And that's that

The house work is finally all done! And I'm pretty sure I have all the pictures need to share the before's {though not guaranteed to be good ones} and after's. So sit back, get comfy and start scrolling...

{the kitchen when we moved in}

and now

Remember how I couldn't find a good before picture of the dining room,

well I just recently came across one...thought I'd share

and a newer after

The fisherman's bathroom

to fully appreciate it, let's take a look at a few of those details

yep that's the toilet paper roll

I didn't get pictures of the fish head knobs though, shucks!

not really my style,

so we made a few changes

and here's the after

Not sure if I've posted Caleb's room on here yet, but here it is

{no before and after for this one}

The Downstairs before

note: this was really taken after a ton of work had already been done

{view of soon to be living room}

{and soon to be bedroom, in the corner}

and after

some other rooms that were already posted about were:

downstairs bathroom

guest room/office

master bedroom

and I actually don't like the master bedroom picture that I put on that post,

so here's a different one

That's it for the home improvements...

if you'd like to see some behind the scene shots stick around, if not then this is tah-tah! for now

yea, its as fun as it looks ;)

8 inch thick concrete is not fun to cut through

Just ask these guys:

^Jacob

^Sean

workin away

{see that beautiful window in the back,

that's where that concrete block came from}

I did some work too :)

{don't laugh too hard...

I was pregnant, tired, working and didn't really care what I looked like}

Viola!

I present to you, pictures of the finished basement Bathroom!!! Finally...I know, I know. We had more problems with the ding-dang toilet, which delayed things even more. I was able to get pictures tonight and I'm posting them without further delay! But...in order to truly appreciate the finished product you must see what we had to work with, the before:

{this was standing on the stairs looking in the direction of where the bathroom would go, a few notes: say buh-bye to the window, and the big black tube from ceiling to floor will have a little wall built around it}

and now the big reveal..

why, hello beautiful!

take a look to the right

the shower

take a look to the left...

see the little privacy wall {that black tube we had to build around}

from above

and here's toilet #2...

umm, pun not intended :)

And so there you have it, our downstairs bathroom!!

Guest room is done!

After the previous post, I was determined to finish some of those last touch ups things in order to complete some rooms. So I plowed through it today and actually got quite a bit of work done. This post will be much shorter and a little more on the positive side :) AND I have pictures to share! This room was our office and is now a guest-room w/ a work area. There isn't really a before picture needed for this one {just imagine a hutch on top of the desk, about 3-4 more pieces of furniture...well minus the bed, a bunch of boxes and piles of paper everywhere...clutter, clutter, clutter}. And now the after!

Home Improvement around every corner

Okay, so I'm finally taking some time to update. I know I've said several times that pictures were to come and sad to say they still won't be here. Every room is waiting for something to be done before worthy of a picture. In this post I said hopefully we'd have the bathroom finished by the weekend....and we did! Shortly after that, Jacob finished the flooring and baseboards in the rest of the downstairs and the downstairs was finished!!! What, you noticed that...was finished.Yea...about that. I should have taken pictures immediately when it was done so I could post them (but I still hadn't hung the pictures you see, would have made a total difference...well, maybe). Anyways, not too long after the bathroom was 'finished' the toilet started leaking! Jacob found out what he thought it was, bought the replacement and it was the wasn't going to work with our toilet. So when Jacob went to buy a different piece the guy there at the store said make sure and check that your toilet doesn't have a hairline fracture, because that could cause the leaking too. Well, it does. Ugh!!! So now we may have to buy a new toilet and install that one (hopefully with no problems, and hopefully our floor isn't ruined from this water issue). So I should have taken the stinkin pictures even if I didn't have the room totally decorated, but that's just not my style. Moving on...to the other things we've been working on. Jacob's main focus lately has been on curb appeal. The usual mowing, trimming, weed eating...the not so usual :) deck washing, mulching, re-rocking our driveway (bought 22,000 lbs of rock...yea, that's a lot of rock!), cutting down the forest growing up our back fence...seriously the way things grow here is insane (Jacob had just cut it down last summer, and it was already taller than me by far). He's also been doing some other jobs that aren't really visual, but things that need to be done (fixing squeaky floors, rerunning wires, yada yada). We've also repainted the kitchen cabinets and replaced hinges. Most recent was the stairs, they needed to be sanded and painted, and Jacob installed a hand rail. While Jacob's been at work Mom and I have been making frequent runs to our storage unit we got a couple weeks ago. Trying to get rid of a lot of the stuff in the back unfinished part of the downstairs. I also just finished turning our office (which seemed to be the cram room...you know the room you stuff things into when people are coming over} into a guest room with a little work area. I think its pretty cute and I'd love to share pictures, but it still needs a few things done {you'd think I'd learn my lesson, because maybe tomorrow there will be a hole in the roof and we'll get a bunch of rain....just kidding!}. Today I went along and scrubbed doors {those spots everyone seems to touch and they get all grimy...what? that doesn't happen in your house? oh...}, baseboards and the kitchen appliances {got some good ideas from this blog, and tried the toothpicks...worked great!}. The list of to-do's seem to be getting smaller and I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel {not the bad one, a good one...like all this work has an end in sight}.

