House pet, anyone?

This is just wrong. I picture in my mind a pest control commercial that shows an animation of bugs crawling into your house leaving their germy footprints wherever they go. So, that's extra dishes for me to wash now. I was tempted to empty the whole drawer into the dishwasher. Not to mention that I will definitely be even more on the lookout upon opening drawers and cabinets in the future. My potholders are in the drawer below this one. I'm really not in the habit of checking for spiders before I stick my hands in them, but maybe I should be. These spiders are all over the house. They actually blend in pretty well with wherever they may be, so I don't really see them that often. However, that's a two-sided coin because while I'm glad they aren't in my sight all the time, it creeps me out to think about what's lurking where. They don't move very fast, so I guess it could be worse. In all of our previous houses, we have just sprayed our own bug spray for any kind of pest other than termites. This time we might be in a little over our heads. We have opted to go for the full shebang service contract for at least this first year. Bug man will be here in two days! He can't come soon enough!

A Wonderful Day

I read a book and took a nap this afternoon while Ryan was napping. Wow, that felt SO good. My cleaning/organizing project today consisted of putting the puzzles together with Ryan. Don't you just love that happy little face? I could just kiss him all day long. I'm so grateful to be able to stay at home with him. I love being a mother.

Beginning projects

So, now you can see just how beautiful our house really is. :) It came with a few surprises, this being one of the first:

  

And this is one of my first projects. I had to recaulk this tub, so we could have a place to shower while I fix the grout in our master shower. I was glad I took the before picture because when I was done it didn't look all that much better to me, but beside the old picture it does.

And I can't tell you how proud of Nate I was with this one. The old appliances in the kitchen didn't work, so he replaced the dishwasher and added in the microwave over the stove. And he stayed mostly calm through the whole process!!

As you can see with our lovely wallpaper, we have much more to do!

And Happy St. Patrick's Day! Those crazy leprechauns forgot to come to our house this year. Maybe they knew it was already messy enough without the chaos they usually add. I did make green macaroni and cheese for supper, though. Very gross looking, but there weren't any leftovers. The kids loved it.

Here we are

Well, either blogger or my computer is having some issues, so we'll just have to forego pictures for the moment. I don't know if this one will post or not. We are in our house, and we are so grateful that we have made it through so much chaos. Alright, we don't have everything in order yet, but we are coming along and starting to get a few routines back.

We had new carpet installed upstairs yesterday, and it just feels SO MUCH BETTER!!! I can finally get a glimpse of the nice house that this will be. It's really going to work! We hadn't put any furniture up there because we were waiting for the carpet. The girls had just been sleeping on their mattresses on the floor, and they were so excited to get their beds back last night.

I can't wait to post some pictures of the handy work Nate has been doing. He has never claimed to be a handy-man, but maybe he will be one day after all. I think he is really enjoying it. Our home inspection report was rather lengthy -- we knew it would be -- but the inspector did include one problem that I think he could have left off: "There was an abnormal amount of spider activity in the crawlspace. This is for your information only." I really would have been okay without that information. I think Nate would have, too. He really doesn't want to go down there, and there is nothing encouraging I can say about it.

So, anyway, I'm back online now. My to-do list is pretty full, so chances are the blog will be neglected for a while, but our email and phone number haven't changed if you need to get in touch.

We're Alive

What? Ryan is taking a nap for longer than 30 minutes? Wow, I'm enjoying it, and I'll take advantage of it to post the fact that we haven't fallen off the face of the earth. We might be close to it, but we're still here. :) Actually, things are going well. Ryan is struggling with all of the changes, mainly with trying to take his naps and go to sleep at night. The girls had their first day in their new school yesterday, and it went really well. Hannah said her teacher is more strict than her last one, and Nikki said she misses her old teacher, but they both had fun with the other kids at recess. Since we stayed in the same county the curriculum is mostly the same, which is really nice. I think Nikki's old class was actually a little farther along than this one, and Hannah had the same homework pages sent home yesterday that came home last Friday from our last school. Whew, at least we don't have to worry about them being behind academically. We still haven't closed on our house, but each day makes it one day closer. They are still making repairs to it, and hopefully that will be done soon. I'm not going to complain about the delay because it just means that we don't have to do those repairs ourselves!