudded, taped, and textured. Then we'll paint, try to get the floors in and try to get moved in. We'll see whether we beat Ascha to our respective "finish lines." We've got 30 days from today until her due date. :-)



Grandma and Grandpa came out to visit and help us for a while. We are so thankful for all the help and we (gotta love that collective "WE" - I didn't do a whole lot, but everyone else worked hard) took advantage of a beautiful day yesterday to do quite a bit of outside work. The lawn got mowed, trees got trimmed, beds got weeded, and rocks got removed from the lawn. (The boys have decided they don't like picking rocks, but they did manage to get the job done. :-) Here's a picture of the boys with "Whiff," the grandparents' dog. They love her dearly and enjoyed playing with her and following her around throughout the day.




Here they are helping Grandpa tune up the lawnmower.




And here's Aric helping Grandma weed one of the front beds.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have WALLS!!!

Sorry about the broken videos in the last post. I'll keep trying to get them up. Just wanted to show off our latest progress because it's so exciting...there are walls! I peeked in the house this a.m. and the drywallers were going to town. Here is our kitchen - materializing and taking shape! You can see our "cool" insulation, called a "blown-in blanket" system, in the left foreground, and the eating bar area sticking out with the kitchen behind.

May Update

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. There has been great progress on the house during the last month. We've gotten through the plumbing, HVAC, and insulation stages, and are excited to be moving on to sheetrock. Hopefully, by the end of next week all the walls will be up!!! That has been our goal for so long that it's hard not to think that's the finish line. We'll still have a few minor details, of course (paint, flooring, kitchen, and bathrooms to install :-), but all the major systems are pretty much brand new and in place. What a blessing!

Taylor's been doing great at Tball and really seems to be enjoying his season. After last night's game, he's down to only four left in the season. When I told him that, he said, "That's stinky!" He's not ready for his season to wind down. Here's a video of him "winding up" to bat. :-)



Aric is his usual chipper self. He walked up to Jeremy and I at the park the other day with this question:



Ascha is growing like crazy. With only 34 days left until her due date, she's about the weight of a honeydew melon and about 18 inches long.

Jeremy has been as busy as ever trying to juggle work on the tugs and work on the house and family time. He's doing a great job of balancing and I'm SO thankful for him. This week has been a big one with the insulation going in Monday and Tuesday and an inspection today and then the sheetrockers starting tomorrow. Jeremy was supposed to be on an upriver trip during all of this and I was not looking forward to all the driving around and managing and phone calling and "being in charge," because I just don't feel like I'm very competent lately. My brain simply doesn't work the way I want it to right now. Well, the tug Jeremy was on had a run-in with a submerged log that was 2 feet in diameter, and the tugboat engine was the definite loser, so the trip was cut short. While it is bad news for the tug company, I must admit I'm relieved my hubby's home to deal with overseeing all these projects. He's way better at this than I am, especially right now with my "pregnancy brain." :-)

And as for me and my "update" of sorts, things are just going along and I'm trying to keep up with everything. The only terribly noteworthy news item I can think of at the moment is that I got my first Washington ticket last weekend. I was headed to Taylor's Tball game and I really thought I was going the right speed, but I missed the first 25 sign coming into town. It was doubly frustrating because I wasn't even in a big hurry. There have, I admit, been a few times when I "deserved" a ticket because I was knowingly going faster than the posted speed limit (although I do try to follow the limit, especially when the boys are in the car). Of course, the time I get "caught," I actually believed I was going the speed limit. I ended up in tears with my sweet boys trying to comfort me ("Just take a deep breath, Mommy." :-). I had to try to be a good example of taking responsibility for my actions and it was a good teachable moment about not being able to use, "But I didn't know..." as an escape from consequences.

Challenges and Blessings (Again)

Aric has taken to asking Jeremy on a nightly basis, "So, Dad, what was your problem today?" We have had some "problems" with the house recently, but we've also made some progress. At the moment (and probably during most moments for the next 2 months), the quick passing of time is at the forefront of our minds.

It's hard to believe it's almost May! We were hoping to give notice at the beginning of the month and be out of our apartment by the end of May. That may still happen, but we're not sure. This week, the initial plumbing inspection passed (positive). However, the inspector didn't want to do a rough plumbing inspection on all the drain/waste plumbing - he just approved the plumbing that'll be covered by concrete so Jeremy can start covering it up and finish the framing (slightly negative). The plumber we had been working with thought it would be a drain/waste inspection (as did we), so he had filled the pipes up with water up to the rafters. Since that inspection won't be happening until Jeremy is completely done running the Pex lines for the supply plumbing, Jeremy drained that water. He discovered that instead of running into the sewer system as it should, it was just draining into the ground in our backyard (huge negative). Thankfully, even though the work was done prior to our having purchased the house, he was able to get the original contractor to come back out and fix their error within the week (positive, I think!). However, it was a setback in terms of Jeremy's use of time (negative). We also had lots of meetings with potential contractors bidding on upcoming projects (HVAC, insulation, and drywall), so it was a slower week than Jeremy had hoped. We have another setback yet to be resolved in the form of a damp basement wall. We had a french drain installed and all of our exterior basement walls waterproofed, so we're not sure what's going on there. Jeremy's talked to both the excavating/french drain people and the waterproofing people (more time spent not doing what he'd planned). Hopefully they'll be able to come figure out what's gone wrong sometime soon. Jeremy was hoping to have all the Pex run this week, but he was only able to get it about half done. I checked it out today (sans camera, unfortunately) and I'm amazed at the amount he has already done. It looks like an impressive amount of work to me! I'm so thankful he's got such a mechanical mind and can "bang out" projects like this so quickly. I think we're at a point where the glass can be viewed as half-empty or half-full. Even though there have been some set-backs, significant progress is being made. (Way to go, Jeremy!)

