Annelyse the Birthday Girl! Age 2!

Annelyse enjoying her cake & ice cream!

That is our little birthday girl, having a great time on her birthday! She turned 2 on Nov 12th, the same night we had to get the house ready for new carpet in 5 bedrooms that was arriving the next morning. Inbetween removing furniture from all 5 rooms to the living room upstairs & into the family room downstairs, removing the carpet, padding & then cleaning up the remaining ICK that was hovering below! Let's just say photos would be a great advertisement for either getting people to put in hard floors or to take off their shoes in their homes & consider having no indoor pets! YIKES!!!

Thankfully stopping to eat dinner with her family, havinge cake & ice cream, and opening a present was an awesome birthday for this little 2 year old! That and running around the house all day with her gift bag of clothes from her Nana & Papa, it went everywhere we went, all day long! LOL

The Cake, yes I made it, cherry chip with cherry icing, YUM!

Licking the cake was a favorite activity!

More punch please!

Playing with my brother, or tryng to escape?

Laughing with my biggest brother!

Opening my present, "Puppy" Pluto, he barks, walks, & wags his tail!

Playing with my new puppy, I love him!

The sweet little birthday girl, having fun while big siste Katie gets in on the action!

Our little sweetheart, getting tired?

Helpng clean up the floor in her room, I'm ready for new carpet!

Do we get to go to bed now? Great I'll sleep in sister Ashlyn's bed tonight!

More Construction

Come On In!

Our little greeter every time the doorbell rings; "I get it, I get it!"

That is Annelyse, 2 years old today; although her Daddy is trying to convince her to stay 1 and he'll still buy her presents! LOL She says: "Otay", anything is fine with her if it's for her dad. been busy again at our house, as usual. After Halloween was all said & done on Saturday morning, November 1st Jordan started framing our pantry (and the wall that my desk would eventually be built along, YEAH!!!!). He had a little helper who liked using the hammer, not sure how much good she actually did but she did have her Daddy smiling! He'd hammer something & then she would mimic him.

Jordan framing in the pantry, remember the pictures of a little girl sitting in front of a large pile of boxes? Our makeshift pantry of numbered & inventoried boxes is there behind him where shelves will go!

Here is the little helper at work during the framing & after the wallboard had gone up.

First the wall going up, then the start of pantry shelves, YIPPPEEEEEE!!!!!

The finished project!

Actually we have more shelves planned, this is how far we have it so that the desk project could begin. We started unloading the boxes onto these 2' deep shelves & found that there was good news & bad news. We will have to put up the back shelves & 1' deep shelves on the other side of the room sooner than we expected, on the other hand the good news is we have more food than we thought with a family of 9 that is GREAT news! The other great news is that about 53 boxes have been unpacked thanks to this project, YEAH!!!!!!!!

Next it was time to start on my desk, I am so thrilled because an organized desk means my brain functions better. I'm one of those people who really needs to have access to my computer, filing cabinets, sorters, etc. I also need to do something like scrapbook periodically to create something & de-stress. Of course at this time of year I want to get to my holiday planner and set up my menus and things so a desk is crucial to my functioning well. This time my office has been planned from the start & I am going to have a great layout where all my things are in one place instead of across the room here & there, Jordan has been planning this for a while & I am excited! I didn't get many construction pictures this time, I was busy painting desktop & shelving, but here are some photos.

The right side of my L-shaped desk, there will be shelves on this wall hopefully by the end of the week so I can finish unpacking in he family room & it can stop being box central, YEAH!!!!

The left side of my desk, we decided we will add one more 1/2 shelf here & move all the disks & things I use more often within reach when I am sitting at my desk. As usual our little one is right there part of the action, & wanting to climb the desk.

A shot with the center of the desk, my computer tower is up where small fingers hopefully will not be turning my power off while I am in the middle of a task! (Yes she has done that!)

I have now unpacked all of my files, all my holiday planners yes I have one for all the fall holidays with 19 weeks in it & then the details for Halloween, Thanksgiving, & Christmas each have their own separate binders. There is one for all of my holiday recipes, then one for each; Valentines, St. Patrick's (Yes Debbie, really! LOL), Easter, & the 4th & 24th of July (those 2 are together!). Those are most of the binders on the top shelf, along with my home control journal, my blank organizational forms, & a few organizational reference books. I also have my mailing center on the top shelf, which makes finding an envelope, stamp, birthday card, etc. much easier to do on a moments notice. The family home evening supplies have moved to my shelving also hopefully that will making planning our Monday nights a little easier, at least I will see the box each day & be reminded! As I get my other shelves up some of this may move around a little, we'll see how it goes. Right now I'm just glad to have 12 more boxes unpacked & things that I need accessible! THANK YOU to my wonderful & talented husband, Jordan!

