Finally Home!!!!

Alright, it took almost 6 months, but we are home (Peanut will be here as soon as we put down the rugs- had to wait a month). It was funny when they were bringing our stuff back into the house that we still had a bunch of Easter stuff out (it happened the weekend after Easter). Anyway, we did make a few changes while we were out. The biggest was we refinished the downstairs hardwood floors, added hardwoods to upstairs and re-carpeted the basement (and the bathroom and a small portion in the other space we put vinyl). Here are some pics (it was hard to get the pictures to show the correct color of the kitchen, but you can kind of get the idea). We have a blueish-gray glass (if the lights are on under the cabinets it looks one color and when other lights hit it, it looks another), new Caeserstone counters and a new sink (Rusty did get a few things and this was his pick). We are still having a few issues with the moving/storage company. They basically are incompetent (luckily the check from insurance went to us and we will pay them if they ever correct what they need to). We already got a new fridge (ours came back with the inside completely covered in mold). It was a fairly new fridge and when I called the person we had been dealing with he told me to rent a fridge and we would work it out later.....that did not go over well (at this point the rational one (rusty) had already decided he was done and gave me permission to "chat with them"). Needless to say, I called him back and told him that wouldn't do (it was ridiculous and not cost effective for them because we ultimately would be getting a new fridge since mold is like death to a fridge) and told him I would be ordering a new one right away. I emailed him the receipt from our original fridge and told him I would be ordering the same fridge and would need to be reimbursed for that cost. (I got it in writing that they would because I let him know that they had lied about a few things already and I needed it in an email in case he had a problem remembering this conversation). They sent someone out to fix the golden tee machine. The person managed to not fix the machine and tear up part of our new floor. Are you kidding me!!They still have to send someone out to fix a table (can't wait to see how that goes).
Anyway, we are thrilled to be in the house. We did enjoy being in the apartment during the summer months (not paying electricity bills) and cranking the air to 68 (it might have been colder than that- Hannah was sleeping in pjs and a fleece sleep sack).

Here is a pic to see the new floor color


Hannah has the small room so I thought she should have a chandelier (thanks mom and dad for making the curtains!!!)




I had to put the tree up again


Here is the backsplash




and the one room in the house that rusty gets.......

Rusty's brother was in town this past week. We didn't get to see them much (it stinks because Frances and T love to play with Elizabeth and Cecilia) because Frances has school so we have trouble getting there during the week and they aren't always here on the weekend. We did make it down for Boo's b-day (I will have to post the pic later because it is on another camera, but it is so cute because Rusty's folks sat at the table with all the grandkids except the two little ones). We saw them when we headed back in town Monday night. Here is a cute pic of the bunch.





As a result of the ironman....Thomas likes to run around the house and say he is racing. He talks about swimming, biking, and running. He is a big fan of this sweatband I got for him.



Hannah is getting bigger and continuing to be a good baby (if she gets what she wants). She makes it pretty clear what she wants and you better do what she says or be ready to battle it out. I guess that is better than T who just didn't like Rusty for about a year or so.




Frances still loves school. They had a popsicle party today at the park. It looked like almost all the kids were there plus siblings and a parent or two for each (even the. There are a total of 8 kids in her class that live in our neighborhood.

IRONMAN!!!

We (Rusty, Frances, Thomas and I) went to Louisville this past weekend for Rusty's big race. He did a great job! Lot of training went into this (not many people could download a schedule and stick to the major training). Anyway, he did great. He went right under his goal time of 12 hours 30 minutes (he went 12 hrs 23 min). He had cramping issues in two other half ironman events, but the only problem he had this time was because he drank the sports drink they handed out (he said the last half of the marathon his stomach hurt, but his legs were fine). It was a fun event to watch. It is fun to watch the event as well as the spectators. People bring their own cheering sections (an ironman race is a large commitment and takes a lot of training and is a pretty big deal). The kids and I walked down to watch him come out of the water, jump on his bike and run some. Someone gave T a bell and dude man cheered everyone. They had a great time.


we got there really early to make sure we got a good spot (things got pretty crowded). The kids did a pretty good job walking a lot. I did figure out that they would sit together in the umbrella stroller- good times!