In terms of our timeline, Jeremy's upriver until Tuesday night. Then he'll work on finishing out the Pex and the little bit of framing he has left. Then, assuming we resolve the problem with our damp basement wall, we should be ready for the plumbing inspection and structural inspection. We have purchased a heat pump and will need to figure out whether Jeremy's gonna install the ducting or whether we'll contract that out. Once the ductwork is in, it'll just be a matter of insulation and sheetrock and getting the final inspections. Then we'll be to what we keep thinking of as "the easy part" -- the kitchen, the flooring, the painting, the lighting -- the "fun stuff"! We hope these last few steps can go quickly so we can get to the fun part quickly. If we didn't keep having these little hiccups, I'd think it was entirely possible for us to be in by the end of May. As things have been going lately, I'm not so sure. We'll see how far we get during the coming week. If we can wrap up plumbing/framing and get inspections, we'll be doing well. Then if we can figure out HVAC ducting, insulation, and sheetrock before the month is over, we'll be so close. Time will tell and we'll try to keep you all posted.

In other news, Ascha's due date is only 58 days away. She still seems to be doing great. She's very active and at the moment she's fond of stretching her entire 16-inch body out sideways - quite a strange feeling (and strange shaped abdomen!). I don't recall the boys doing a lot of sidways stretching like this - they were more fond of angling their foot into the corner of my ribcage. I'm sure Ascha will do more of that as she grows and has less room to maneuver, but for right now, it's kinda fun and interesting to watch this belly changing shape and moving around so much as she flips and stretches. The boys find it mildly amusing when they're in the right mood. Taylor is actually so excited to meet her and take care of her. He sweetly lays his head on my belly sometimes and talks to her until he feels her moving by his cheek - he said the other day that he heard her swishing around. Aric won't wait for her to move, but every once in a while, he'll catch a movement anyway and that usually makes him smile. He told me yesterday, "Mom, even though I don't like baby girls, I'll be very gentle with Baby Ascha." Nothing like that kind of statement to inspire confidence, huh? This morning at the TBall game, he was sure I ought to unbutton the bottom of my shirt and show off my belly. He didn't understand why that ought to be private and why other people might not want to see a big baby belly hanging out in public at a Tball game, of all places. :-)

Sunny Baseball Pics

Taylor had his turn as catcher. The kids really can't see much with the mask on so they mostly just stand around, and if someone tells them to get a ball they jerk their heads up, down, and all around and usually can't find it anyway. It's a pretty coveted position, though, because what could be cooler than this outfit?



Last post, I wrote about Taylor being tackled by another kid. This game, more and more kids decided to get in on the fun and generally, there was a pile-up on top of any successful fielder. Taylor is at the bottom of this pile, and I love that I captured the action for little number 4. This is pretty much how the kids on our team are approaching "fielding" at the moment. Taylor likes this sort of wrestling/football/baseball hybrid and tried to get in on as much action as possible - he ran after EVERY ball, even if he was by 3rd base and the ball was headed to right field! We had a talk about not doing that any more, and he's going to try to refrain from going out of "his area." Now we just have to figure out how to define "his area" and we might be ok. :-)



Last game, Taylor was the last batter. This time, he was first. He's got running the bases down pretty good. :-)

Taylor's First TBall Game

Last night Taylor had his first game. He did great and seemed to enjoy it ok, given the rain and muck. All three of us were pretty muddy afterwards, thanks mostly to Aric repeatedly trapsing through puddles and slime. Taylor was relatively clean (especially compared to his teammate who fell in the slime in front of the dugout. His entire front, from shoulders to shins, was brown. Poor kid! Taylor had one "fall" but thankfully it was out in the grass so he didn't get too mucky because of it.


[Check out that "ready position"! Maybe a little exaggerated, but so cute!]

He was playing in between the first and second basemen (we have a lot of players and not much outfield, so there are additional players between every standard position) and he fielded the ball. The second baseman (also the coach's son :-) said HE wanted to get the ball 'cuz he hadn't gotten to field it yet. With that brief explanation, he tackled Taylor and tried to wrestle the ball away from him (in all fairness, Taylor and a number of other kids tend to do this to each other in practice, so it was not entirely unexpected or without provocation. :-). The coach, who was right there, took his kid off Taylor and Taylor threw the ball in with a sheepish grin. I think he was pretty pleased that he had managed to hold onto the ball (maybe he's prepping for football in a few years).



Although his form was pretty rough, he did a pretty good job at actually hitting the ball, and since we were the last to arrive, he was the last batter. In tball, they don't keep score and innings go until everyone's had a chance to bat, so every time he batted, he got to run around all the bases at once. I think he enjoyed that.



In the first inning, he took his sweatshirt off to bat and field and wore it while waiting for his turn at bat. I found it amusing that he and the other kid whose dad is from Montana were both in T-shirts. Every other kid was layered warmly. After the first inning, I decided I'd join the "Romans" and had him put his sweatshirt on under his T-shirt. No reason to let my nearly 0% body fat boy get chilled to the bone, but it just doesn't come as naturally to me as to these "wimpy Westerners" (or more sane people, as the case may be. :-) The wet cold out here is so different from the dry Montana cold - even when the temps seem fairly reasonable, if there's any moisture in the air, it feels significantly colder than I think it should.

