Where a Sunshiny Day equals Bauhaus Buff

The painters are here! You'll hardly be able to tell what they've done, because the raw color of the siding was very close to the color I chose. Bauhaus Buff from Sherwin Williams. Because you need to know the exact right shade to paint your house when you want to match Austin Stone. You'll be able to see a little more difference when they get the trim work painted, it's going to be something Sable if I remember correctly. The cedar columns are going to be stained a similarly dark brown. I got to order the garage doors yesterday and they are going to be sweet! I was even able to get them with some windows at the top. (In the budget, thank you very much.)

This is what we have picked out for tile .. the small 1x1's are the decorative element for the master bathroom and the
12 x 12 is the tile that will go in the shower and in the small bathrooms as well as the utility room and the pantry. We chose the same color in a 16 x 16 for the entryway, hallways and kitchen.
Today we went to Home Depot today and bought white 2" faux wood blinds for the TWENTY windows in the house. OUCH! And then I still have two "french doors" that I did not buy with the integrated blinds and now I don't know what I'm gonna do with them.

And this, my friends...
Is why I typically don't add pictures of the two knuckleheads on the blog. This is their makeshift lounge, note the T.V. perched on a U-Haul box (classy, eh?). When I took the picture they both got really mad at me. John said, if it shows up on my web log, he's going to sue. I tried to get a shot of them wrestling, but they're very good at sensing when I'm near, as I usually sneak up on them so I can sort out which one started it and needs a time out. Melee' is the one with the pale stems and John has his first sunburn of the season, which by tomorrow will be a toasty brown.

Melee' and I are freckled haters.

Watch out for the Nails...

The house is coming along. Brick is done! They're working on taping and bedding this week, next week texture. It's quickly getting down to the finish details. I haven't been keeping up with the pictures or the blog.

We're mostly on time according to the newest schedule except for the exterior paint. And of course the weather is not cooperating in that area. We had rain all day today and we may have more tonight.

Ace took some pictures the last time we were out at the house. This is my daily job of going out to the house and stocking the cooler with cokes and water. Mr. Cooper thinks I'm spoiling the workers, but I'm getting good results, and it gives me an excuse to go out and check the progress everyday. We stepped on our first nail this week and of course it was Ace. Thankfully he is current on his tetnus booster.

We're winding down at school, so everybody has a lot of end of the year activities going on right now. Including an end of the year band concert Monday night which was a lot of fun. Melee' signed up for the talent show at his Intermediate School, I had to ask him what he was doing for his talent. And he said "Well, playing the piano, of course!" Of course. I had forgotten Charlie had taught him the Intro to Journey's "Faithfully". :) Well, at least I have one brave child. He said he might also play the Peanuts song his dad taught him. I think he knows about four bars of that one.

Jokes. 'Cause You Guys Make Me Smile

This first joke was sent to us from a friend that thought we could appreciate some house building humor....

Here's a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little 5-year-old girl and some construction workers that will make you believe that we all can make a difference when we give a child the gift of our time. A young family moved into a house, next to a vacant lot. One day, a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot. The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers. Eventually the construction crew, all of them 'gems-in-the-rough', more or less, adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important. At the end of the first week, they even presented her with a pay envelope containing ten dollars. The little girl took this home to her mother who suggested that she take her ten dollars 'pay' she'd received to the bank the next day to start a savings account. When the girl and her mom got to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age. The little girl proudly replied, 'I worked last week with a real construction crew building the new house next door to us.' 'Oh my goodness gracious,' said the teller, 'and will you be working on the house again this week, too?' The little girl replied, 'I will, if those assholes at Lowe's ever deliver the fuckin' sheet rock...' Kind of brings a tear to the eye - doesn't it?

Then Sunday Father Selverage told this one at Church. Father is from India, and he likes to tell the occasional joke, sometimes they're funny, sometimes it's just funny because sometimes you can understand him and sometimes you can't...

There were three very devout members of the congregation, members of theKnights of Colombus, that died in a tragic accident. Because of their many good works they were sent straight to the gates of heaven where they met St. Peter. St. Peter was distressed because he did not have their rooms ready and he had no place for these fine men. So St. Peter called Lucifer and asked if there was any way that he could accomadate these guys for the next few days until there rooms were ready. Lucifer said "No problem." and took the men down. The next day, Lucifer showed up at the gates of heaven and said to St. Peter "You have to take these men back right away!" St Peter had a grin on his face and was very amused, "They're good men aren't they?" he said, "Have they been down there trying to spread the Gospel?" "NO!" said Lucifer, "They're playing Bingo and raising funds to air condition the place!"

