Jaydens first deer, and other firsts...

First and foremost, hunting season is upon us and we now have 3 hunters in the family.  Ryan took the boys hunting this past week on opening day and Jayden shot this nice 3 point buck.  The next day he got a button buck!  He loves being able to actually shoot something!

 Dylan shot his first deer with a bow this year as well. 

Another first is for Luisa, she has stayed dry for 2 days now!  She is really getting the hang of this potty training thing, it makes her momma very happy, and she is enjoying the candy.  Found out she loves Tootsie Rolls, she picks them over all the other candy, every single time.  Anaya loves to help Luisa, and she takes her in with her when she has to go, just to show her how it's done, too funny!

I was able to park my vehicle in the garage for the first time!  This was a momentous event, one of my favorite things about this house is that we finally have a garage, and now it is cleaned out enough that I can park in it!  We were giddy with excitement last night as we were taking the groceries in and could hear the rain and wind out side!

We also were able to hang clothes in the closets for the first time since we moved in.  Ryan finished up all of the kids closets this week and it is so wonderful to not have the huge mess of clothes on the floor.  Ours should be finished this coming week and we will be done living out of suitcases!  We still have to get closet doors, but, for now...

We are looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving this week, we sure have a lot to be thankful for! 

a great week...

Remember this eye sore?

well, it is no more!!

 our horses are getting bigger and fuzzier!

 Painting the floor of the mudroom and putting up the bench.

So, I have been taking pictures on my new phone of all of the projects we have gotten done over this week,  I just sat down to blog about it, and I realized that the cord that came with my phone, doesn't work with my computer.  So,...hopefully I will figure that out soon, for now there are a few pictures to keep things interesting.  But, we made some great progress this week, including my mud room is done, my island has laminate, they replaced all but one of the windows we were replacing, finally got our dining room table put up and ate sitting down as a family for the first time in weeks!  Closets are starting to take shape, we fixed the siding on the house,  Ryan got more of the trim up and I 'frosted' the glass on the bathroom door{Yay for some privacy}...still no doorhandles on yet though, I am sure that will be done soon.  Getting back into a good school routine and settling in.  I took a break last night and watched a movie with the kids, feels like life is getting back to 'normal!'   So incredibly thankful for a nice warm house with all this windy rainy weather!     

pumpkin carving...

 Oh so many choices...look at them contemplate!

 Luisa walked up to one and grabbed it!  Plenty good...let's go!

 

 

 Eww!  Pumpkin guts!  I was shocked Anaya stuck her hand in it, but very soon, she was asking to wash her hands.

 Lucy was loving it...Anaya...{big shocker} not so much!  Yes, she got pumpkin guts in her hair, they were flinging it everywhere, seemingly non intentionally, however, one can never be sure, she was not impressed!

 Easton doing a happy dance because he likes the way his pumpkin looks!  That kid is too funny!

I was thinking pumpkin carving would not happen this year as I had not yet located any sharp knives..."they are in the barn somewhere..."  is the notorious answer for everything that we can't find.  But, my children would not let that happen, instead of looking in the barn for our knives, they went to the garage and found sharp objects.  Power tools gave new life to our pumpkin carving adventure!  They used a drywall saw and a sawzall and they had a blast!  I doubt we will ever use those puny little pumpkin carving knives again!

FINALLY!!

Back on the world wide web!  Oh my goodness, it has been a long time!  But, we finally figured out how to get internet.  We have been busy getting the house ready, we passed all of our final inspections and are moving things in.  We still have a ton of work left to do, things like trim, fixing the siding outside, replacing windows, my island needs the counter top on it...lots of little things, but...we have a fully functioning kitchen, lights, electricity and we are starting to get furniture in place.  We are so excited to start getting things back to 'normal' again!  Here are a few pictures of how we have been living...it ain't pretty, but it's getting better!

 My favorite part of the house...my new huge fridge!  I think I hear the angels singing when I open it up!!  And yes, it just eeked into that space...it's 2x the size of our old fridge, {which drove me nuts because we couldn't even hold enough milk for the week!}  We can fit all the milk and juice we want in this one!

 Thankfully the gaps were fixed before we got any of the cold weather!

 Doing home work! 

Ready or not...

Here we come!  We will be with out internet (and t.v., a kitchen, most lights, as well as many other things) for the next little bit as we are going to be moving into our new home{a tad prematurely!}  I hope to get internet up and running sometime soon, however...we have been too busy to deal with that just yet, so it will have to wait!  I'd like to do a little "reveal" of each room when it is finished, so it's probably good that I won't be able post any pictures before the room is actually done!  Although, I'm not sure that they will ever be done, seems like there's always some work in progress, so goes home ownership!  We will miss the view from up here on the hill, we have great memories of our time spent here, but look forward to the next chapter of our life in our farm house!  A huge thanks to Gary and Linda for allowing us to stay here, we feel so blessed, it made a difficult move 4 years ago much less painful to know we had a great place to land.  And now that we have fallen in love with everyone up here and found a home of our own to settle into, we are excited for you to move back into your amazing home!  God is good.  His timing is perfect.  We are blessed.

renovation realities...

Have you ever watched the show, Renovation Realities on the DIY Network?  I love that show.  Anyhow, if you have never seen it, it's pretty much a reality show of ordinary non skilled people renovating their homes{much like we are doing.}  Well, mostly people have disasters or crazy things that happen to them or their house during the process.  We had one of those moments Saturday, when I was putting the second coat of polyurethane on the floor. 

We were almost finished, when I ran out of poly.  So I asked Ryan to get the other gallon, the only problem was that I had left it in the bedroom which was surrounded by...wet polyurethane!  Oops!

 So Ryan went up the ladder through the window and back down the steps and did a  maneuver spiderman himself would have been proud of!  {I wish I would have gotten that on camera.}  He made it safely into our bedroom, but couldn't figure out how to get the poly and himself back out of the room.  So, he proceeded to set drop the poly into the uncovered vent hole...but the poly proceeded right on down to the basement!  I was standing near the basement door and ran down as fast as I could, hoping I would find it still in the container and not on the basement floor!  I ran into a few spider webs which was not cool, but found the smashed container, still full and unopened!  It was good comic relief after my stupid mistake!

On Sunday, I was able to finish the final coat of poly, I love these weird floors.  Some of the wood looks like zebra, each piece is so different, I wasn't sure if I would like it or not, but they turned out great in my opinion!  
Ryan finished carpet upstairs tonight, and we moved the majority of our stuff over to the barn...we should be sleeping there soon, although it is far from being done, it will be nice not to have 2 houses to deal with!  One is plenty enough for me.  We are getting ready to be done.  We would like to have some normalcy again.