More serious remodeling

The biggest changes that have been made to the house so far is the paint on the walls and the removal of the floral wallpaper borders that were everywhere. Until today that is. The carpet in the hall bathroom was ripped from the tack strips and is not being replaced with tile. Jenny and Todd are working hard on getting everything laid out appropriately.

We only had one instance of the carpet being peed on by a little boy but we had long known that the carpet would be short lived in both of the bathrooms. I'm glad that they have the courage to jump into tiling the floor. The wet saw is out again and getting put to good use. Todd is loving having our very own two car garage. There is somewhere to really work! The other night we made a major trip to Lowes and it was starting to rain when we arrived at home. It was no big deal, all we had to do was pull into the garage. We didn't have to get wet and the stuff didn't have to be unloaded in the wet either...it was really a great luxury.

As we pick our remodel projects that we are going to do, we have to remember that we are only going to be here for a few years. So instead of picking the way cool tile, we went with the stuff that was the weekly special for about 60 cents a tile. It will still be better than white carpet in the bathroom for sure. Any suggestions for the color of the bathroom? We haven't picked that yet. (and who really thought that white carpet in a bathroom was a good idea?)

As Jenny and Todd change the looks on the inside of the house, I have been doing more on the outside. Todd gets credit for most of the big changes there as well. The previous occupants of the house had a riding mower and must have ducked a lot when mowing under the trees. Todd and the push mower wasn't up for that, so the bottom branches of every tree in the yard (which there are over 10 of them) are now happily creating compost. The city even took all of it for free, we just had to drop it off! Small town life is good for this type of thing - all the local services are really close by!

The garden is growing well. I had to add a picture of something that I was doing! My mom gets credit for the initial planting. This picture is only 6 days old and it's really amazing how much different the garden looks already! The grape tomato plant even has a little bloom on it. The green beans have come up they are on the right side of the garden. It seemed like only a quarter of the seeds sprouted but for some reason another quarter of them decided to come up yesterday. God gave us such an amazing world even the milk jugs are growing!

The neighbors have been gone this week on vacation and the boys have missed their new friends terribly. We thought they were coming back today but we haven't seen them yet. They are doing pretty well occupying themselves especially the last two days when Mom was working and Dad and Jenny working on house stuff. We don't have any TV yet either - we are holding off for awhile before biting the bullet and paying for cable. They haven't run out of new places to sleep yet. The first week here they decided to sleep in their closets - their room has two separate closets and they fit nicely in them. The last couple of nights they have been in the guest room because their room was being painted. Not sure when we'll do the first camp-out in the basement!

Two Weeks In

Two weeks ago the moving truck rolled in with us and all our belongings. God has blessed us so much during this move, we could not have written a script that would have been this good. I'll try and share some of those moments with you in my first attempt at a blog...

First of all, the packing went wonderfully and very low stress on getting out of Iowa City. The truck barely fit on the car carrier that was behind the moving truck but it was on there secure and we were off on a beautiful morning.

Right after we got the moving van backed up to the front door of the Rolla house, the family from down the street came over with three of their children. Char and Kelly introduced us to Caleb, Elly and Josiah. Micah and Joshua were both napping. A few minutes after that the boys were off playing. Josiah is 5 and turns out to be about 6 weeks younger than Andrew. They have had a blast together and he's greatly missed this week while on a family vaction. We both live at the end of a dead end street so the kids can cross the street without too much concern and travel between the yards.

Todd's sisters met us here as well as my parents so the unloading happened very very quickly and the cleaning started on the cabinets and other surfaces. Monday night we ate out, but since then the kitchen has been fully functional to eat in and we have been good about doing that. I have an amazing family who is willing to jump in and help and work so hard!

The house is pretty much as we expected and are still very satisfied with our selection. We like the open living area and the basement area for a playroom. The previous couple took all the curtains with them and filled the holes sloppily. The carpet and walls were in worse shape than we had remembered, but we had thoughts of changing them anyway. Jenny began removing the wallpaper border that was in most of the rooms of the house after all of the boxes were removed from the truck. There's just nothing to complain about so far with the house - it's been great. By the time my parents left, there were tomato and pepper plants in the garden as well as some herbs and green bean seeds.

Jenny started painting last week so there is some color on the walls now. They had used wallpaper border for color before and it was a bit on the floral side for us...solid colored walls are more our speed. It feels more homey already! We bought some couches too so we feel like we have a real house and can have people over! (No TV yet, but that will probably happen next week. We can tune in one fuzzy station but that's it. It's amazing how well we have done without it though.)

As we have talked with our neighbors some more, we have a lot of Christians on our block. The family across the street with all of the Biblical named children go to the Lutheran Church which is our roots though their roots are in the Christian Reformed denomination just like our neighbors from Iowa City! They are a great family - the kids are extremely well behaved and polite and great to have around. Helen lives right next door to us. She is in her early 80's and lost her husband about a year and a half ago. We've had her over for dinner twice in the last three days and I think we'll see a lot more of that. She's really lonely right now and that's the least that we can do! On the other side of us is a young couple with three pit bulls. There is just a small fence between the two yards to contain the dogs...one of them got out today so we know that it can easily happen. We'll probably do something about a more substantial fence very soon for JL's protection. She is concerned as well so it shouldn't be an issue at all.

We have one more week to do the odd jobs around the house and then the summer starts to get a bit busier. Andrew is going to do an enrichment class at the public school in the mornings for 4 weeks. Todd is up to two classes for the summer now which starts the second week of June. I'm still working on Tuesday and Wednesday!

I'll try to be a little more enlightening on future entries but wanted to catch everyone up on our family news! We have the guest bedroom all set-up so feel free to come visit. It has been used by three different sets of people already and we aren't afraid to wash the sheets and get ready for more.