Jamaica!

It has been over a month since the last post. The house continues to get better everyday. We fall more in love with it as we continue to get settled in. Our newest adventure was a trip to Jamaica. We were down for just 1 short week but our lives have been changed forever! Brent and I were at different schools but it couldn't have worked out better. Brent was on the sports team and I did individual counseling and helped lead a grief and loss group with Jen. I also ended up in the classrooms teaching lessons on health, and math as well! I was reminded of the love and joy that can be found, even in a state of loss. Brent and I are longing to get back, although we have no idea when that will happen! Of course, it is all in His ultimate timing but we do hope and pray we can make this trip happen more frequently. Brent and I gained a new appreciation of each other, our marriage, and for all the blessings we have! We created a really fun slideshow of a few of our favorites on http://jamaicalove.slide.com I hope we will continue to share our stories for months to come and that this trip will continue to guide us and change us! God is sooooooooooo good!

One Happy Couple

We couldn't be happier now that we have keys in hand!!!

ALL DONE!!!

Hip hip horrary! The day has finally arrived! After a very long LONG battle with our loan, we finally got to the end! We had to take the day off of work on Friday to drive up to Bellevue to sign with Escrow and then we drove our papers back down here to the county and played the waiting game until about 3pm when we got the call that we got our keys! We moved on Sat. and worked our hinies off (with the amazing help from my mom and sister) and are now ALL unpacked! We are beyond exhausted but we are unpacked, things have a home and life is working on getting back to normal! We did treat ourselves to a new couch, new love seat and a new bedroom set. They will be delivered on Wed. so right now we just just sit on stools in the living room and are sleeping in the guest bedroom. We are hoping to also purchase a dining room table but haven't found anything we are in love with yet! (we're using an old one now!) For all our out of town family and friends, you are the reason we created this blog! We hope that these final pictures will give you a better idea of where we will now call home! We hope you will be able to visit soon! Enjoy our "virtual" tour....
Here is my sister sitting on a stool in the living room, she is sitting where our love seat will go and you're looking into the kitchen nook....

Here is a shot from the kitchen nook into the lilving room. The kitchen chairs are our "couch"....

Here is our stove and mircowave....

The rest of our kitchen, we're also in hunt of some kind of breakfast bar stools...

Our kitchen nook.....

Our large and in charge pantry.....

The office room....

Our guest bedroom, for all you come and stay in when you visit, aside from the bedding, the rest of the room is golf....

The one room not yet put together...our Master bedroom. Still not so sure what to do with all the space, we'll think of something.....

My bathroom, that I have yet to figure out a theme for...I just wanted to throw a shower curtain on until I figure it out....

We'll that's the basics of our house! If you want to see the rest of it, you'll have to come visist! I think that the blog will be put on hold until the next "adventure" in our life! Hopefully we will be blessed by God yet again with a new member of the family! Stay tuned and please continue to pray! Thanks!!!

Day who knows, but we're so stickin close!

Hey everyone! We are do to sign with escrow on the 29th and all our ducks are in a row but one... our certificate of occupancy won't get released until we do our final appraisal. Since our how is bascially done, minus a touch up here and installing a screen there, we are hoping to get our appraiser to do it one day early so we can stick to our plan! Please pray it happens so we can indeed sign with Escrow on the 29th. Our plan is still to get our keys on the 1st sometime betwee 2-5pm. Let me tell you how unproductive that day will be at work! Our plan is to get movers on Sat. Oct. 1st in the morning and then be all moved into our BRAND NEW HOUSE by dinner time!!!!!! We will hopefully be hosting our first Sun. night dinner (carry out of course) with my Aunt, parents, sister, and cousin!!! Long journey looking like it is coming to an end soon!!!! Please keep your prayers coming, just to help us get to the finish line-injury free, on time, and hopefuly without any more gray hair!!!!

Day 40

The vanity in the upstairs bathroom

Our vanity in our Master bath

Our kitchen

Here's our stove/microwave area

Well day 40 was last week but that's when these pictures are from! Yesterday was day 45 and rumor has it our carpet is just about finished, we got mirrors, and shelves that that's what they were working on this past week! Not sure when we'll get out there as we're hanging out with my parents all day on Sun. but I will hopefully stop by there after work someday! We are still on for Setp 29th for our close date so I don't think I'll do too many more posts so we can all be surprised when everything is put together!!