In other news, the drain plumbing is pretty much finished up. I took pictures, but they're pretty boring and you can't see much, so I decided you should just take my word for it. :-) Jeremy's been upriver, but when he gets back, he'll be running the supply lines and then we'll be quite close to sheetrocking time. We probably want to run our ductwork first, and of course we'll need to wait for inspections before we close things up. We'll also have to insulate all the walls before sheetrock, but really, that's not very much left to do. I'm excited about how close we are getting. We really look forward to moving in and stopping the commuting business we're doing right now. Jeremy commutes up there every day to work on the house when he's not upriver, and the boys and I have T-Ball practices or games twice a week, church on Sunday, and a Bible Study on Tuesday, so usually we're up there at least four times each week. It's about a half-hour drive each way, so it's not too terrible (I keep telling the boys as they whine about time in the car), but it'll be really nice to actually live there and have all of our community events so close! I'm very thankful for the connections that we are making and think that we will really enjoy the community once we settle in a bit.

A Great Long Weekend, Stairs, and Other House News

We had a wonderful few days with our friends. Jeremy had a lot of help with modifying the stairs (NOT his favorite project),



installing the last few windows,



and a few other miscellaneous projects. The boys and I had a wonderful time enjoying the company of our great friends. We played and played and played. We played at the parks, read, played games, went to IKEA and library storytime and Sunday School together, and generally had a great time. I think the highlight of our playtimes came during our last full day together. Our friends stayed with us for 3 nights and then at a hotel for 1 night with their younger two (the four biggest kids had a genuine sleepover at our place) and then all six of them stayed at the hotel for the last night. The hotel had a pool, so on our last day together, we took all six of the kids swimming in the afternoon. We had an amazing time. The pool was on the small side and was fairly shallow, so it was perfect for our situation. The hot tub was closed for maintenance, so we didn't have to worry about disrupting anyone's pursuit of more peaceful relaxation. We played and played and played. The 9-month-old (who hadn't napped much) ended up loving the water, and of course all the bigger kids enjoyed it, too. I spent a lot of time catching the kids as they jumped to me in the "deep end." After they were aided in "swimming" back to the steps, they would climb out and hurry back to the end of the line and wait for their turn to jump again. All the kids did great and got more and more brave throughout the afternoon. I was really impressed with Taylor's bravery. He puttered around floating on his back (important side note: lifejackets were worn! ;-) all by himself. Even though the kids both had swimming lessons last fall, the winter out of the water has taken a toll on whatever "skills" they may have acquired. Last time we went to the pool, they were both acting scared of the water and didn't seem to remember anything from their lessons, so I was encouraged to see that, at least in the security of his lifevest, Taylor was comfortable in the water.

It wasn't ALL work and no play for Jeremy, either. He and I got to go out on a date (what a novelty! :-). We went to Gustav's, a local German restaurant that we've always wanted to visit. We each got a sampler plate with six different items, so it was quite a culinary adventure. It was VERY nice to get out by ourselves for a little while - we are so thankful to our friends for keeping the rugrats for us. Jeremy and his friend also took Sunday afternoon off and went to Harbor Freight (a break from Home Depot, anyway :-) and then spent some time relaxing at Borders.

The whole visit was so refreshing for me - it's amazing what a difference it is to hang out IN PERSON with a dear friend rather than on the phone. :-) I also got to do a lot of cooking and baking (I know that sounds really weird, but in lieu of the nesting that I'm not able to do and the scrapbooking I ought to be doing (Aric's baby book has exactly 1 page completed), I'm fulfilling my nesting urge right now by cooking and baking, and it was great to have a large audience so I could bake a bit more than normal. I generally don't allow myself to make a full-sized dessert every day because I'm the one in my family who most loves dessert, so a cake a day isn't exactly beneficial. :-)





Here are the "big kids" hanging out the morning of their sleepover :-)


As far as the house project goes, Jeremy's doing a bit of the drain/waste plumbing and contracting some of it out to save some time. Hopefully, it'll be about done after our subcontractor does his part this weekend. Jeremy spent most of the day yesterday crawling around under the house replacing a smelly, partly clogged kitchen drain/waste pipe. It was not enjoyable in the least, but by the end of the day, he had it replaced with clean new pipes. Hopefully, he'll soon have that line of pipe tied into the washing machine drain pipe and then he'll be done with his portion of drain piping. Next week, if his supplies come in, he'll work on the supply-line plumbing, and I believe we'll be about ready for sheetrock once that job is completed. There are so many small "hiccups" inherent in this type of project that I don't really know a timeline for getting actual walls installed, but I'll try to keep you posted.

A few "miscellaneous projects":

Jeremy has finished furring out the basement walls.


He's also turned an attic access into a great big storage cabinet in our master bath. Eventually we'll have his & hers vanities on either side of this cabinet. It was a great idea (thanks, D!) and I'm thankful to have that added storage - it should be really nice!

It's Electric! ... and the Arrival of the Third Trimester



We are very happy to announce that the electrical rough-in was completed last week. As always, the next sentence begins, "Now, if we could just get the ______ done, we'd REALLY be making progress!" For this week, you can fill in the blank with "plumbing." Hopefully we can get that project wrapped up fairly soon. Then, we'll be about ready for inspections and, pending approval, for installing sheetrock. Once the walls look like walls, it'll feel a lot more like a house. We're looking forward to that day.



