Out of Order 2-25

I didn't realize that I had skipped a day of progress.  These are from 2-25.  I realized when looking at pictures of someone else that is currently building a house, that I just keep taking pictures of the same outside view, none inside.  And it's now or never, so I figured I should take some so I wasn't sorry some day.  Plus I'm sure the kids will love looking back at it too since they've loved this whole building process.  Some windows went in today and the rest should go in tomorrow and then our roof should go on and our doors should go in next week.  Before we started framing, we picked out all of our exterior stuff and this week we finalized our cabinet selections and interior doors.  And then in a few weeks we pick out flooring and countertops.  Baumann definitely makes the whole process very easy and stress-free!

 

Layla posing at the house...

 2-25 view...

 Our garage...we had them frame the top of the garage like it is so that we can use it for storage and at some point, make it into a bonus room.

 Standing in what I think will be her room, although recently I've been doubting our selection of who gets what room. 

 People often say what a mini Joe he is and I normally don't see it, but here I think he looks a lot like Joe's pics from when he was a kid.

 Gibs having fun running circles in our laundry room...

 Standing in what we're planning (I think) to be his room...(it's really going to throw Gibson and Layla off if we switch them!  His room is by far the biggest of the three)

 Our bedroom (I had just yelled at Layla for sticking her foot off the edge of the house, I think she thought the green plastic stuff was a wall and it freaked her out when I told her not to do that so she was still recovering here)...

 Grandpa and Grandma showed up to see the house while we were there.  The stairs to go up are to the right of them, the living room is behind them and the kitchen is to their left.  The dining room is the other window you see on the left back and there is a playroom for the kids in the front right of the house.  All of our bedrooms are upstairs.

 Standing in the entrance from the garage to the mud area.  There is a closet to the right of them as well as a space for lockers, and a half bath to the left of them.  The laundry is behind Joe and we have a side casual entrance to the left of Joe.  I am excited to be able to put Elvis on his line out the main level of our house:).  Of course I'm excited for other things about the house too:).  We can't afford to build our dream house, but overall, I feel like we were able to get a lot of things that we had wished we had at our old house.  My top faves would be a mud area, main floor laundry, a walk in pantry, and a closet and a bench with hooks area by our front door.  They are typical things in a new house but things that we didn't have before!

 A family pic in our soon to be front door, poor Miss Grets was sleeping in the car:(...

 Gavin and his fam also showed up while we were there. With all the visitors there, I got distracted and almost lost track of time and I had a pot pie in the oven.  We made it back about 10 minutes late but thankfully dinner was still good and not ruined! :)  Here are the kids in the kitchen pantry...

Sunny Thoughts

We are all ready for some warmer/sunnier weather here!  The kids this morning put their sunglasses on along with Gibs' shirt from Hawaii and Layla's necklace from Hawaii (since Grampy and Gigi just got back yesterday) and Greta of course also wanted sunglasses on:). 

The kids were pretending to have a tea party yesterday and Gavin and Greta thought they'd be goofy when I wanted to take a pic:).

February 26

They got the porch started and some boards on the roof.  Hopefully that'll keep some of the snow out! :)

Giada

Tuesday at preschool was a day to dress up like what they want to be when they grow up.  I first was going to have her dress up like a doctor because she loves all things medical, but then thought that being a chef/baker was more fitting for her because almost every day, at some point, she pretends to make food.  She LOVES watching Food Network, especially the "girl shows":).  Giada from Giada at Home is definitely her favorite.  She loves pretending to host her own cooking shows, so she went dressed as a host of her own show...

 They could bring their "tools of the trade" with them, so she took along a bowl and a wisk and such and on the bag had a little sign that said her cooking inspiration is Giada:).

Such a Big Girl

Grets has been getting so big and is still so sweet yet so silly.  Last night Layla was dancing around in fancy shoes, so Greta went over to Layla's shoe bin and pulled out a pair of dance slippers that she tried to put on herself.  So cute how she wants to be just like her big sis:).  Greta and I stayed home from church this morning due to her snotty nose and I thought it was funny that her and Elv were sitting in this little chair together (and that she took her socks off and then wanted these shoes on:D).  Elv just had his FIRST haircut since we moved (last summer!) so he is now so shaved that he shivers without his sweater on:).  Thankfully he had one here.  I should have gotten a picture of him before his haircut b/c he looked like quite the shaggy dog!!

 My dad and Joyce are in Hawaii (which with all this snow, it has been SO nice to be able to park in the garage, especially on mornings that I have to load up the kids to take Layla to school) so we let them play the piano today for a bit.  Layla always asks, but obviously, that would be a bit annoying to my dad and Joyce if they were here, so normally I don't let them.  You can't see it, but Gibs has a microphone in his hand.  They can certainly make a lot of  noise!  As you can guess, this did not last all afternoon:).  Even Greta thought it was fun though!  As loud as they were, it's so cute to see how happy they were singing and playing, and it's also amazing, as a mom, how easily I've learned to tune things out:).

 Tonight after baths, they had popcorn and a movie before bed (on my computer since there's no DVD player down here).  We only have two little comfy chairs (Layla and Gibs got them for Christmas) and as soon as I moved them infront of the computer, Greta quickly climbed right in.  I thought that would cause issues, but Layla happily took a "non-comfy" chair and put her pillows on it to make it comfy and said it was even comfier than the other two:).  Such a nice big sis!

