Baby Shower

Here are a few pics from my CA baby shower (more details at the bottom). Above is the blanket Bob's mom made for the little one. She cross-stitched every little detail. What handy work!
Below is the special matching blanket my grandma made nearly 29 years ago. I had this blanket as a child (the picture is of me on it) and apparently my grandma had made two of them. My aunt was going through my grandma's things a while back and found this, saving it for our little one. The blessing is that my grandma passed away just a few weeks ago so it was extra special to receive this now.

Here are many of the people at the shower. A few escaped before we could get the picture!

My mama and I (Grandma Mindy or Gramindy as I call her)

Sweet Diane

The lovely Amy and baby bumpBob's mom and aunt

The decor

My lovely friends Amy and Diane threw me a baby shower in California. It was so fun to celebrate with long-time friends and family. I still cannot believe that there is a real life inside of me and it was so fun to receive clothes and little things to remind me of that fact. It is so wonderful to be pregnant and have so many people that you love rally around you. I was also very blessed to receive many gift cards that I will use to purchase things that I will need from my registry or in the future. I was so overwhelmed when registering and with all that had to do with baby that it felt nice to receive gift cards so I know that I can hold on to them and see what I will really need. I am trying to keep everything simple and not obtain too much STUFF! Thank you all so much for blessing me and my little one. Much love to you!

A few of my favorite things

Well, we finally moved into our house last weekend. Thanks to some wonderful helping friends, we got things moved and organized in most places really quickly. There are still very many finishing touches that we will continue to do, but overall it is livable and beautiful. Bob has worked so hard over the past 5 months and the fruits of his efforts have really paid off. We are ready to get settled and become more focused on planning for our little one. I will post more pictures as rooms become more complete, but here are some of my favorite things that make my house feel like home to me:
1. The chalkboard table that I made--I will write more about it in the next post. It turned out exactly as I had imagined.

Here is another angle. We bought those two new chairs from Ikea and are using a bench on the other side that my parents bought me from Pottery Barn when we first got married. We had been using it as a coffee table previously.

2. The pantry. I didn't take a full picture inside, which I will have to in the future, but it is the size of a small room. It is bigger than a closet and I could get lost in there. I told Bob if he can't find me to come search in there because I may just be standing there mezmorized.

3. The fireplace and mantle. I have always wanted a fireplace with a mantle to decorate. Thanks to my awesomely gifted brother, I have these beautiful frames and pictures that he took.
4. The kitchen! It is big and dreamy and since I spend most of my time in there, I am very glad that I love it. 5. The laundry room. I love red. I still do. However, in the first house we lived I completely overdid it with reds and got sick of it for a few years. Now I have learned to just accent and the laundry room is a good place to do that. I am still looking for my cute curtain to go in here. The laundry room is downstairs off the kitchen, which at first I wasn't sure of because I thought it would make sense for it to be upstairs with all of the bedrooms. However, I realized when at the Devaults that when I am downstairs all day, I tend to forget about the laundry I am doing, so now I am glad to have it nearby.

6. Our bedroom. There is so much natural light coming in and I love how the color turned out. I still need to paint that dresser black to match our other furniture, but that chair by the window with my favorite pillow in the world makes me so happy. So do the daffodils.

7. Monogrammed towel hooks. Bob and I each have one so we choose the correct towel.

8. Our bathroom. It is so nice to have different sinks and a toilet off of the rest of the room. We have a huge bathtub and a separate shower and it is so nice. We also have a hole in the wall. Like that? It was there when we bought it but we are going to put a medicine cabinet there--this weekend I hope!

More than anything, we realize how much we have been given by others in the past few months while we worked on our home--a place to live, patience, help on our house, emotional support, and friendship. We really desire to use our home to offer to others and work on our hospitality. Thanks for all of you who have been a help to us in this process. We couldn't have done it without you!

2 plus1 makes 3!

We're having a baby! This picture is from last week so we are officially halfway there today, praise the Lord! We are due on our 7 year anniversary, June 26 and couldn't be more happy. This is baby's first picture at 7 weeks. It is that little dot in the black abyss. We found out we were pregnant in October.

