{Michelle's Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage}

{Meghann's Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage}

{It's JUNE! 1st Mortgage Payment....MADE!!}

Yeah! Never thought I'd be so happy to part with that much $$$, but it'll be a JOY every month! We are LOVING our new home...it makes us very happy to finally have a place of our own! It felt like home as soon as we moved in, that's how you KNOW you're in the right place! There are still MANY, MANY more boxes to get through, but that will just take time! We can't wait to have all our family and friends over...I'm sure it'll be a little bit @ a time, but eventually everyone will get to share in our homeownership joys!

Thanks to Mom and Dad for all their gifts for our new home! We have been SO lucky that so many of our friends and family have given us gifts...it seems weird, because we HAVE had a home to live in for many years, but being as it's our first home PURCHASE, we're so glad that everyone seems to get as much happiness out of it as we are! We love you all!

Okay...back to watching "Tale of Desperaux" with Meghann now!

{Slowly Wading Through....}

....all the boxes! Hee, hee! We have a few dishes left over @ the old house still, but no rush to get them out. Claudia is gone for 10 days and said to take our time, not to worry about it! So it's off to get more shelf liner stuff today and get all that taken care of!

Our friends are AMAZING! All the work they did on Sunday can never be repaid and the friendship has ALWAYS been irreplaceable for us! We are TRULY lucky people to have friends like we have! God has blessed our lives in ways that constantly blow us away!

So....back to the boxes. Gotta get everything back in "place" @ the new house, and get rid of crap that we don't need anymore. We have too much "stuff"..."stuff" takes over your lives, and it's time it all went AWAY! The Goodwill won't know what hit them when we start dropping stuff off! :-D

We can't wait to have everyone over to the new place for a BBQ and swimming! YEAH! Thanks for all your well-wishes during this whole process, and we're REALLY working on getting ourselves above water! Mike went back to work today (patrolling) for the first time in about 8 months. So he's VERY excited, but I'm sure will be even MORE exhausted than moving made him! It's a good thing, he's happy to be doing his job again and not sitting @ the office. Pray that he continues to do well...he was blessed by a wonderful surgeon that healed his back with God's help.

Okay, okay...now off to that LONG commute to get Megs to school. (Ha, ha...it's 1 minute away!)

{Today is MOVING DAY!!}

So...it's finally come to this! All our procrastinating is @ an end! Today is Moving Day! We pick up the UHaul @ 11am and all our friends are coming over @ noon to help! With Mike's back, we have to be careful...thankfully we have a bevy of WONDERFUL friends who are willing to give up their Sunday to help us out! Mike and I already decided that we're NEVER moving again! It was so EASY when the military did it for us! :-D This is our first non-military move! But we can't put it off any longer...the DirecTV guys are coming tomorrow and the internet guys are coming Tuesday. That means we HAVE to get everything over there! We've taken a few big loads of stuff on our own, but it still doesn't look like we've made a dent! Living in 1 place for 8 years you don't realize how much stuff ya have! Time for a good garage sale!

Okay...better get ready for church and a LONG day ahead!

{Some More Photos of the House!}

I figured that before I headed off again to the house to do more work that I should post some more pictures! We've been slowly bringing stuff over there (not much yet!) and hopefully I'll finish painting the inside of the kitchen cabinets today. They have 1 good coat on them, but need another. They are REALLY old, bare wood....and I just can't put our stuff inside of them until they are "fresh and clean"! It'll be MUCH better!Okay, I couldn't get some of the photos to post because they wouldn't rotate! It's probably time to reboot the laptop! :-) The one above is to show the accent wall in the craft room. All the walls are light blue (Eminence) except for the one "Close to Cocoa" wall. Meghann picked out a lovely brown, don'tcha think? Michelle loves it! The one below shows some of the work that Josh has been doing @ the house for us. Since we're not plumbers (and he IS!) it works out well! He has all the tools and the know-how, and it's fun to have someone else there while I'm painting, etc @ the house! The water valves for the laundry in the garage were almost @ the floor...so he put in new copper pipes and ran them up higher and put in quarter-turn ball valves so it'll be super easy to cut the water on and off. He ran the gas line over to the left side so that the dryer could be closer to the vent. After he'd done all that...Mike decided he wanted to put the deep sink in now...hee, hee! So Josh took care of all that too! It's a GREAT deep sink! 14.5 inches deep, with a side drain tray and a sprayer! We LOVE this thing!Here is another couple of pics. Above is a picture of the new granite vanity top and faucet that Josh installed for us. The vanity was fine, but the top they had on it was white...and just looked BLAH! Now it really looks like a nice set up...and we got the faucet for $24! Originally $130! GOTTA love the clearance section @ Home Depot! Below is a quick shot while I was painting in the pantry with Meghann. That yellow color (we called it "School Bus Yellow on CRACK"!) was in the whole walk-in pantry! I don't know how anyone stored FOOD in there with it...I would think the color would have started leeching into their food! It's SUCH a "violent" color....waaaaay too crazy! So now it's a nice, neutral brown. The paint is still wet when this picture was taken, so there are varying shades, but now that it's dry it looks SOOOO nice and SOOOO much better than School Bus Crack! :-)Okay...I'd better get showered and ready for another fun day of painting inside kitchen cabinets! :-)