HOLY SHEETROCK BATMAN!

View from the family room into the kitchen.

View from the family room, to the left is the hallway that leads to Ace's room and the entry, to the right is the arch that leads to the staircase on the left or straight to to the main living room

The family room with the wood burning fireplace. Sadly, budgetary demands have caused me to eliminate the bookcases on each side.

View from the family room/eat in kitchen, to the hallway with the pantry, powder bath and out to the garage.

Upstairs in the bonus room.

All's Good in the Hood

We were in the news today.

This morning, Charlie took the kids to school today. I was scurrying around the house trying to get ready as we were headed to Tyler to choose tile. When he got back it had started to sprinkle and by the time he got Ace's shoes on and got to the front door, it was pouring. I ran back into the house and grabbed Peaches "Hello Kitty" umbrella and stepped back out it was dark and the wind was whipping all around as I tried to wrestle the booster seat out of the suburban and into Charlie's car and then I forgot to grab the color sample wheel and by the time I jumped into the front seat, the Hello Kitty umbrella was toast and I was soaked. We went over to the Sonic for our daily dose of caffiene and then we headed up 64 toward Tyler. About five minutes later we hear on the radio that there had been a tornado reported in Canton.

Turns out it hit about four blocks from the "Dog House", where we're staying. This weekend is First Monday Weekend and it hit right at the main entrance. A couple of minor injuries, a few overturned tables and one overturned R.V.

Of course as we sat at the Sonic waiting for the three Dr. Peppers to arrive the storm went on down the road. Highway 64 to be exact. Yep, we followed the storm, ran into the storm and then after a very tense 10 minutes (or at least it was tense for me) we came out on the other side. We got to the tile store, just in time to hear the tornado sirens going off in Tyler. I think Tyler made it through unscathed.

We picked our tile. We went out and had lunch. And then drove back to Canton to a beautiful sunny day with First Monday bustling as usual. We finished the day at Melee's first game of a baseball tournament. Whew, what a day!

Because You Must Be Tired of the House

What do ya say Ma, give us all a break!

Out at Baseball with the Goofball.
(Ya'll keep your fingers crossed. Her front teeth are loose and I'm afraid you might have a toothless flower girl in June.)

Kindergarten field trip and picnic.

This cracks me up, what you can't see is that she's four inches off the ground.

Gratuitous Cuteness.


And yes I have four children. I usually don't break out the camera while they wrestle loudly in the living room until somebody's crying.

(Hmmm, possibilities for tomorrow's blog entry.)

Bricks and Sticks

Yes, it's that time of year again. Only this year we're doing it "small town". "Small town" meaning that we don't have anything better to do than to practice four times a week and play in tournaments all weekend. Practice has been starting at 7:00 and going well past 9:00 at night. Suddenly, I've lost all my enthusiasm for baseball.

Today was the first time I actually got to see him play with his new team, because I can't keep the Littles out that late. They lost by one point in a very close game. He got a hit, but it was caught for an out. It was still progress, as the coach hit him the other day while practicing batting and now he's scared of the ball. At the top of every inning, they would circle up, put their hands in and yell "ONE TWO THREE! ******!" I turned to Charlie and said "What are they saying?" He said "One two three, sticks! Sticks? You know, batting? Sticks?" I guess. This is the first time we've played on the same fields where girls are also playing. Those girls talk some smack. ..


Hey! YOU! Batter! SWING!