This is baby's picture at 20 weeks. Can you believe how beautiful? We have decided to wait until baby's birth day to find out the gender. What an awesome surprise it will be!

These are the precious footprints as seen from below. We are completely in love already.

And on another good note, we are planning on moving into our house in 2 weeks! Woo-hoo! Putting some final touches on it and after 5 months of hard work (mostly by Bob), we will get to enjoy it!

Growing old together

My brother is an awesome photographer, so every time we are together I beg for free shoots from him. This is one of my favorites, of Bob and I on my parents' porch...growing old together.

Grey hair

So my body wants to keep reminding me that I am almost thirty. I have a lone grey hair that has been with me for months now. I decided not to pull it out because it keeps me humble and reminds me of my mortality, which I do need a lot of reminding of. It really is a good spiritual practice for me. Anyway, today was the last straw when I was trying on sunglasses at Target and I look in the mirror and the singular atrocity was standing straight up. "I don't need that much humility," thought I as I attempted to pluck it right there. However, rather than succombing to being pulled out like a weed, the hair decided to curl. So now I have a lone curly gray hair on the top of my head, reminding me of my humility, mortality, and that I will ultimately be defeated by age. Encouraging, right?

Merry Christmas

So this is what we've been up to lately:creating a home. Our dear friends Kristina and Sean have spent nearly every weekend with us in the past couple of months working on our house and providing us with company. Walt and Sandra, who we are living with, have done the same. We are overwhelmed by their generosity.

Here Sean is pictured tearing out the subfloor in the the entryway. There was a 10 by 10 foot wood floor when you first walked in and since we are replacing it, Bob thought it would be a quick tear-up job. However, the wood was glued down and proved to be a frustrating problem. They ended up tearing up and replacing the plywood since it was easier.

Below: Okay, so our wood flooring is beautiful. Bob has already installed a ton of it, but for some reason I don't have a good picture. Here is the first strip being laid. I love it and it is going to transform our house. It really is amazing all Bob can do. It is fun for me to watch him work. This is where having a perfectionist for a husband can pay off! This is our dining room.

Below is the pink room being transformed. Today I painted it a very light blue color. Light blue is a stretch for us (as you can see most else is some version of tan), but it is the guest room so we are trying something new and figure if we don't love it, that's fine since we won't really hang out in it. The chair will go in there eventually so we wanted to make sure it matched.
The lovely Sean and Kristina. And the lovely Bob. And the lovely gold chandelier. Right.
Our master bedroom! I love how it turned out. We picked a gray color and we both love it. We painted the bathroom the same.
I changed all the doorknobs from gold to rusted bronze or whatever it is called. That cost a pretty penny. Luckily I had gift cards, but it really has transformed the whole house. It's the details, as any girl knows.
We had our kitchen cabinets painted white and I added knobs since those had been stolen by the people who moved out. Good riddance and thanks, since they were probably gold anyway. It looks like a whole new kitchen. We will probably have to wait a few months to get granite counter tops because we have been spending so much money and can live without them.
Bob added beadboard to the breakfast nook and did such a good job. It transforms the room. Another beautiful gold chandelier.

So those are probably the biggest changes. I am finishing painting the rooms and Bob is working on the wood flooring, then we will add carpet upstairs and will hopefully be in by the end of January. I can't wait to add little details and color since my palate is like a blank slate.

With all this work, it has been hard for us to really prepare for the holidays. Bob wanted to work all weekend, but I told him we HAVE to take Christmas off! We are looking forward to spending some time at church, relaxing, and eating good food with the Devaults. Then off to CA to celebrate my dad's 70th!

Merry Christmas.

On the job

Here is the house after we cut down the forest outside. You can actually see it!

