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!