It's Done

I'll try to stop talking about grass now and come up with more exhilarating conversation.
The space in the back is left for a fence and dwarf azaleas.

Dirt Is Dirty

Did I say the grass would be installed on Saturday? I meant Tuesday. I'll try to not spend this whole post complaining about our sod guy. He doesn't communicate very well though.

The bushes finally came out yesterday. It was very fun to watch them get removed. Mr. Joe (don't know sod man's last name) hired these two high school football players on spring break to come and manhandle the bushes. They did a fine job. They needed a machine for the huge hibiscus and especially the palmetto. Mr. Joe's dad was driving the Bobcat. Those bushes came out of the ground like they were just simple weeds. It was totally fun to watch.

This is the same angle I took the other picture at. It's lovely, ja?

We got to see most of the life cycle of ladybugs. In this picture you can see a larva, two pupas, one empty pupa and one adult ladybug. Homeschool is everywhere. The girls caught several ladybugs in their various stages and kept them in a bug jar.

We finished the front flower beds yesterday also. Many of these plants are still very small. We have a tibouchina there in front of the window, a yesterday, today and tomorrow over by the American flag and a rose bush. Many of the day lilies we planted still don't have blooms on them but the calla lilies are doing well. That's eucalyptus mulch. Apparently termites don't like the stuff.

I can't wait for the grass to go in; the amount of dirt in the house because of all 9 of us tracking it in is crazy.

My life must be dull. The most exciting thing I can think of to talk about is grass. Sigh. Well, at least there was no poo yesterday.

The Final Touches

I think that after all this time we're finally feeling moved in. All that was really left to do was to power wash the house (we'll paint the exterior next year) and sod the yard with zoysia grass. None of this icky St. Augustine (read: weed) stuff that they pass off as grass. Yesterday our house went from looking like this

to this. Isn't it nice?

Yes, those are snowflakes on our windows. They're cute...the kids made some...and GG. It's as close to snow as it gets here.

And today Mr. Joe is coming to take up the old, dead grass weeds. He is also going to remove these awful, hideous bushes. They are horribly infested with aphids. We are actually calling a holiday from school today so that we can watch him take out these bushes.

On to even more exciting news. I got a call from my good friend Marie yesterday. First, she rubbed it in that she was eating Korean for lunch. Not nice. I had a lousy salami sandwich.

Then she made up for it by informing me that she had Atlas Shrugged audio. She's already put it in the mail so I can listen to it while I sew this cute dress (the red one) for Sarah. I'm so excited. Especially after Granny put this post up today about the movie. I'm quite anxious to know the whole story.

The Final Push

Just think everyone out there: one more week or less and you'll finally be able to stop hearing these two Jos talk about being pregnant. You'd think that's all we ever did.

Anyway, my visit with the doc today revealed 2cm dilated and has produced many, many strong contractions. Hopefully soon Anna will be here. They will schedule a C/S for Thursday next if I don't go into labor naturally before then. The contractions I've been having have moved lower on my uterus and are quite painful. They come about every 5 to 10 minutes. That's pretty good. We'll see if they keep it up. Usually my water breaks and then labor stalls. I don't mean it gets slower, I mean it comes to a dead halt. They give me a wee bit of Pitocin and in 45 minutes baby is here. It's amazing.

Okay, wait...contraction.

Whew, that was a REALLY good one. I hope it was productive.

Anyway, I think I am prepared to post some pictures now. We had our first day back to school today and I am so excited about our shelves and how totally useful our neat little school room is. It's a complete answer to prayer. I'll just never get over how blessed I am. You'd think I'd be a more dutiful daughter.

Now, surely you all remember this post that showed off all the glorious vomit colors of this house we bought. We decided that before we moved all of my parents' stuff in we should have the house painted. We managed to find a guy in need of work enough to take the job for $2250. This was for all the rooms in the house except the laundry room and bathrooms and no closets or doors, but all the trim. We were so happy with his work and the fact that he came later after the job was done to put a third coat on the yellow and pink and do a lot of touch up work that we paid him an extra $500. The other two bids we had on the job were for $4900 and $8000.

Here's some pictures of the colors we picked.

This is the sewing room. It's pretty far down on the priority list as far as getting it in working order so it's not put back together yet. But both Mom and I really dig the happy yellow.

The girls' pink room. Not too bad a pink, I think.

This will be Anna's room and also the guest room.

You can see the two colors of tan we picked out for everywhere else in the house. All the main living areas anyway. The kitchen and two master bedrooms are the blue you see below. Hmm, I have a pretty darned high-speed camera; maybe I should take some better shots of this color.

And then there's the blue. Here's Lily showing it off. This is the upstairs master (mine). Del was remodeling and painting the closet at the time so there was a lot of chaos in the room. Hmm, once again...high-speed camera...need better pictures.

Then we finished putting the school room together basically. There's still a few things that need to be addressed but for the most part, it's done and I really like it!!!

So that's my news. Please pray for Anna to be born sometime before next Thursday. I'd appreciate it.