In other news, we're all doing well. This morning, at my 28-week OB appt., the boys got to help use the Doppler to listen to Ascha's heartbeat. Aric got to squeeze a big blob of goo onto the microphone, then Taylor got to put the mic to my belly. He immediately found the heartbeat and we all listened for a while. Then the midwife let each of the boys listen to their own heartbeats. It was a pretty cool morning. The pregnancy still seems to be going along quite well and Ascha is certainly an active little girl! I'm officially entering the third trimester this week. That means that although she's pretty big, she's still got enough room to "wind up" and put a lot of momentum behind her blows! :-)

Jeremy's upriver for a few days, which is always an adjustment when he's been around for a while. We're definitely missing him. He'll hopefully be home sometime around Thursday. When he arrives home, he'll have some extra help on the house for a few days, courtesy of our good friends from Idaho. They are coming for a visit and we are looking forward to having them around for about four full days! Jeremy and my friend's husband will probably be out at the house most of that time, but my dear friend and I will be playing up a storm. (Sorry guys - someone's got to watch the kiddos! :-) We're very thankful the weather report is looking up, because there will be six kids (ages 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and >1) running/crawling around and the apartment might get to feeling awful small. Hopefully we'll get to go on many fun outings, and even if it's rainy, we will have SO much fun with our great friends. It's been too long since we've gotten to play and we love their company!

My time since Jeremy left Saturday night has been mostly spent trying to prepare for company. I have a hard time making my brain function normally right now (I'm really mourning it's loss, and am looking forward to that time, about 1.5 years or so from now, when it will return. I am already missing it sorely!), so thinking through meals and laundry and cleaning takes a lot longer than it should. Whenever I start something, I immediately find myself sidetracked and don't realize until two or three days later that I never actually did the first thing I set out to do. Oh, well. I am my own comic relief most of the time right now.

The boys are doing good. Taylor is in T-Ball so we're commuting to Battle Ground every Wednesday night and Saturday morning for practice. The weather hasn't been particularly conducive to outdoor sports recently, but it's been fun when we actually get to play with the other kids. I'll have to remember my camera one of these days and document the cute little ballplayers.

Easter

I love springtime and the celebration of new life and the remembrance of THE new life we have in Christ! I'm so thankful to live in a place where we are able to openly celebrate Christ's resurrection. So often we take things like that for granted, but we are TRULY blessed to enjoy these freedoms and even more blessed to have the privilege of knowing and having relationship with our Creator. "Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness...Let everything that has breath praise the Lord." (excerpted from Psalm 150)

We had a lovely Resurrection Sunday morning together as a family. We got up and had the requisite egg hunt. The kids don't believe in the Easter Bunny (they saw a person dressed up in a costume and it was apparently quite unbelievable - they determined that he's just a mascot, so he's just pretend). However, they believe in his helpers. The night before Easter, Aric came up with the great idea to leave cookies and milk out for the Easter Bunny's helpers. Taylor thought that was a great idea, too, since we'd dropped the ball at Christmas time. (For the record, they think Santa is pretend, but they think his helpers are real. They are convinced those real helpers are elves who must like cookies and milk. :-) We, of course, never got around to putting out snacks for the Easter Bunny's helpers, so they helped themselves to a few of the boys' marshmallow peeps. The boys were quite happy with the evidence that the helpers had been there.

Anyway, Aric got up before anyone else on Easter morning and came downstairs to scope out the egg situation. A few minutes later, Taylor also took a survey of the situation. They both agreed the Easter Bunny's helpers didn't do a very good job of hiding eggs. They gave a good critique of what should have been done with the obvious eggs to make them more challenging (i.e. "This hat should be turned over so I can't see the egg at all. This is way too easy.").

I think next year, the Easter Bunny's male helper will have to hide the eggs, because the female helper is apparently not tricky enough. After breakfast, we went to an Easter service at our new church up in Battle Ground, which we are liking very much. Then we went to Sweet Tomatoes for a yummy brunch. I had been planning an Easter ham for dinner, but Jeremy got word that the afternoon and evening were going to be quite busy for the tug company. Almost as soon as we came home from lunch, he had to go to work and he was gone until it was nearly the boys' bedtime, so I'm really glad we decided to have a nice lunch together as a family before he left. It was a very pleasant day.

The day before Easter was a very full and fun day. We went to Big Al's bowling alley in Vancouver for an "egg hunt." Turns out they just throw a pile of eggs in the middle of a circle of kids and then say "Go!" and it's every kid for himself. The boys had fun and successfully wrangled a number of eggs, so it was fun anyway. After the egg hunt, we saw the "Easter Bunny mascot." The boys declined to have their picture taken with him, saying, "that's too silly." They did enjoy watching a balloon artist making "anything in the whole world" - Taylor even thought he could've made a world out of a balloon if only Taylor had thought to ask for one. They were both quite impressed and Aric has a new career track in mind. :-)

We went to the park for a few minutes to try to practice batting, but it was so windy that the ball wouldn't stay on the tee. We came home and took advantage of the very windy day by flying kites. Grandma & Grandpa had purchased little kites for each of the boys at the Kite Festival in Long Beach, WA last fall. Taylor & Aric ran around and pulled the kites behind them, having a great time until they were "all out of air."

We also spent some time coloring and stickering eggs the day before Easter. It was a very fun day.