 Greta lately does this big smile face all the time, it cracks us up!

Second Floor

The second floor is now framed!!  More progress, whoohoo! :)

3 Days

It's amazing to me how quickly they can frame a house.  Today was the third day they worked on our house and the first floor is about framed.  We've been driving out to see the progress after Joe gets home from work which has been earlier now that he just this week started a new job that is much closer to our house.  I never pictured him working close to home (what are the chances that you find a job that fits you that is close by?), but it worked out that way and now is actually quite handy. 

 The kids get very excited to see the house, but tonight got cold quite quickly and couldn't wait to get back into the warm car!  I'll be happy when the weater warms up and the snow goes AWAY!

My Little Valentine's

Layla got to tour Zeeland Community Hospital with her class the other day which she LOVED.  She loves all things related to hospitals/doctors/nurses and especially loves talking about babies being born.  She probably would have liked to see a baby being born on her tour:).

 Grets loves her grits, but they sure are messy!

 My girls sharing a hug on Valentine's Day...

 Here's Layla ready for her school Valentine's Day party.  The party was originally going to be the Tuesday before Valentine's Day, but then got switched to Friday which worked great because Layla had her first sick day on Tuesday.   She woke up barking and sounded terrible so I didn't think I should send her to school like that! So thankfully, by Friday she was much better and was able to hand out her Valentines.   Of course she wanted Dolly in the picture--tonight at dinner, the Bible story was about not being able to take earthly things with us to Heaven and she was very concerned about not being able to bring Dolly.  Touches my heart how much she loves Dolly, for obvious reasons, but also because my mom gave that to her in the NICU.  She felt better about the situation when she decided that she could leave her here on earth with her future daughter:D.

 And here are my three little amigos riding on their cars.  It is so cute seeing Greta play with them more and more.  She pretends to eat play food and the little sounds she makes while doing that is quite possibly one of the cutest things I've ever seen:). 

House Progress

2-13-13

First lumber load! (late in the day 2-13-13)

Saturday, 2-16-13

                             It was quite snowy when we visited on Saturday! The kids love seeing the progress, but I think they're expecting it to be done quicker than when it's going to be done.  Gibs wants to go look at it every time we're in the car and cries if we can't go:).  He also pretends now at home to build a house whether it be out of snow or out of blocks using his toy excavator.

2-18...We were hoping that htey worked on it today and they did!  It started raining in the early evening, so we were thankful that the rain held off until then.  Unfortunately, tonight and tomorrow we are supposed to get a lot of snow, so I'm not sure if they'll be able to work on it at all tomorrow:(.

House Progress

We started making progress on our house and then it started to snow a lot:(.  We are hoping that the framing can start at the end of this coming week.  We had a lot of dirt to haul in and wet, snowy and very cold temps have made that whole process take a bit longer than normal, but at least we are making progress:).  

This pic looks like it could have been taken in the fall, but it was actually December that it was staked.

The week that we were in Florida (early January) our walls were poured...

And this was taken today after a lot of dirt has been taken in and after a lot of snow has come (and yet a lot has also melted away)...

Walking!

Greta started taking her first steps around her first birthday (2 months ago) but then took until last weekend to decide she wanted to fully walk.  She still crawls every once in awhile if she falls down or whatever, but starting about a week ago, I'd now consider her a full time walker!  We still think it's funny how long it took her to walk though.  She started crawling in  June so she crawled for almost 8 months!  We were just surprised that it took her that long to start walking.  Finally, Miss Smiley Pants is a walker:).  Uh-oh, does that also mean that she is now a toddler??  No, she's definitely still my baby:).

Gibs' 3 Year Stats

Gibs had his three year appointment in January and I believe he was 75-90th in in everything which surprised me a bit. 
Height: 39"
Weight: 35 lbs (He is now a few pounds more than Layla!)

He is definitely FULL of energy and all boy.  He has been incredibly whiny lately and so we are hoping that this is a short lived phase:).  He can be so sweet which is especially fun to see when that sweetness is shown to his sisters (although, trust me, he can also be not so sweet to both of them!).  We just potty trained a couple of weekends ago (I wanted to wait until after our Disney trip) and it went SO much better than I had anticipated.  Layla was so easy to train that I thought for sure with his strong-willed and high-energy personality that he would be the difficult one.  I am happy to say that I was very wrong.  Other than a couple of mistakes the first few days, he has not had any more mistakes and always tells us when he needs to go.  It's strange now only having one kid in diapers!  We love our little guy and love seeing him interact with is sisters.  He is so sweet yet so tough that I can't wait to see what a great big and little brother he will grow in to.  He can also be such a goofball.  Recently, his jokes often include the words underpants or mustaches.  He seems to catch on quickly to which things people laugh at and apparently those got the best reaction from others, so he now likes to throw them into his stories randomly.  Trying to explain to him that there are times when he shouldn't be talking about underpants seems to only make it worse, so we are now attempting to just not say anything and hoping he drops it eventually:).  He definitely does not understand having a filter.  The other day while waiting at Layla's dance class he announced to those around him that his fruit snacks were making him toot:).  Such a typical odd Gibs comment:).  He loves making people laugh so that will be interesting to see too how that changes as he ages.  I just signed him up for threeschool this week (for next fall) and just last month he started Young Children's Worship at our church.  We love our silly yet sweet little Gibs and feel so blessed to have had in our lives for three years already!!  Time sure flies!