Sometimes I Amaze Myself

Apparently all I needed to stop being such a lazy bum was a huge house with a gazillion projects. I am exhausted but unlike in the apartment, my fatigue doesn't stop me from doing the projects. In the apartment I'd just say, "Well, I'm pregnant" and lay down on the couch and rest or sleep if I could. I don't do that here. I am a little afraid that I'm going to throw myself into early labor by all this crazy work I'm doing. And we're very far behind in school. I know, I know, it's our school and we can do it whenever and wherever we like but seriously, I didn't make lesson plans so that I could ignore them. It's hard for me to not feel pressure to get this joint cleaned up.

All that to tell you that yesterday I went outside and just sort of tugged a bit on one of the mystery plants that I want to get rid of and it literally just eased right out of the ground. They all came out that easily and then, I lost my mind. I destroyed, I opened a can of...um...the friendly version of kicking butt. We were outside for more than four hours trimming and ripping and raking and shoveling and killing bugs and scaring lizards and going crazy on the chaos.

That Mexican Petunia is a bugger. NEVER get it for your garden; it takes over and then you have to go postal on it to get it out. And even then there's no guarantee that it's not going to grow back.

Reminder "before" pictures.

And after we went to town it all.

It looks a lot better already even though it's hard to tell from these pictures. The only bad part is that my back is killing me. Oh well...today, there's more tile to clean.

House Update Again

Hi. It's me again. I'm a little paranoid that I have misspelled its/it's so forgive me if I have.


Our first official morning in the house and the girls had donuts for breakfast. Yummy. This was not yesterday but last Saturday, before everything was moved in.
That same day Sarah lost her first tooth. Okay, I pulled it out. But in my defense both of her bottom adult teeth are already growing in and the tooth had to go. I'm currently trying daily to pull the other baby tooth to make room for the adult tooth that's already growing in.
And now on to progress. Del is working like a dog. Or something. Our bedroom is nearly finished. It just needs to be organized basically. But all the furniture is in, drapes are up. I think it looks nice. We're thinking about putting a rug in. I really like the floors. Oh darn, I forgot about the missing bed skirt...I wonder where it is.

Toys. Sigh. They take over your life. I feel about children's toys the way I feel about TV. I mean, how many boxes and plastic dishes and stuff like that do your kids play with and not the gobs of toys. These guys play with some dolls, Legos and maybe the Little People but other than that they make the rest of it up. I want to down size our toy collection. This is supposed to be half a school room and it's totally taken over by toys.

Ahhhhhh, what a lovely sight. Except for the ugly wall color, which I will have to live with until we actually have time to paint. But isn't it a fabulous sewing room already? I want to put a long table in it for scrapbooking. And eventually I might have to share the room with a guest. Sheesh, friends...always taking up your space. LOL. I'm just kidding, you can come take up my sewing room any time you want to.

And here's Del's office. Obviously not very made up yet. We don't have a desk. There's never been room for a desk in any place we've lived in so we don't own a desk. It will be sssssoooooooooo nice to get all the Star Wars paraphernalia out of my bedroom and into his office. Not that I don't have an ever-loving fondness for all...okay, a lot of things Star Wars but it's just not so relaxing and romantic in my bedroom. Know what I mean?

So there you go. It's been quite a productive day. I should go put away all my plastics.

Finally, an Update

Hi. I'm alive. Isn't that great! Who knew that moving into a house would be so much work. It's different moving into a house instead of an apartment where all you do is move in and live. In a house you have to fix it up...or whatever; it's different. I have to sit on the floor to type this up so I'm just going to post some pictures and then get my poor tailbone on a couch for a little while.

Here are three of our new appliances. Man what a horrible picture! Sorry, I'll try to get a better one. I'm desperately trying to get the kitchen in order because I feel that once I can have order there, the chaos in the rest of the house won't bother me as much.

Here is what I dig about having a house. Look at them. Doesn't it look like they're having a lot of fun. Okay, maybe that looks boring but man you should hear them giggling and having a blast out in the sunshine. The "grass" is mostly weeds and there is one particular weed called a dollar weed that they really like making "salad" out of. They've been using an old, dead palm frond for an oar and sailing about to who knows where in that turtle sandbox. You know, the one that's been in storage for 4 years. I am just so grateful to have this back yard so the kids can play out there.

Here are three of the girls at the empty apartment. We took pictures of them in all the rooms and Ella almost cried because we lived here longer than any other place we've lived as a family. Del got sort of sentimental over it because the only place he ever lived longer was Boy's Hope and that was by less than one month. Not me. I said good riddance. LOL. We did pray over the apartment though and thanked God for providing that humble little home for us.

I've spent the better part of two days lining cabinets with that cool green contact paper. What a pain!!! I'm finally done with the kitchen. I might do the bathrooms next.

The good news is that my washer that has been in storage since...June of 2002 works. The bad news is that the dryer doesn't. So we have a clothes line in the kitchen. It's very funny. We just got finished putting it up before I posted this so the kids haven't seen in because they're in bed. I can't wait to see how they'll react to their clothes hanging up in the kitchen. It's going to be funny.

Anyway, we're having fun and surviving. I'll try to get better pictures.

Play Ball!

We got the boys moved into their new room this past weekend! They really like it and tell us every day how much they love their new room! Jerry really did an excellent job. He designed it and painted it all himself - freehand! I am impressed and very glad I have a husband who can do these things. If it was up to me, the walls would just be plain one color... I took pictures before furniture and after since the furniture does cover up a bit of the baseballs. Didn't he do a great job?

What little boy wouldn't love this room? I am really happy with the way it turned out!