{HAPPY Mother's Day!!!}

Happy Mother's Day!!!

We know you're on a cruise right now coming back home to us....(and your puppy!), but we figured we'd all wish you a Happy Mother's Day anyway! Thank you for all that you do in our lives! For all your advice and loving actions. For the way you've treated us all...with love and kindness @ all times. For the way you love our daughter! For the way you love my Daddy! For just being YOU! Thanks Mom! You're the BEST!

MMM

{Closer and Closer...}

We're getting closer and closer to actually moving IN! Today, Josh installed the new granite vanity top in the bathroom. Max busted out all the flagstone in the backyard so that Dave and Heidi can have it for THEIR backyard! Josh and Michelle went to Lowe's to get the deep sink for the garage and all the plumbing supplies to put it in. Heidi helped Michelle paint closet doors. All the bedrooms have been painted and all baseboards painted. Michelle wants to paint inside the kitchen cabinets before we move in...we'll be redoing the kitchen @ some point, but you know when you plan on doing it SOON, it always takes longer than you'd hoped....so painting inside of them will make Michelle feel better for now! The kids got to swim in the pool today for the first time! That was fun! It's good that we have so many good friends to help with all the work while Mike is at....WORK! :-D We're getting a lot accomplished so that means that we'll get moved in soon! YEAH! Okay...now it's bedtime! Ha, ha!

{Pictures of Painted Rooms}

I thought I'd post some before and after shots of the rooms we've painted so far. I have to take the camera today and get a good picture of the cocoa brown accent wall in the craft room because I only had my cell phone camera yesterday and it doesn't take good pictures! :-D Meghann picked "Tinkerbell" from the Disney color collection @ Home Depot for her room...it's REALLY bright and hard to get an accurate picture of it...that's why there is only the one, it looks the most like it in real life. As soon as I take it from other angles, it looks like a really soft green...it's NOT! :-D Meghann loves it and that's what matters! The craft room is a color called "Eminence", it's a light blue with a slight lavendar cast to it, it's also the color of the 1/2 bath in the master bedroom to match with the seaside themed stuff we have now. The craft room has a "cocoa" colored accent wall where you see the yellow wall in the pictures above. Meghann picked this color as well, it's called "Blanket Brown", but I call it "Close to Cocoa" because it looks like a Stampin' Up! color of the same name. The master bedroom is painted a color called "Twin Falls". It's a light blue as well...a little deeper than the color in the craft room & 1/2 bath, but with a grey tone to it. It's VERY restful and matches our bedding. I can't wait to put all the furniture in there and relax! Mike & Meghann scraped up all the peel-n-stick linoleum tiles in the garage and Mike put down a "showroom" finish on the floor. He did a GREAT job and it will be SOOO much easier to clean up and nicer on the feet as well...since the laundry is in the garage! Thankfully we have direct access from the house, that makes it really easy when the weather is bad! So, that is our little update for now. More to come...can't wait to complete the move!

{Small Update!}

Things are moving along @ the new house! Mike is working on his showroom finish garage floor, Michelle has been doing a lot of paint prep, and we've had Josh @ the house doing some plumbing stuff and other misc. handy work. TODAY, Heidi is coming over to help Michelle start painting! We're going to start in Meghann's room....Tinkerbell green from the Disney collection @ the Home Depot! Michelle can't wait to have the new granite vanity top installed in the bathroom...it's so purdy! And the new faucet! $130 faucet, found in the clearance section @ Home Depot for $96 (had Josh check to see if all parts were there since there weren't instructions!), and it scanned @ the register for $24! WooHoo! Now THAT is a bargain...and it's the EXACT faucet I would have picked out anyway! It's gonna be BEE-YOU-TEE-FULL! So, hopefully I'll get some pictures up today of Meghann's room...but no guarantees! :-D