In ongoing house news, the electrician starts his work today, so hopefully by the end of this week, we'll have electricity inside the house again. :-) We were hoping and planning to have all the plumbing done before we did the electrical, but that hasn't quite happened. Jeremy's plugging away and getting closer all the time, and the parts that aren't done yet shouldn't interfere with the electrical installation, so we'll just keep working on plumbing before, during, and after they do the electrical. Here is an exciting picture. I'm standing in our dining room looking at the kitchen area. The half wall is where our eating bar will be. Jeremy has all the windows in their final positions now. It's really shaping up, isn't it? You can see the pantry behind the kitchen area and the guest bathroom past the pantry, then the garage past all the framing. Having a "see-through house" makes it fairly easy to explain things. :-) We're also excited about our master bathroom. We acquired an oversized 6-foot soaking tub on Craisglist, and I can't wait to soak in a tub built for tall people. People often complain about being short, and I do like being on the tall side, but when it comes to bathing and finding pants that are long enough, short people definitely have it easier. :-)

I think that's all the news for now. Ascha's still doing great and the pregnancy is going fairly well. She'll be here in about 95 days, give or take, and we're hoping to get this house project done and be all moved in before she makes her entrance, so we've got a lot to do. I must say (yet again, but it's so true) that I'm SO thankful to have such a handy and hardworking husband!!!

Pre-Easter Fun and Plumbing Progress

Last Saturday we joined some friends in Newberg, OR for an Easter Egg Hunt. There were 13 little "hunters" wandering around, all under the age of 6. Taylor was the oldest and I think that might have had something to do with his achievement of finding the most eggs. Aric was tied for second, so they each got to take home an extra prize. It was a LOT of fun and they are so excited for more egg hunts this weekend.

Jeremy's been doing a lot of plumbing work recently. It's been slow going, as he's had to cut through a lot of concrete in order to access old lines and install new ones. We've been ambitious in our planning, moving pretty much every piece of plumbing in the house. Jeremy has been bravely tackling this huge project with high hopes for completing it quite quickly. Here's a picture of what will be our main floor bath. We've got a shower (so once we actually live in this house, we'll be happy to have overnight guests make the drive and stay awhile with us!), then to the right of that will be a toilet. About where I'm standing, the sink will be on the righthand wall. Right now it's all kinda undone while we wait for the plumbing to be inspected. Then Jeremy can finish out this section of floor, which he's had to build up from the level of the garage to match the rest of the main level.

Just outside this bathroom is a "mud room"/entryway from the garage where the kids (OK, OK - and the grownups, too) will be able to dump coats and muddy shoes without them being in the way. That floor is all built up and the wall separating it from the garage is built. (Yay, Jeremy!) It's hard to tell what you're looking at in this picture, but that shower is visible in the back corner and the wide opening just to the right of center is where our garage entrance will be. You can kinda make out (maybe, if you're creative :-) how we'll enter and have a mud room here, with the bathroom to our right. Then the hallway will open in front of us, extending past the family room (on the left) and kitchen (on the right) and dumping us into the formal living room / dining room area.

Here is a peek downstairs. Jeremy has spent many hours cutting that trench to the right of the picture (sorry it's a bit dark and hard to see down there). We are moving the bathroom into its own space from the tiny room where it used to be combined with the washer/dryer/water heater room. That means all the plumbing used to stop in the middle of the picture where you see that pipe sticking up. Jeremy's replacing it all and moving it all the way to the very back wall, where the kids' bathroom will be. It's been a long arduous process and he's not there yet, but he's doing good and keeps consistently moving forward on it. It's exhausting work for him, and I'm so thankful he's willing to do all of this to make the space nicer for our family. I'm also thankful he's such a quick, competent learner (the Home Depot plumbing book has been an invaluable resource).

A New Accomplishment, A Visit, A Roof


Taylor removed the training wheels from his bike last week. He still needs to gain a bit of confidence on starting himself, but he's an excellent little bike rider. He got to use Daddy's tools to remove the training wheels all by himself.


Then we went to the park, where Daddy & Grumpy helped him get going, then sprinted to try to keep up! :-)

Aric enjoyed spinning in circles at the park that day.


Obviously, Grumpy was out for a visit, and so was Grammy. They stayed for about a week and went back to MT on Sunday. We had a wonderful time while they were here! Grammy and I and the boys played a lot and Grumpy and Daddy worked on the house a lot and played a little.

Here we are at the Vista House. The boys hadn't ever gotten to go up on the balcony before, so it was an exciting visit for them.


While in the Columbia Gorge on a beautiful day, who could resist a hike? We walked down to the Bridal Veil Falls viewing platform, where my mom snapped this shot of Taylor looking like himself (no cheesy camera smile).


On another beautiful day, we walked up to an overlook near our apartment where you can see the River, the airport, and a nearby rock quarry. It's a favorite place for my boys with their love of heavy equipment. We could stand there all day watching the giant dump trucks and loaders. Of course, since the boys are "outdoorsmen," we have to be prepared and bring a backpack full of "supplies" (in this case, cupcakes and water bottles). You never know when you might get thirsty on the [very short] trail!


One more hike on one more beautiful day...this time, we even convinced Jeremy to take a breather from work on the house and come with us. We went to Lucia Falls (NE of Battle Ground) and walked around. It's an easy place to get to and there isn't much hiking to be done, but the guys all made their way farther than we've ever gone out onto the rock outcroppings in the middle of the East Fork of the Lewis River. It's a place where the salmon come to spawn, so we're gonna try to revisit it while they're running. It's really neat to be able to stand right over these pools and waterfalls and we hope to show the boys what a salmon run looks like sometime soon.