The house is coming along. So much so that it's hard to keep up with it all. We've decided to finish out the bonus room. So we've now got three air conditioning units, the electricians had to come out again to wire it for lights and electrical outlets. The plumbers were here all week and everytime I go in, someone asks me a question I'm not prepared to answer, like "Where do you want the doorbell chime?" or "Were do you want the phone to go in the kitchen." Then there was this whole thing with the master shower. The Builder showed the shower with two shower heads one on each wall. Well, evidently we were supposed to choose one location, but we thought that we were going to have a super-duper two headed shower. So when he informed us that it was supposed to be one or the other, I thought, "Oh well, easy come easy go." but not Charlie. No! "He showed us two shower heads and you bought two trim kits and WE'RE HAVING TWO SHOWER HEADS, CAUSE THAT'S WHAT HE SAID!" He's had a lot of those kinds of fits this week, all the stress of me making him play Bad Cop to my Good Cop. So when he went off on the shower, I said "I'll call him and tell him." So I did, and he said NO PROBLEM. And all was well in the world. Right up until the day we went over and the plumbers said "By the way, which wall do you want the shower heads on." And we went back there, Me, Charlie, Calvin and Fred and the two plumbers, one hanging out of the ceiling, the other standing in the bathtub, and Charlie steps into the shower and says, "Okay, if I'm standing here, then where are you gonna want to be standing?" I turned three shades of red (I just turned two shades of red writing this story down), lot's of giggling and laughing ensued I mumbled "Whatever you think." and got the heck out of there as fast as I could.

It's expedient. It saves water. (or at least it did until we installed a second shower head) And that's all I have to say about that.

(See the thing they did by putting the knobs right beside each other. I was thinking they had to go on the same wall as the shower head. I'm a totally IN the Box kind of thinker. I was totally impressed by that.)

Yesterday late in the day they started bricking the house! We went out twice yesterday, and we've already been out twice today.

They have started putting in all the ductwork. The whole house is full of it. We met with the cabinet maker and I had to make several more on the spot decisions. After I got home I had time to think about it and have changed my mind on one or two things and I've since changed my mind about the location of the phone in the kitchen. I've learned I'm not a decisive person at all, and unless I can SEE what you're talking about, I can't picture what your saying. We've had a whole caucus about the fireplace and what it will look like. Despited the fact that Calvin sent me a website that had over 200 pictures of fireplaces, I'm still not altogether sure about what I want.



Not that I'm complaining, it's a good problem to have. But stressful, nevertheless.
Next week I'm looking forward to seeing the brick on the front of the house and they are supposed to begin insulation. That is going to be really interesting. We're using a product call Rockwool, that they shoot into the wall after putting a mesh barrier up. I also get to go look at tile next week. We went over and looked at the granite choices and Charlie and I don't agree on a color. Shocker, huh?

Moving Again!

Where did the week go? I'm not sure I can even remember what's been going on. I posted some more pictures here so you can see what the current status on the house is.

It continues to be a roller coaster ride where the house is concerned. Every day I go out and everytime there is some progress it's a HUGE rush! I got teary when the first windows went in, then I got teary for an entirely different reason when they took the double windows that appeared to have been the wrong size and they sawed them in half and then installed them with nails on three sides of each window with a big gaping whole on the fourth side. That incident has since been explained to me and the proper reinforcements have been added and then all was well and I was happy again. There are windows, some siding, roof decking and felt, electrical, stone has been delivered, shingles should be here in the morning, and I have my cedar posts on all the porches. Lot's of excitement!

In the meantime, my Mom purchased a house that she has loved for many years and she is having us move into that house, so that she can put this one on the market. So that has been the main reason for the blur over the last week and a half. We've made half a dozen trips to Gun Barrell city (where the nearest Lowe's is located), a few trips to Ace hardware, 3 visits from a plumber, an electrician and a partridge in a pear tree. And it looks like we will move into "The Doghouse" this weekend. Named the Doghouse for it's two concrete dog statues out front.

So once again we're off to rent a U-haul. I've moved most of the kids clothes, my clothes a couple of boxes from Houston...my mind is starting to get a little frazzled....

Anyway, I should have some exciting pictures next week as bricks, stone and a roof are added, it should be quite a week. That is if tonight's current thunderstorm doesn't send me on another one of those roller coaster moments!

More House Updates

By the time I get these pictures loaded onto this dang blog, I'm too tired for words. So these will be short and sweet.

Come up our new stairs...

John shows you the fabulous view out the second floor bonus room window.

This is from one corner of the bonus room to the other.

We are now taking donations to actually finish the bonus room. Or we'll be charging $100 a night, which is the First Monday Hotel going rate.

Today, we got outside walls! Here Ace models the front living room.

Peach enjoys the view out her bedroom window.

The Littles Model the fireplace.

Melee' is conspicuously absent. Yep, home playing StarWars.

