Gratitude

Sorry to have left things hanging so much lately. It has been an exceptionally busy time. I look forward to getting pictures up once we are more settled and clean. We are living in our house now! It has been such a long process to get to this point. Fritz was only 5 days old when we looked at this house and decided to take it on and he is now crawling and we just moved in.

This process has filled me with gratitude for the people we have in our lives. A few weekends ago we had a pile of friends show up to help us move. People have been bringing us meals, offering to take our kids, and even just sending love and support through emails and messages. My parents also took our older kids for a weekend so we only had our smallest one with us. It has been amazing and has helped so much! Thank you to all of those who have helped. We look forward so much to having you all over soon for a BBQ and a beer :)

Our bathroom is in and it is lovely! I can't wait to share pics of it. Of course, there are also boxes sitting in there right now because Joe and I need to put in shelves so we can put away our towels and such. I swear, the to-do list is non ending. Here are the things I can think of off the top of my head:

1. pick a paint color (the outside gets painted next week)
2. finish changing out the electrical outlets and light switches
3. finish hanging all the smoke detectors (no worries... we have a few!)
4. get a carbon monoxide detector
5. window treatments for the livingroom and kitchen
6. paint the stairs
7. touch up the paint in pretty much every room
8. rip down the carport
9. replace both the front and side deck
10. bring in dirt for the back door area (where we had pillars put in for foundation)
11. continue to try to take this place back from the weeds that have claimed it
12. put up shelves in the basement so it won't look like an episode of Horders down there
13. hang the curtain rods in the bedrooms
14. put up our pictures
15. move white bookshelf from garage to the hallway upstairs
16. build some sort of gate across the window in our bedroom that our bed rests against. I am paranoid that Fritzy is going to push against it and it, being 120 years old, won't hold and will take him for a ride down to the ground.
17. take the glass off the fireplace and scrub it well
18. trim out the front door
19. take out the old door in my office and fill it in
20. get new threshold pieces for the side door in hopes we won't have a solid 1-2 inch gap under it anymore
21. get on the waitlist for weatherization
22. build a front walkway
23. replace our mailbox
24. hang the towel bars in the bathroom
25. paint the bathroom door

There is more. Every time I look around I am able to see a few more things we need to do to this place. I am having to remind myself to be patient. We will get there eventually. It just is going to be a slow process of many, many, many weekend projects :)