As you might be able to tell from this picture, Ascha's taking up more and more room in my belly all the time. We are now in the 24th week (out of 40 weeks of pregnancy), so we're nearly done with the second trimester. We are so thankful she seems to be growing healthy and strong, and we can't wait to meet her.


You might have noticed a weather trend in the above pictures -- gorgeous, sunny days. We were so blessed last week to have a dry warm spell. The forecast kept predicting showers, but they never really happened, and our roofer was able to reroof the entire house in dry weather. It was an unexpected blessing and we are so pleased to have a roof that doesn't leak! Here is a picture of the front of the house with the new roof and the gutters.


Here's another sampling of our progress on the inside of the house. This is a new wall we're placing between the formal living room (where I'm standing) and the dining room (where the sliding glass door is). We'll have an 8 foot opening on the lefthand side and a 5.5 foot opening on the righthand side, so it should still be very light and airy, but with a bit more distinction between the different living spaces.


Another exciting project Dad & Jeremy accomplished was the building of a new floor. This section of hallway didn't used to exist and it was all part of a converted garage which had become a sunken family room. The guys built up a new floor so it matches the level of the rest of the house, put in this little desk nook on the left side of the picture, and framed walls around the hallway. You can see the opening to my pantry in the right foreground, and the wider opening where Jeremy is standing is going to be one of the openings into our kitchen area.


Although there is still a long way to go, it's so exciting to see progress every single time I go to the house. I am so thankful for my handy husband and for all the help people are giving us with this project (THANKS, DAD!). Jeremy is upriver this week, and then he'll spend next week tying up some loose ends (two more windows to move, building up the floor in our new bathroom area to match the hallway floor, a bit of framing) and figuring out how to move plumbing in concrete, and then it'll hopefully be time for the electrician to come wire everything. Once that occurs, we'll be ready to insulate and sheetrock the walls. At that point, it will truly seem like a house again, and we're hopefully only a few weeks away!!! I think we'll try to get a bit more than that done before we leave our apartment and move in, but if we chose to, we could move in at that point, given a working bathroom. Unfortunately, our kitchen cabinets aren't going to arrive until April, so we probably won't move in until the end of April, or maybe even May, but still, that's not too far down the road.

A few other tidbits: ~Taylor is starting T-Ball this Saturday in Battle Ground. We're pretty excited about our first foray into "real" organized sports and hope this is a good learning experience and that he can make some new friends in our new town this way.
~We've met a number of our neighbors, and they all seem incredibly nice. We even have close neighbors with kids the same ages as ours, so we're feeling really blessed to have some "built-in" playmates.
~Aric's full of silly sayings, as usual. We drove down to Salem to visit some friends a few weeks ago, and on the way we passed a plant that burns garbage to generate electricity. There's a big red- and white-striped smokestack and the boys always notice it. Aric was excitedly pointing it out, so I thought I'd see what he remembered from our last trip. I asked what was burning in the smokestack, and he said "Garbage." Then I asked him what they turn the garbage into, and without missing a beat, he said "Marshmallows." I think it might have something to do with the whole concept of "Junk Food," but I'm sure thankful the "garbage" we eat is food grade. :-)

New Pictures

Here are a few sample shots of the latest progress. It's hard to tell what's what, but I'll try to explain what we're looking at anyway.



This is our kitchen area. We're going to have the leaking skylights removed along with the huge window directly to your left. The back wall (where our favorite cabinet choice is set up) is going to be the back wall of a pantry. The pantry will span the width of the kitchen, moving the whole kitchen towards the dining area, which is directly behind where I was standing. Jeremy and his weekend helpers (Thanks Adriel & David :-) ended up having to pull up the subfloor in the old kitchen, so he'll have to replace that subfloor. Then he'll move the smaller kitchen window a few feet towards the dining room. He'll frame in the near wall of the pantry and reframe openings on the right for our new hallway entrance. Then he'll just have to put the walls up, replace and move all the plumbing, assemble and install cabinets/countertop/flooring, and the kitchen will be about done. :-)



This shows our master bedroom. I'm standing about where our bed will go looking at our new master closet area / Ascha's nursery. :-) On the left we had two big old sliding glass doors going out to a deck that was not safe. The deck is gone, so we of course needed to fill in the second story doors. We wanted to keep the option of someday being able to add back in a deck and door, so we had the closet stop short of the old doorframe. We put in two square windows for now to let in the morning light without blinding us. We're really happy with the way this room is turning out.




These last two pictures are of our beautiful (or previously beautiful) yard. It's actually not all that bad now that everything's said and done. We have a LOT of mud, but we mostly just have to replant grass - we didn't lose a ton of our landscaping, and Jeremy replanted a number of the plants that ended up getting torn out by all the earthmoving, so hopefully they'll survive and we won't have to replace a lot of trees or bushes. This is the front yard - we had an excavator parked there for about a week as they dug around the basement area, waited for a sunny day, then backfilled over the new drain pipe and gravel after the waterproofing was applied to the foundation. The hard part is that every area of the yard has been affected by the mud, so there's no large, clean, grassy area for the boys to play. Hopefully the grass will grow well this spring and we'll have our yard somewhat rehabilitated by this summer.



Here is our backyard. There is a patch of grass that's big enough to play on here, but it's hard to get to without getting muddy. The mud completely encircles the deck, then goes all the way around the house and takes up the entire yard out by the road (towards the front of this picture).