Sorry this isn't anything real exciting and I feel like its all I talk about or think about is house work, but it really is our life right now...just the way things are for the time being.

To end on a more fun note, quick little blurp about Caleb. He's getting more and more daring, mischievous, mobile, strong, understanding, and character. Pretty much he's turning into a toddler, and I'm not quite sure I'm ready for that. I've had some near break downs of 'what happened to my baby boy', I can hardly remember him being a tiny baby. Away from the sad thoughts...and positive! I'm shocked at all the things he's beginning to understand. Like talking about daddy during the day, he'll run to the front door and wait for a minute to see if he's there. And all these words he now knows {knows not says}, if I talk about the ball, fish, etc. he'll go point at or get them. Things I didn't even know he knew. Everyone says its like this from now on, constant growth and learning more and more everyday. Another one of his big things has been growling, some of you may have heard him do this before...but this is a different growl. This is a monster/dragon growl, like it hurts my throat if I try and copy him. And he does it all. the. time. Funny kid.

Here's our growling fun lovin boy:

We'rrrre Baaaack!!

After a day of packing, rushing, good-byes, glares, trying to entertain a one year old within a 2 foot area, changing multiple diapers within that same area (one of which I didn't change in time and he ended up peeing out of and then I had the wet pants...), trying (unsuccessfully) to get a very tired babe to sleep...you guessed it in the same 2 foot area :), landing at the airport at 1:00 am with still a 2 1/2 hour drive home, we were quite glad to finally be home and go to bed at 4 am Thursday morning. We had a great time visiting with our friends and family on our trip to Washington. It went by fast, but was a great break from all house work. We were gone for 10 days, so to tell all that happened on our trip would take several posts, so I'll just touch on the highlights.

We stayed at Jacob's parent's house and all of Jacob's brothers were able to come visit too (he's one of six, 5 boys and 1 girl...Jacob is the oldest). That was a lot of fun, watching the brothers interact. Now that they're older and have their own identity and aren't ready to kill one another, they seem to really get along and can hang out and do things together. It was also fun to watch them with Caleb. I never would have pictured these guys being so excited about a baby, it just makes me smile seeing them as uncles. Which leads to another thing to talk about...Caleb had an extreme culture shock :) He's been use to our house hold of three people, quiet environment, and isn't really ever around a multitude of people. There were about 11 people staying at Jacob's parents, and there were always more people over during the evening. So...not a real quiet environment and definitely a multitude of people! He was extremely clingy and wouldn't hardly let anyone touch him for the first few days :( it was a bit frustrating. He got better as the week went on, although I don't think he ever really reached his real self. We kept telling everyone, at home he's so funny and smiley. I hope they all got to enjoy some time with him anyways.

While we were there, Caleb turned One! and all I kept thinking was 'we took you home from the hospital just a year ago'...seems to hard to believe that the time has flown by so quickly. What a fun year its been. A baby changed my life in more ways than I could possibly have imagined :) Since we were visiting, we got to celebrate his birthday with all our family! He had a book theme party {he loves his books!}, here's a few pics of the fun event:

Caleb's personal cake to devour

Caleb enjoying his cake :)

Yes, he stuck his face in it...

Present time!

Notice his shirt ;)

There's the babes: Caleb, Olivia and Jaxon

I certainly enjoyed my time there too! I've been in some desperate need of girl time, and I think I got my battery charged enough to last me a little while. I got to catch up and get to know my sister in-law {Adriane} a little bit better, and am so excited for our friendship to grow! My brother in-law's girlfriend {Jenna} was also able to come up and visit and hang out. Thanks to Jacob, the girls were able to go in town a few times to get Starbucks, pedicures, do a little shopping, sunbathe...it was glorious!

{Adriane, Me, Jenna}

Jacob's parents house is a 'hot spot' for socializing (they live 2 seconds away from the church, so after night church/practices/whatever, people go to their house to hang out), so we had several nights of game playing {I love games!!!}, laughing, movies and just overall fun times! Really missing some of those people... Caleb managed to fit in some socializing with his peeps too :) He got to see his cousin Jaxon (who is 2 months younger), Olivia (is 3 months older) a friend from church who is such a cutie, and a few other babes from church. It was so fun watching Olivia and Caleb together, she just wanted to hug him and talk to him...and he just couldn't get away fast enough, so she just ended up chasing him around and around. Hopefully next time they're together he'll be more into playing with other kids and won't be rude to the sweet girl ;)

The trip definitely gave us a big umph to get going on the downstairs. On our second day home mom and I painted the downstairs and the stairway (which was quite a sight...I had a brush taped to a broom stick and was balancing on the stairs, haha). Jacob's almost got the flooring done and has the next two days off to hopefully (by his timeline) finish the bathroom...we shall see. Here are some pictures of the downstairs construction:

view of the bathroom from the outside, it's a pocket door

the shower

the ground where the big hole was last update

the toilet will go where the silver circle is on the ground, it kind of has a privacy wall between it and the door to the bathroom {which is to the left of the picture}

Hopefully there will be more pictures to come {soon!} of the finished bathroom!