They even had fireworks



Dad's House


We did swing by the house my dad grew up in. Here is a picture that I snapped. It is a really cute area.

moving along

They are moving along with the house and we are hoping to be moved back in 5 weeks or so from now. The heat, electrical and roof inspections said we were good to go. They have measured for the countertops. As I am typing, the crew is putting up new drywall (the hallway, two of the bathrooms upstairs as well as numerous walls/misc parts of the ceilings up and down stairs are getting fixed). The next step will be turn on the air once insulation is in and get the house cooled so the hardwoods can be put in upstairs and refinished downstairs. Rusty gets to pick basement carpet (yep, his one room in the house). We also are waiting for the two new bay windows for the back of the house. We also had to add a new fence in the front of the house. We had some trees removed and the old fence was going to need a lot of work to put back up.....add it to the list. I will post pictures this week.

love bug!

All I can say is Hannah loves her bug! You can tell she is ready for bed when you put her in the pack n play and she rolls right over to spoon her bug. She chews on her antenna, wings and just snuggles with it. She has learned to turn on the bug too. Here is a picture of Miss Hannah and her bug (yes, i must have been crazy taking a picture while she was sleeping, but luckily the camera/flash didn't wake her up- it had to be done).

this week

House Update-

We had a bunch of trees cut down. 4 pines (the pine beetles had already gotten to one), a really large poplar over next to the oak that fell (which is a good thing because when they cut it down you could see from the stump that the middle of the tree was filled w/water-awesome), a tree by the chimney, one by the roof and a bunch of branches (they took down a few smaller ones too).

They have put down the additional plywood upstairs to get ready for the hardwood floors and wiring has been corrected. The front stairs inside were ripped out and have been redone. The only carpet left in the house is the back stairs.

We are waiting on inspection so they can close the ceiling and put back insulation so they can turn the air back on and work on the floors.

Frances Update-
Loves school! She sits in the front of the bus with two of her friends. She sits next to the window. She even had her first playdate with the kindergartner across the street (can't wait to get in the house so they can play more). Frances basically comes home, eats and plays just a little bit and crashes around 7.

Thomas....
I don't think he requires sleep. There are many nights where he is up past Rusty and gets up pretty early. Things have somewhat settled down a lot for him so he is back to my sweet boy. He loves his new class (he has the same teachers that Frances had). He still likes to blame things on his cousin. James hasn't even been to the apartment and Thomas told me yesterday that he was the reason the chair had a spill on it.

Hannah
Still sleeping in the closet. I use that term loosely still because she likes to get up for a bit at night and talk (this is normally the time with the kids when we turn off the monitors....can't even close the door on miss thing).

We are hoping to be back in the house in less than 2 months and that will help make our schedules a lot better!

Frances/Rusty story......

So Rusty apparently is a magnet for speeding tickets-in school zones---by policemen on foot (really- are you freakin kidding me!). He got pulled over again and when the cop came to the window Frances told him that her mommy didn't drive as fast (so not true- as Rusty likes to point out I drive a lot faster). I told him I drive an old mini van and he does not. Maybe we need to get him an old mini van. As Rusty was pulling away, Frances told him that she was happy he was driving slow. Nice.

progress

I know I need to update and show some pictures of the apartment- it is just awesome. I love having a almost 7 month old sleeping in my closet (it has been 3 months of miss noisy), a three and five year old who have rooms right outside of the living room and basically no room for anyone to make a noise without waking up their sibling (apparently rusty is the only one who can't hear anything).

I didn't get a picture of when they ripped the roof off and replaced the beams (that was pretty cool), but here are some other ones. They have replaced all broken beams and put on a new roof. They also took out all of the insulation. They have taken off the damaged siding between two of the upstairs bedrooms and have taken Hannah's room down to the drywall. The good news was they found no additional damage. They have ripped out the carpet upstairs (we are replacing that with hardwoods and refinishing the main level). They have also taken out ceiling for the hallway and two of the bathrooms upstairs. We are making some changes to the kitchen so they took out the backsplash and counter tops.

Thomas' bathroom (they have now removed all the ceiling)

Hannah's room

back to school (and back to blogging)

KINDERGARTEN!!! What a big girl! Frances did a great job. She seemed a little nervous while waiting for the bus, but when it got to the driveway she hopped right on. She was all smiles when she got off the bus in the afternoon. She said she loved it! She loved riding the bus, her teacher and apparently a little boy (she said she met her husband-lovely).

we went to the house so she could get the bus (yep- her book bag is almost as big as she is) I will post some pics of the progress on the house and give updates tomorrow.




waiting....