Challenges and Blessings

As with all of life, our house project has surprised us with many unexpected challenges and road blocks. However, thus far, I'm feeling incredibly thankful for the ways in which they've resolved themselves. We have been so blessed by NOT having a major insect repair job on our hands, by NOT having to deal with some costly code things we were told we would have to deal with, by NOT having to pay as much as we were anticipating for converting our power from overhead to underground, and by NOT having to wait a long time for permits. We were told it would be about 3 weeks of waiting, but as of last Thursday, we have our permits in hand and are able to go forward with the framing in of new walls and the destruction of walls we're removing. The entire upstairs is framed in with the new floorplan in place and the downstairs is partially framed in. The project hasn't quite kept Jeremy's schedule, but he's a very optimistic scheduler and we're nearly on track with his lofty goals (which I think is amazing!). We've been blessed with lots of help from friends and are very grateful for it. All of these blessings aren't things that we NEEDED or even necessarily EXPECTED to have happen, so we are very grateful.

We need to remember this gratefulness and the ways things have been going well as we face our newest sets of challenges. We don't expect or "demand" that things will continue to go as well as they have been, but we ought not get sidetracked and "down" because of other unexpected challenges that pop up. At this moment, those challenges include the surprising fact that most of the grain on the Columbia River has already been sold, so the upriver trips we've been counting on to sustain our income while allowing Jeremy the flexibility to work on the house are no longer available. Our other unexpected challenge has to do with a county road being built right through our backyard in the next 5-15 years. Because the house was a foreclosure, we waived our rights to disclosures about the property, and we obviously didn't do our homework as well as we thought we had. We don't know when this road project will begin to truly affect us, because it doesn't yet have funding, but it will eventually change the entire landscape of our backyard (and the location of our newly placed sewer system pumps). We obviously can't do anything about it at the moment except be aware that it will come at some point in time, but it makes it harder to embrace this project. Jeremy has put it SO many hours and SO much labor (and will put in so much more before all is said and done), and we've really customized the floorplans to our family. It's hard to think about this place as "just a flip" when there has been so much personal investment. I would love to not move our kids during their school years, and I was hoping this would be the place where we'd stay until all the kids completed high school. Knowing there will be a road roaring through what used to be our backyard makes the location a lot less appealing in the long term. As with everything else in our lives, we ought to hold this house with an open hand. In some ways, knowing about this road makes it easier for me to hold it loosely, but it is more like a painful forcing open of my clenched fist than I'd like it to be. :-) I want to be thankful at this moment for the reminder to hold this dream, and all my selfish dreams, more loosely than I am accustomed. In the grand scheme of life, my children's security ought not come from living in one house during the whole of their school years - it ought to come from their position as children loved by Christ and loved by their family.

Anyway, I can tell I'm beginning to ramble (if I haven't already been rambling for a while), so I'm gonna sign off for now.

BTW, anyone keeping up with the lenten challenge? We are trying to keep it up and I'm really enjoying our evening conversations about how we were loving and how we failed to be loving during the course of the day, and most of all, how we're going to change for the better tomorrow. We're trying to be careful not to get too focused on self-help, but rather, to be mindful of the grace of God at work within us as we are intentional about allowing Him to influence our actions and attitudes. Tricky concepts for 3- and 5-year-olds...and 27-year-olds. :-)

An Introduction

We had our 20-week ultrasound today and IT'S A GIRL!!! Ascha Lynn will be arriving in June. We are incredibly thankful for this very healthy-looking baby girl. We are all excited for her to join our family...Aric included. The boys got to see the ultrasound and they each got their own picture to take home. Doesn't she look like a happy girl?



And if that doesn't make you smile, here's another shot at laughter: As Aric informed me yesterday, "Every day, holes just climb into my pants, but I don't make them." Of course, as he was saying this, he had both arms stuck into the (previously much smaller) hole at the knee of his jeans.

House Update and Lenten Challenge

How do you like that odd juxtaposition of mundane/temporal and significant/spiritual? That's how my pregnant brain works these days - everything's all mashed together (if I can remember it at all).

Kami asked for pictures, so here are a few:


Before - looks pretty nice, right? Unfortunately, between damage from the leaky roof, stress cracks in the ceiling, and the fact that everything needs rewired, it all had to go.



After - this is the same view as above, except now our stairs are hidden under debris and our house is "see through." Upstairs and to your left is what will be an office space with our master bedroom behind it. Upstairs on the right is a bathroom, which will be retooled, but will still be a bathroom, and more bedroom/master closet space behind. Downstairs and to your left is what will eventually be two kids' bedrooms. On the right will be a laundry/storage room with a bathroom space behind.



Another picture of downstairs, just for fun. It's amazing how the relatively "minor" project of changing out sheetrock suddenly seems very major, even without considering moving the framed walls around. :-) Have I ever mentioned how thankful I am to have a handy husband? He's a wonderful, wonderful, talented man and I appreciate his hard work very much. (Keep going, Honey! :-)


Nice, huh? It definitely has a ways to go. Unfortunately, we were misinformed about how long we'd have to wait for permits, so we can't start rebuilding walls for a while, after all. We've slowed the pace a bit and we've still got some demolition we can do while we wait, so we're just doing what we can and hoping our permits can slog their way out of the beaurocracy and into our possession sooner rather than later. :-)


In a different vein entirely, I have a challenge for those of you who consider yourselves Christ-followers. Scot McKnight (an emergent church theologian who I really like, but don't always agree with :-) has issued a challenge for the upcoming 40 days of Lent (starting Wednesday, Feb. 6). Instead of giving something up (not something we evangelicals usually do, anyway), let's live out the Gospel for the next 40 days by reciting the Jesus Creed each morning, whenever we're thinking of it throughout the day, and again at night. During the evening recitation, reflect on where you've sinned in relation to the Jesus Creed and confess those sins. I believe what Scot calls the "Jesus Creed" is absolutely foundational to Christian life. It is the first bit of scripture my kids ever memorized, and we talk about it often around here (quite easy to find opportunity in the context of "is it loving your neighbor when you hit/kick/push your brother?" :-) Here is the creed, and I've also attached Scot McKnight's thoughts after it... Definitely a challenge worth considering and a passage worth integrating ever more fully into our daily lives.