The flooring continues...

Well part of our living room is put back together, flooring is in up to the end of our 1/2 wall that borders the stairway. The couch is back where it goes, as is one of the bookshelves. I even got the books & accessory items back on the bookshelf, YEAH!!! Below you'll see a little bit of our progress, we even got a few more pictures & things hung this week so the walls aren't sooo bare!

This is our couch on the new flooring, I love the way this floor is turning out!

Here is our bookshelf, complete with books! It sits next to our fireplace (the bricks).


Our couch & beautiful flooring!

One of the wall hangings Hubby put up this week


Our little helper playing with the flooring spacers.

Testing out the new floors

Making sure these floors get broken in well!

We aren't sure what she is saying/asking, everytime she keeps saying exactly the same thing & using this hand gesture! LOL

Our little cougar in her First BYU T-shirt

Hubby getting a well-deserbed break after floor installation & cleanup talking with his parents with our twins waiting to talk to Grandma & Grandpa while they enjoy the living room put back together!

Treg willing to get in on the photo act, especially so grandparents can see him, he has grown a ton this year! LOL

Well we now have the first 12 feet installed, next we start on the hallway tomorrow evening which requires some creative cutting on hubby's part, after that maybe the kitchen eating area. Hopefully we will get the upstairs flooring complete this week, get the pantry framed in, & get out for a bit of Christmas shopping early Saturday, at least that is the plan as of right now. Anyone else working on your holiday shopping & planning? I am getting out my Thanksgiving planner since we are hosting all of dh's family that can come to our home this year, I'm excited, this is one of my favorite holidays, I love all the cooking & baking that goes with this time of year!

Little girl ON our pantry boxes which are sitting on the pantry wall where it will all be framed in shortly!

I think my bed is calling me, even if my little one doesn't think she needs to sleep! Of course she takes naps so she isn't in such a hurry to sleep at the end of the day. More photos tomorrow!

Our flooring project has begun! YEAH!!!!!

This is a photo of our new house from the front at night, this is without any lights on outside, thought I'd see how good of a picture we got without a flash, not bad!

This is an interior photo of the front door, yes that is our very 1970's looking light fixture! LOL There are a lot of funny looking light fixtures around our house, it is very much a project house which we look forward to updating & making it look the way we want it.

Last night we started our flooring project, this will go from the living room (pictures below) down our upstairs hallway, into the eating area (currently carpeted, with 7 children eating there! YIKES!), and finally into the kitchen. We may be doing the same flooring in the downstairs hallway & possibly using it on the stairs as well, not sure about that one yet though, maybe we'll do tile... decisions, decisions! This is a do it ourselves project, luckily hubby has done a laminate floor before and I worked with my parents on their wood floor about 5 years ago, I'm very good at varying the wood grain & color! :-D

Hubby cleaning up the floor, if I'd taken a picture of the dirt under the carpet pad you would never want your family to wear shoes in the house ever again! That or you'd opt for all hard floors throughout your home! ICK!



Our 17 year old son hard at work removing the carpet tack strips so nobody steps on them, I told him I was taking pictures so we could document him helping out!

Our little girl checking out the beginning of our Pergo floor project this should be fun!
"What are you guys doing now?"

"Whatever it is I'm having fun!"

(This would be that ongoing question of hers everytime she sees the camera: "C'I see, C'I see?")

Hubby hard at work starting the floor installation, the first 4 rows or so are a challenge, after that it's pretty smooth sailing.

It's starting to look good!

Here is where we got to by the end of the evening, the end of the first layer of soundproofing, exactly 48" out from the livingroom wall we started on, it goes the entire width of the room! YEAH!!!!!!

Little girl supervising her daddy, he had to make a cut in the wood for the heating vent (yes that heat that was just installed over the past week! YEAH!!!!

Checking out how well she can slide into the splits on the new flooring, pretty well apparently!

Tonight we will be working on finishing the livingroom, including adding new baseboard trim so we can put the furniture back, starting the hallway, and see how long that takes us, maybe by the end of the week we can have the carpeted kitchen area finished & the kitchen, here's hoping!