Just finished Day 36

Last weekend we went and checked out the inside of the house. We brought with us my Aunt Ann, Hillary, Garret, mom, me and Zepper. It was really nice to share our "soon to be home" with family! Can't wait to move in

Here is Garret trying to figure out our wiring in our living room.

I think this is where the oven will go. The living room area is on the right of the little wall. Right behind the wall with the boxes on it is our 1/2 bath. The door to the left of the wall is our VERY large pantry and just down the little hallway is our garage

Our living room again. That's our front door (that's open) and our closet on the right.

Our staircase looking up at our laundry room

Our "we hope to be our nursery room.....it looks really dark but it really isn't....and of course there will be a light in the room as well

Part 1 of our Master

And Part 2 of the Master....now in contrast to the extra rooms, our bedroom is NOT lacking in light. I guess I won't get to sleep in as late as I'd like anymore

Our bathroom in our bedroom, again with another window. Just to the right of the bathroom wall is our closet with yet again more windows (3 to be exact!) Our closet is attached to the bathroom, which I think is pretty nifty since I always bring my clothes into the bathroom with me when I take a shower

Here's the outside back of the house. Everyone is standing on our little patio area-perfect for our plug in George Foreman grill!!! Zepper is trying to convience me that we need a man grill now that we hve a real house. We'll see about that!

Here's our house, all that's missing from this shot is our black front door, our black garage lights, and some landscaping!! It's coming along!!!! Stay tuned!!! We're hoping that in 1 month from today we can move in!!!!!

Coming along- Day 34

Sorry it has been FOREVER since we did a post! The house is really coming along. I'll post more pictures hopefully this weekend. Brent is out of town for a golfing trip and took the camera! Today we are on Day 34!!!! We walked through the house this past weekend and boy are things looking like a house....we have walls up, paint on the walls, a garage door, and this week our millwork was going to be started. Our cabnets should be finished today and things are really coming together. We've had a few set backs so now we are shooting for Oct. 1 close day. We are going to wait another week before we give our notice to the apartments cuz in case we have to push it back even more. SInce Oct. 1 is in the middle of the week, we will probably wait until the 3-4 to move into the new house and say goodbye to apartment life! It is getting closer everyday. It comes with a lot of crazy emotions-mostly all good. :-) We have a few glitches to work out as far as space is concerned as we are seeing once again that our house isn't true in size to what we were told it would be or to houses we were shown and told ours would be similar size, but oh well! It really isn't that wierd to have your dining room table in your Master bedroom, is it????? Stay tuned....more to come!!

Day 18-our interior of the house

Brent and I got to see the inside of the house! Although it is still in need of a lot more work (walls, carpet, paint, appliances, etc), it is starting to look like a house. I will try to give you the virtual tour of the house...
Here is what you will first see when you walk in the front door, our small living room looking out into our backyard. We will have a fence put up with some hedges so you won't really be able to see that house through the window very well...

This is the opposite view of what you'll see coming in. This is taken from inside the living room looking at our front door (which will be black on the outside and I think just normal door color on the inside) and the hall closet on the right and wall on the left....

Now we're in our kitchen standing about where the island will be looking out into the backyard off the porch. Just to the right (which you can't really see) will be our small breakfast nook).

No house is complete without some countertops and a kitchen sink...(that's what you're looking at now). Our staircase goes behind the kitchen and spits you out in the breakfast nook area. Our stove is I think on the left of this picture and I don't remember where our fridge will be???

Now we've traveled upstairs to the hall bathroom...

This is our bedroom taken from the bedroom door. It kinda does an L shape so you can't really see it all. That goes into our bathroom, where our closet will be.

This is our 2nd bedroom. The picture of the office didn't turn out cuz it just looks like all boards but it will be to the right of this room...