"Here it is:

Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

What we are discovering — in tune with the wisdom of ancient Israel’s recitation of Shema and the early church’s recitation of the Jesus Creed and the Lord’s Prayer — is that this sacred rhythm works love of God and love of others into the bones and sinews of each day. Who will take this challenge?"

Projects, Projects, Projects

Since we closed on the house last week, Jeremy has spent every spare second gutting the inside. The electrical wiring needs replaced, and we eventually wanted to change the floorplan, so we decided to save money and do it all at once. He's tearing down all the walls & ceilings (the roof has a number of leaks that have damaged the ceilings), then Jeremy is going to frame in new walls where we want them. While everything is still open 2x4s, we'll have an electrician come in and rewire everything. Then we get to put up new sheetrock for new walls and ceilings and go from there. I keep saying I'll be happy just to get electricity and new walls. At that point, if we need to or want to, we can move in and slowly finish each room. I know Jeremy would rather get as much as possible done before we move in, though, so I don't really know when moving day will come.

It's exciting to actually be able to be working toward that goal, because the process of acquiring this house has taken so many months. Our big focal point is just to have it liveable and be settled in before the baby comes. I think (but our plans change on a daily basis, so who knows?) we're planning on just finishing out the "master suite" (except the bathroom - we'll just get the one on the main floor going), so that Jeremy and I can live up there, the kids can be next door in what will eventually be an office space off the master, and the baby's crib will hopefully fit in our master closet. :-) We'll eventually finish out the downstairs so that we have the kids in their own space with bedrooms and a bathroom of their own.

We are very thankful to have had lots of help this first week. Our friend Adriel came up last Saturday and spent a very long wet day in the rain helping Jeremy frame in some windows and doors that we are moving/eliminating and working on siding. A coworker of Jeremy's who used to work in construction has come on board to help us during the weekdays when he's not working on the tugboats, so the two of them have gotten A LOT done this week. By the end of today, we expect them to have the upstairs and downstairs bedrooms completely gutted and new walls framed in and possibly have some of the main level stripped down, too. Next week, in addition to finishing up the gutting and reframing the new walls, Jeremy will be building up a new subfloor to accomodate some of our remodeling plans. Previously, a portion of the garage had been converted to living space, but the living space was all a step down from the rest of the house. To accomodate our new plans, a portion of that garage space must be raised - we will still have a "sunken family room" but we need the main hallway to be level with the adjascent spaces. Jeremy will definitely have had his fill of destruction and construction by the time next week's work is finished. We'll also have an excavation company come in and dig all the way around the basement portion of the house, have a waterproof barrier applied, and then have the dirt backfilled. That will hopefully address the problem of wet, moldy walls and floors in that area and make it a liveable space again. We'll also hopefully get a trench dug and wire laid to convert our overhead power to underground power. Then, we'll just be waiting on the roof and the electrical. Once all the new wiring is in, we'll be stuck waiting for a stretch of decent weather (multiple sunny days are hard to come by in this region in the winter - it rains nearly every day) so we can get a new roof on. Because of the many leaks, we think it would be foolish to put any new sheetrock or insulation in place until the roof problem is addressed.

In addition to the expected issues that we are planning to remedy (50-year-old electrical wiring, mold issues downstairs, roof leaks, etc.), we have discovered a number of unexpected issues since digging into the guts of the house. Jeremy had discovered what he thought were termites in an outside wall and carpenter ants on an inside wall. We were very concerned about the bug issues, but thankfully, a pest guy came out yesterday and told us all the problem areas were old and that none of the damaged wood was caused by termites. We are so relieved and THANKFUL to not have to deal with an active pest population! Jeremy also made some other interesting discoveries related to creatures - there were a number of very large bird nests in the ceilings and there were a number of mouse nests downstairs in the walls. I suppose that in a 50-year-old house, some of that is to be expected, but it's really nice to know we won't have any "skeletons in the closet" when we move in - everything's getting cleaned out and dealt with. Our other major unexpected discovery has to do with the windows. All the windows in the home had been replaced with energy-efficient vinyl in the past few years, so we were thankful not to have to worry about replacing them. However, when Jeremy and Adriel removed one of the windows we're moving, they discovered that it was installed in such a way that water gets trapped behind the trim. The wood around the window they removed was rotten and had to be replaced, so that means we will probably have to replace wood around all the other windows, too. Hopefully, the wood won't be so rotten as this wood was and we will just have to readjust the windows and trim so that water isn't trapped, but it could be another major headache. Time will tell.

All in all, though, the house hasn't been that much worse-off than we expected, and Jeremy and his various helpers are making great progress. It's always an adventure to rehab a house, but we like it. The kids are big enough that they've been able to "help" with some things and they are always so proud of themselves. Now that the electrical is all exposed, we're keeping them away from the house for obvious reasons, but when we move into the next phase, I'm sure we'll have more jobs they can help with.

We'll try to keep you posted on our progress at regular intervals through the blog. We hope you enjoy this adventure with us.