The kids at her stop
(Look how much smaller she is than the kids. This was the first day so the kindergartners had nametags on)


she jumped right on the bus (she didn't know anyone - no tears and jumped right on)


All smiles coming home

bad choice- no one to blame but myself

Alright, I am always telling the kids to make good choices-I must say this was not a good one. For Frances' birthday we got her a cuckoo clock (by we- I mean I picked it out so no one to blame but me). The thing is loud and since I work from home a great deal it scares me to death all the time. It cuckoos and then meows. Brilliant!!!

wow two pics

Yes, it is a very unusual thing to see a pic of me with my kiddos. They will probably look back and wonder why it looks like they don't have a mom. I mean I rarely take photos with them (usually there is a reason for that- I am taking the pics and I am not a huge fan of being in pics), but I do think every once in a while I need to jump in one or two so they can look back and see they did have a mom :)

A few more pics of the house

I forgot to post a picture of the crane. I had mentioned the first crane wasn't big enough so here is the one that did the trick.



Thomas thinks my folks house equals pancakes (he thinks that Rusty's folks house=mac and cheese). When he visits the house he thinks he should have these foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner so since we were at my folks for over a week...he had a lot of pancakes.



Granddaddy hanging with Hannah





This tells the state Rusty was in (he is doing a little better now)

Kindergarten!!!

I don't know who is more excited..Frances or mommy. We definitely will miss Mt Pisgah and the great head start it gave Miss Frances, but free school sounds good to me. We are zoned for one of the top schools in the county and we are very excited. Of course, I can't wait for her to tell them on the first day of school that we live in an apartment and mommy drops her off in a neighborhood for school- that doesn't sound sketchy. Anyway, we went for registration (yes, can you tell this is our first- we both went). I am sure they loved watching the two of us on our phones (Rusty was working on his iphone and I had both of my phones out working while they were observing Frances). The next week we went back so that the incoming kiddos were able to go to a kindergarten class and then.......ride the bus. So exciting! No barfing from Miss Frances, but we will see if that keeps up.

This time not my fault...

Ok, I have a lot to post so here we go.....I have to say that it is not my fault this time that there has been so much time between posts, a tree hit our house.

I am going to start with a few pictures from Easter. I am still trying to get a good picture of the three kids, I am beginning to think that won't happen until we get a professional in here at the end of the summer.

Easter was so much fun. We started off with the usual Grant Family Easter Egg Hunt at his Aunt's house. Tons of kiddos 6 and under and there will be 3 more there next year. So much fun! We went to Easter at our church with the folks. The kids got to play with chicks. Then off to the club with the folks for lunch and to Rusty's folks for dinner. A great weekend!

The next week was when there were big storms. I stayed up to about 11:30 until the worst of the weather past (to may sure we didn't need to head down to the basement). At midnight we heard a loud noise. By the time I was out of bed, Rusty already had Hannah in his arms (he never hears anything so you can imagine how loud this was). I ran down the hall and grabbed Frances and then to Thomas' room to get him (yep- they slept through it). We all ran to the basement. We thought maybe there was a tornado or something going on....little did we know that we had a 30,000 lb tree on the house. Yep, if you want to get a good picture imagine that the first crane was not big enough and they had to bring in the big boy. One piece alone was 16,000lbs. The tree hit Thomas' bathroom and a little of ours. The ceiling came in at those two rooms. There is major damage in the doorway of Hannah's room and then a lot of vertical cracks around the upstairs and a little on the main floor. Before the storm, I was going to bring Hannah in our room because she is on the backside of the house......I mean I am never sleeping again. We are very fortunate that no one was hurt. Big prayers go out on that!!! The structural engineer came out and we are waiting for the first report. We know that the roof/roof structure and a bunch of the upper level will have to be repaired. Basically they said once they start peeling back layers, they will be able to see if there is more damage. Awesome! So far we have been told this is a 4-6 month project at least.....

Next, Miss Frances turned 5. She was so pumped! We had her birthday at a chocolate factory near the house. The kids had a great time making chocolate lolly pops, pizza, etc (sorry to all the folks because the kids got to taste all the chocolate between each project and finished the part with cupcakes so I am guessing nap time didn't happen for a lot of them).

For Mother's Day dad preached at Johns Creek so we headed up that way. We ate at the folks and then went to Rusty's Parents for the kids to play and then out to eat. Another fun and busy weekend.

Also, just found out that Christine and Bob are expecting #3 in December......fun times! Hannah is thrilled to have a friend (Frances has Ansley, Thomas has James and we will see who the last and final grand kid for the Rev and Mrs will be).

The kids have started to settle. Thomas refers to our house as the "crack house" - lovely. Hannah is now sleeping in the closet and Peanut is hanging at the parents' house. Rusty is handling it pretty well too.....
















as good as i could get


still hoping for a good picture- one day - i mean are you kidding me?