Here are the outside views, starting with the back. The circus tent section of the roof is over the main backporch.

This is a view from the far right corner of the lot.

Front right corner of the lot, facing the three car garage.

The front view, complete with trash dumpster, bricks, radiant barrier decking, and whatever that stuff is that they're using for the outside skin (is that OSB?) and other various trash.

The First Signs

You might think that the first signs of spring might be budding trees, rainshowers, daffodils, warming temps and buying the industrial size bottle of Claritin. You'd be right, but at my house, the way I know Spring is upon us, is that Peach had to move her color for the first time in her illustrious Kindergarten career.



"What happened? Why did you have to move your color."

"I didn't get my work finished."

"Why didn't you get the paper finished?"

"Well, these other kids were talking and Momma...I just couldn't resist."





Spring has sprung!

KAY-RAH-TAY!

I don' t know what I'm gonna do with him. I just can't imagine what he's thinking.
Well, he's not. He's not thinking. He's certainly not thinking about his future. I never thought one of my kids would want to quit school. Much less before they got to Kindergarten.

Evidently things are not going smoothly at the new Mother's Day Out. The biggest part of the day, is naptime. It turns out that they lay down for an hour and a half. Ace is not used to taking a nap anymore, but at his old MDO, he tolerated without any trouble. He's been complaining about not wanting to go back to school for the last couple of weeks. On Tuesday when I went to pick him up, he bundled up his nap mat and tried to run incognito out of the room. On the way out I asked him how his day was, he said "She kept saying "Nosqueaking! No squeaking!, NoSQUEAKING!" and I said "What was the squeaking?" he said "My shoes." and so trying to change the subject I asked "How was the rest of your day?" and he said "In church Bo kept Swacking me and Swacking andSwacking andSwacking me!" He said that he basically didn't want to go back. And I said "Well, do you want to go to Kindergarten next year instead of Mothers Day Out." to which he replied, "No, I just wanna go to fight school."

My House Built of Sticks

This is what we found when we got back from Houston. I'll tell you right now, job sites are not for the weak at heart. I just want to pick everything up and stack it neatly somewhere. I'm loosing the game of picking up nails.

This is what it looked like when the entire first floor was done, before they started the roof.

The kids love to go out and look at their rooms now that they have walls. Well, everyone except Melee' who can't be torn away from his video games. I may have to put him in rehab when the house is done.

I broke a record this week by going out to the homesite three times in one day. This is so exciting! Charlie can hardly go to work everyday. He played hookie for half the day today. He went out to check on the cables this morning, the next thing I knew he was calling to tell me that they had not arched the doorways and did I want them to redo them. Today was not my day for decision making, I evidently woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning because the news sent me into a big cry. In the end they arched one of the doorways for me so that I could come look at it and decide what to do. I decided I wanted them arched and we stayed out there the rest of the morning chatting with the builder, the super, the framers and their boss. We went and picked up pizza for their lunch. (I felt so guilty that they had to change seven doorways, plus they were doing a fab job!) I had to decide whether I wanted the walls in the master shower to be full walls or half walls. Everytime I tried to get Charlie to tell me what he thought, he'd just "PHpppptt" and look at Calvin and Fred like "I don't know why she's asking me, I don't get a say...." That's ever so helpful. So I decided we would have one half wall and one full wall. How's that for decision making.

This was how we left it before lunch. By the end of today they were completely done..

This is the view of the back of the house. Those are the piles of brick laying all around. There are 13,790 and the guy who dropped them was not totally convinced that we had enough.

The fun continues....

Pray for clear, dry skies!

The End of an Era

Wednesday Morning...

Loaded up and ready for Travel.
We closed on the house and prepared for the movers.

Thursday Morning...

Last stop at Best Donuts.
Sugar is the breakfast of champions.

I packed all these boxes with just these two fingers!









Not a thing left unpacked.
(No thanks to us. All professionally done. Well except for the six truckloads of boxes that we brought over from storage. I totally packed those!)

Nowhere to sit, all the furniture is wrapped.

Friday morning...

The big guns arrive. Loaded from 9:30 in the morning until about 7:30 in the evening, while we sat out in the front yard, trying to stay out of the way.

*Sniff*

Good-bye trees.

Good-bye Rippling Hollow!

We Love You!