At long last...

I finally gave in and even though my house is not yet remotely put together and we have a lot to do, I used Justin's camera to take a few pictures tonight. His camera died pretty soon- so yeah, there would have been more and better ones but take what you can get:)Here is our living room (or part of it, the battery died after this pic). We still need to put the molding back on the walls and clean more but this gives you an idea of how our walls and floors look now. I am really impressed with the job that Justin and our friends did on this floor and for how cheap we were able to do it!
Here is the shower that Justin and another friend of ours tiled. Before it had been a nasty old stained and broken tub with ghetto glass doors but he ripped that out and replaced it with a perfectly good used $20 tub and then tiled the rest. This is currently my favorite part of the entire house.
He needs to re-plaster above the shower but I wanted to show it off more. So many projects to do... We still need a bathroom door, doorknobs, a kitchen floor and to gut the rest of the bathroom. And those are just the big things but it is fun and Justin has learned so much in this process.

And here is cute Macy the night before we officially moved in to the house. We had her watching a movie on the computer while we cleaned and then I went back to Randy and Debi's (where we had been staying) with Kylie and Justin stuck around to keep working but pretty soon he discovered a zonked out little Macy Jo.

Other than this we just keep working away at our house, cleaning, doing little projects and unpacking. I am looking forward to being unpacked so we can focus on finishing everything else up. We took a little break from everything and went camping in Hope (70 miles south) Wednesday night and then Justin fished much of Thursday while the girls and I played outside and watched. It was great to see him get his first Alaska salmon and I know he had been looking forward to that since we moved up here. I have pictures on my other camera that I will get up as soon as I can.

I have been working away on my little coupon blog with my friend and Monday we are going to be on the local news to talk about our site. I am excited and anxious to get ourselves out there more and I think it will be fun for the girls because our five children (between Kara and I) get to all be on too. I will post a link to the video if we can get it, wish us luck!

Chatterbox

Kylie has been learning to talk more and more lately and her latest new phrase reminded me that I ought to be writing these down more so here are some of the cutest things that come out of her mouth:
- "I don't know!"
- "What Happened?"
- "I see you!"
- "Where are you?"
- "Why?"
- "Where Macy go?"
- "Want it" while shaking her head means "I don't want it"
- "Done!"
- "Lay Down!"
- "Hair" and "Bow" for when she wants me to put a bow in her hair to keep it out of her face.
I wish you could hear the cute sing-song way that she says all of these things. Maybe I will have to try to record them later.
Currently we are residing at my cousin's house in Eagle River (just outside of Anchorage) and really appreciating their generosity in letting us stay here. The girls have been loving the trampoline and I am learning how to take care girl of the girls without the help of PBS in the mornings (it is very useful for giving me and the girls time to wake up and allowing me the chance to shower) Justin has been back in the routine of working on the house, work and back to the house to work some more. I am glad he is working so hard but the girls and I definitely miss him. Hopefully the house will be suitable to live in this weekend.
Here's to a sunny 65 degree day!

I should be packing...

but there are some things I want to document before we no longer have a computer to use. First, we spent the day painting the walls and ripping up carpet at our new house. It already looks better but there is a lot of work left to do before we can move in. We had been hoping to find someone to refinish the hardwood that was under the carpet but apparently no body wants to do it for the amount we want to pay...imagine that. It looks like Justin will get to dive in and learn how to do it on his own- I just hope he doesn't sand a hole through the floor :). Here are some of the before pictures, I will have to take some "post day one work" pictures tomorrow.


These pictures were taken a few weeks ago and not really for the purpose of a "before and after" but maybe they will give you a hint of what we are dealing with. If not, here are some tidbits we learned form the neighbors today:
- This family was nice but a Korean family that spoke no English so no one really knows much about them.
- In this house they had several dogs, a muskrat and chickens (yes, you read correctly) living in the crawl space. This does explain the odd smell in there and the chicken wire over the entrance to the crawl space from the house. I am glad I am not the one who had to clean up down there! Wow, definitely no regrets in pulling the flooring up. I am soooo not an animal person.
- Apparently this family only owed 50,000 on it when they were foreclosed on. Instead of selling the house for $100,000, they asked over $200,000 which no one in their right mind would pay with it in this condition. Therefore, they were foreclosed on and apparently left in the middle of the night, taking their boiler with them (thanks HUD for replacing that) and also all of the doorknobs, I might add.
- At one point this family had a stove fire that tragically scarred what would be a gorgeous stainless steel gas range. We are left with the remnants of that fire.
- There are planters in the back because the lady was a gardener and there is already rhubarb sprouting up around the yard.

So this is now what we know about our new little house. Aren't you jealous that this loveliness is not all yours???

I don't really want to write about what we did yesterday, I don't have the energy. That will have to come later but here is a shot of the girls enjoying their S'mores.

And because I have had s'mores on the brain lately I finally decided to try a peanut butter s'more tonight. I toasted a marshmallow over my electric stove, spread peanut butter on a graham cracker, put chocolate and that and voila! An amazing- too good for words- Peanut Butter S'more.

A friend suggested I try it with a peanut butter cup and that will definitely be tested out soon!