Here's our furnance, which for some reason Brent was really proud of! It too is upstairs next to our laundry room

There were a few more pictures but I can't remember what they are and so as not to confuse myself, I'll just wait til they take shape! The house is coming along. It will be nice when it is finished. Not everything we had thought it was going to be, a lot of suprises along the way, but in the end I think it will do us just fine! And the best part of it, is we won't be paying RENT any longer!!!!!!! I'm not sure when we'll get more pictures but check back. We'll try to get back in on the 23rd!

Day 17, our grey house

So I am finally back to the blog....Zepper insured me he took care of everything to keep you all up to date on the house! I am feeling better each day from my surgery and am thankful I can be back involved with the blog. A lot happened while I was "out of the picture". I also kinda lost track of what day we were on, but Friday Aug. 7th, was day 17!!! As you can see we now have siding on the house and you can start to see our grey house!!! I wasn't 100% sure about the color but now seeing it on the house, I think I am liking it more and more!


Here is the back of the house!


And the front porch area!

Tomorrow we are going to get to "walk through" the house so stay tuned for our first interior pictures of the house. It will be the first time we get to start to see the offical layout of the house on something more than a picture! Although we saw the one home under contsruction, we have never seen OUR house. It should be pretty exciting! I am starting to begin to feel like this is our home more and more! (I'm starting to get attached!!!!!!)

Days 10 & 11

Zepper here again! Well I got Brittny out today for the first time post surgery so that is a very good sign. Look at the progress on the house the roof is complete with shingles and vents. It looks like the house is completely wrapped and the siding is ready to go up. I am afraid that once the siding goes up that the pictures may slow down. Once the outside is complete then the inside begins with fun stuff like electrical, plumbing and sheet rock (whoopee). Anyways enjoy the pictures on another beautiful Washington summer day.

Day 9

This is Zepper doing a couple blogs while Brittny is recovering fully from her surgery. First an update on Brittny - she has had a very trying week! She had a laparoscapy on Tuesday which the news that came back was good but the recovery has been tough. She has been dealing with much pain, naseu and other stuff I won't go into detail about. But with your prayers and much rest she is feeling better day by day. Once I got Brittny on the couch, loaded her full of drugs and watched her slip away to la la land I was able to sneak away for a few pictures. Day the nine the framing has been complete and the siding and roofing materials look like they may be next. Check it out......

Day 8

The King of his castle....


Here is our first picture of the house together since we purchased it back in April. Once again, I promise the house is straight...Zepper tried to do one of his Professional photographer moves and tried to balance the camera on the side mirror of the car....Oh dear! So the house is really coming along and it was super fun to see the tressels for the roof going on. The roof should be complete within the next week!!!


Brent wandered into our neighbors lot to get the back side of the house.



Things are really coming along quickly. This will probably be the last week where things are changing daily cuz soon they will head inside and we won't be able to take pictures without our sales manager and a hard hat! :-( I will try to get out to the house today to take some pictures but then don't know how much Brent will be able to get out there as I won't be driving or very mobile after surgery! I'll try to post again around the 11th but continue checking in....Brent may just take the reins on this one! Enjoy! (oh and Aaron...I didn't get your post, just your question about it!)

Day 7

So once again the house looks different today! So now that I can start to make things out I thought I'd share what you are looking at....This is a picture from the sidewalk (duh) standing at the tree in our front yard area. Right now we have neighbors to left (when looking at the house) and an empty lot on the right (when looking at the house). .....

This is a picture straight on to the house. You are looking directly into the garage. Right above the garage is our guest bedroom (or nursery if God blesses us with children) on the upper left window and our office on the upper right window. The front door is the rectangle next to the garage which looks into our entry way and then our living room. Our Master is above the front door (that will be ou bedroom window). If you look through the garage (past the tubs), you will see our kitchen....

This is the side view of the house taken from the empty lot on the right. There aren't any windows on that side of the house except the small one in our Master closet. This will be the side of the bedrooms and garage and back of the kitchen.

Kinda cool how it is all coming together. Only a few more days of things changing daily cuz once they get the siding and roof on they'll head inside and then pictures will only be coming about once a week. But for now it is fun to see the daily changes!