Below: Here is my first mistake (it is a learning process, right?) I was so excited to get in there and started on something that I came over to the house before Bob was off work and started tearing down wall paper in the master bedroom. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Then Bob came in and said, "Oh no, Jamie, that is not wall paper, that is dry wall you are tearing down." Whoops. At that point I didn't even know what dry wall was. Now I do and am a master since I tore it down on purpose in the garage.
Walt, who we live with, and his friend Andy, have been a tremendous help to us in this process. They helped us fix the water heater and cut down trees and fill up the dumpster.
Bob starting to tear out drywall in the garage. We had to wear masks because of the dust and because one of the reasons we were tearing down the dry wall is that a lot of it had mold.
Me tearing down drywall on purpose! The previous owners had turned one of the garages into a room, so we are making it back into a garage. Bob laughs at me because I held the hammer with both hands. Buy me a tool belt, someone, because I am becoming a master at using them!

Process

We are having fun ripping things out of our house, cleaning it up and making it ours. So far we have torn out all of the dry wall in the basement, including the room they made the second garage into. We have lifted the sagging porch, torn out carpet, torn down some wall paper, cleared out mold, cut down the jungle out front, and have filled 2 dumpsters full of trash.

It is definitely a work in progress and will be a while, but we are having fun and it is ours. Here is a link to all the pictures I have taken so far, if you are interested.

https://picasaweb.google.com/106338896800545130178/OurNewHouseWorkInProgress?authkey=Gv1sRgCLvFt6fkiJunOw

On a funny sidenote, the other day in class with my 5th and 6th graders we were talking about aging and a student said, "I heard everything starts doing downhill after 30." I told her that while that may be true, I am almost 30 so that gives her a picture of what 30 looks like. She quickly changed her mind out of embarrassment and said, "Well, I mean 45. Isn't 45 senior citizen age?" I said, "No, dearest one, that is 65." Blessings to you, my child, for making me laugh so hard and be able to tell this story over and over again.

Guess what we did

We bought a house! Here is the first of many BEFORE pictures. The Lord blessed us tremendously and gave us most of what we had been waiting for for so long to find in a house. It is a foreclosure, which we had never really planned to buy, but we fell in love with this place and with its potential. Bob and I both joked that of course with the nature of our jobs (him being a counselor and me being a teacher) that we would find a place that we desired to blossom.

The structure of this house is good and while it is very photogenic, it needs a ton of work. It has not been lived in for almost a year and needs nearly everything replaced. We are extremely excited about doing the work together and ourselves and making this into our home. We are truly gifted because as I mentioned before we are living with a couple from church and so we have all the flexibility and freedom to take as long as we want to in fixing it up. There will be many more pictures to come, it was just taking forever to upload. Thank you for all of you who continued to listen to our saga of emotions over this place and all that it involved (and who will continue to do so).

Family: With both of our birthdays and Christmas coming up, if you desire to get us a gift, all we really need/want are gift cards to Home Depot! (I never thought I would say that). Bob of course will use it for tools and manly things, and I will use it for things that a man might deem "unnecessary", like good-looking door handles and hinges, fans that match the house and don't have gold on them, etc.

We virtually welcome you to our new home!

Friends and cupcakes

Since moving, we have been just far enough from our friends that we don't get to see them very often. So Saturday, we planned ahead and got together for dinner. Kelly suggested a place in downtown Roswell, which is a quaint little place with fun restaurants, live music, and lots of people out for the evening. It reminds me a lot of downtown Orange, where we used to live. Bob and I live a lot closer to downtown Roswell now and will probably frequent it for date nights. The shop Kelly took us to is known for their bakery and fun drinks, but they had delicious sandwiches and salads to. I had been craving a cupcake for weeks, so I was so excited when she told us we were going here. The decorations inside were girly and fun (the boys didn't mind too much) and our waiter was absolutely hilarious.

He ended up bringing me a bib because I told him the mark of a good sandwich is that the sauce that is on it starts to drip down your arms (note: Ruby's club with ranch is the BEST for this!). Anyway, we had a lot of fun and here are some pics: Kelly and I were the only ones who ordered cupcakes out of the 8 of us that were there, which was so sad to me. For those of you that know me, I am a sharer (or a sharee) and I love tasting everything. So only two cupcakes means only two tastes. Kelly got the chocolate chip cookie dough one and I got the lemon one. They were delish, but not worth the $4 that they cost. Seriously, $4 for a cupcake?

Before:
After: