3's

1. I ran over our only working stroller with the car, bent the wheel and it is now a really funky ride.

2. I slipped while walking across the driveway at the new house and dropped our digital camera. A large piece of metal came flying off. I taped it back on with blue painter's tape, but the flash is broken and it is doing random strange things.

3. While driving in lunch hour traffic I rear ended a large home made metal trailer. The brake lights weren't on and traffic around me was moving, giving me the sensation that he was moving also....not so. The only damage done was a small crack in our plastic fender. The owner of the truck and trailer said to me upon seeing that there was no damage to his trailer, "man, that is the 4 time this week I've been rear-ended!"....and this is why we have brake lights!

1. Arlo vomited all afternoon the other day.

2. Sam vomited last night and was then awake for 2 hours.

3. Who's next??

Where We Are: A List

• The painting at the new house happened all weekend and it looks amazing...albeit still very messy and looking very much like a construction zone, there is progress and a lot at that. I will post photos soon.
• We've postponed move in to get more done. Our friend that helped us paint has offered to give a day this weekend to help with trim work and prepping the kitchen for painting...which we were just going to do after moving in, but it seems smarter to do it while the whole place is a mess.
• Andy, my brother-in-law patched the rough spot in the ceiling where the cabinets were removed in the kitchen. It looks great though it still needs some surface smoothing and paint...were 75% done with that one!
• It looks like my Dad might come out next week to offer help in the whole "Grieshop Forest Road House Remodel"...thanks Dad!
• Arlo was puking all afternoon yesterday for no apparent reason...maybe a physical reaction to the hectic craziness of our life lately...
• The snow keeps falling, though this weekend is supposed to warm into the 40's so I am hoping for some reprieve.
• Matt and I will be involved with the Michigan Organic Farm Conference this weekend. We had completely forgot about it with all this house hub-bub, but life outside of our house renovations seems to continue....how crazy is that??
• And, I am hanging in there. It has been a rough transition from having lots of help to having none and I feel very pulled between two places, though it feels good to have lots underway and near completion in the new house.

I need to extend a HUGE thank you to Pat, Jim and Andy for all of their knuckle-bleeding, knee-bruising, back-breaking work this weekend and last week! I feel incredibly blessed to have my family so close and/or so willing to travel to help us "raise" our house. It really makes this house so much more of a home.

Outta Touch

I have been a bit outta touch with the travels and house demo....please just know that I am still here plugging along with life. Matt's mom, Pat (just know that is who Pat is from now on), is here helping with house stuff and kid care....THANK YOU PAT!!!! I don't know how we would have done this without her here!

Our days have been going like this:

Morning: 

Matt and his mom leave around 8 am and Matt drops Pat off at the new house. She has been cleaning (I mean scrubbing) the new kitchen cabinets among other things.

I hang with the kids, run Lowe's errands, and do whatever else needs to get done at the rental house.

Noon:

We all converge (even Matt) at the new house and we have lunch and then work as a team until the kids can't take being in our construction zone any more. Then Pat takes them to the rental and plays, cleans, cooks, does laundry (everything, basically). Matt and I plow through at the new house until dinner.

Evening:

Matt and I eat with the boys and Pat and hang out for a bit. Then we return to the house until about 11:30 pm. Pat takes the evening shift, bathing and putting the boys to bed.

We are all very tired at the end of the day....which is why I have been outta touch!

We are getting closer to being ready to paint and I'll post pictures after it is all done! Whew!

The Demolition: er, Remodel...Making it Ours

This post was going to to wait until after I returned to Michigan and took some more photos of the work Matt has done while we are gone....but, due to illness (Matt) and an exorbitant amount of "regular", paying work (Matt) and some impatient friends; I am going to post what has happened up to this point.

KITCHEN:

Here you see the kitchen as it was in November, just after our offer had been accepted. Notice the large center island and cabinets suspended from the ceiling. When I stood at the kitchen sink  and looked to the bar area, all I saw was cabinets. Matt and I dreamed of removing them and talked about recruiting my Dad this summer to help. Once we'd closed our good friend Dave offered to help paint the house. He came by to have a look at the house and get a good idea about work load and prep work, etc. He talked us into jumping in full boar and doing basically everything we want to do now, while the house is empty.

Thus we began removing the cabinets. The cabinets were installed in 1960, as we learned from an order slip taped to the top

of them, by the Amish. The Amish apparently make up for lack of power tools by using extra strong nuts and bolts and screws! It took us the better part of a day to remove the cabinets! Of course we had a dog and kids running around, but nonetheless it was a job. We removed the cabinets one at a time and then removed the framing.  Once the cabinets were out the amount of light in the work areas of the kitchen greatly increased and I didn't

feel like I would be cooking in a cave! We will repaint the walls and eventually (way down the road), we'll redo the floors and have the cabinets refinished. For now though, it will be the nicest kitchen I have ever owned!

DINING ROOM:

This is the wallpaper that was on the walls

in the dining room. It is actually quite pretty and I have thought 

many times that my mother would have liked it. The striped paper 

was on the lower half and the flower print on the upper half as you can see in the full room shot. Again, we weren't going to remove the paper originally because it still looked ok and I thought the removal would be horrific. However, the paper pulled off very easily and in a matter of 10 minutes it was completely removed!

Now there is a lot of prep work to be done if we want to paint it. I am not convinced that I want to. I think we'll explore some wall paper for the upper half and paint on the lower half, though you never know what will happen once the creative process begins.

Other than removing nails and spakling holes, we haven't done much. The whole house painting is planned for the 23rd and before then we have a lot to do!!! After that we have a lot to do!!! I am just feeling very thankful that it is winter and we can focus on the inside of the house before things start growing and need attention outside of the house...

A True Vacation

We've once again packed our bags and bounded off across the country to sunny California! Sam, Arlo and I braved the below freezing temperatures of central Michigan to fly (on two flights, one of which was 5 hours long!) here and visit my mother and father-in-law or a.k.a, Grandma and Grandpa for a week. The weather is amazing here! 65 degrees and sunny! I wasn't even sure how to pack for such warm temps. I am not complaining, in fact, I am so relaxed and the boys are sleeping so well from all of our park play!This afternoon, after more running and climbing at the park, Arlo is

 napping and Sam is having quiet time, Pat, my mother-in-law, is working and I am sitting by the window enjoying the sunbeams, a cup of coffee,

 and my knitting blogs. I had planned on knitting while the boys were occupied, but have since been inspired to post about my recent knitting projects and a few other things.

I finally finished Andy's socks! It was my goal to 

complete them before we left for this trip so I would only have to bring along enough supplies for one knitting project...and sure enough the library had Season 3 of the Gilmore Girls just in time for me to knit like a mad woman and finish two days before we left. I am very happy with how they turned out and they are in the mail on their way to my dear brother-in-law. And onto my next project....Playground Mittens for Sam! I am using some left over wool from a variety of sock projects past. It should be a quick knit and lots of fun as they will be my first mittens ever!

If you haven't figured it out already I finally got my Ravelry invite and have been adding to my notebook as I get pictures taken and time to do it. I am called 

NaturalKnits...come find me!

In between my homemade chocolate biscotti binges and park play outings I have been trying 

to help with the little bits of house chores here...including laundry! I took this photo yesterday morning and realized how big my first baby is

 getting. Even though he's been in underwear for months they look so small in amongst the heaps of adult laundry at home...here hanging on a laundry line, I realized how big they are...how big he is! The photo on the left I took in Washington. Arlo had grown out of his newborn cloth dipes and into the medium size dipes and I had a little teary realization that he keeps growing too...ugh.

I have many realizations while hanging laundry. I guess it is a sort of meditation time for me....

So a real vacation for me. We closed on the house the demolition began very soon after. It is chaotic there with our hearts in the new house and wanting to be there all the time, but our things in the rental and it is necessary to be there at least a couple times a day. I was packing lunches and dinners and toys and spending all day at the new house. I feel very relaxed and removed from what is happening there and I am going to enjoy it! I have some good photos of the progress, but I'll post that later with good descriptions of what we've found our plans for the Forest Road house...

Maybe I am KNITCRAZY!

Matt decided to tell me the other night he feels I am becoming knitcrazy! Or, obsessed with knitting! HA! I think it is all quite funny since I am not knitting as much as I want to be and I know there are folks out there who knit WAY more than I do. So, I am going to a gathering every week, so, I knit at least two times a day, so, I think about knitting whenever I am not knitting....does that make me knitcrazy? If so then I welcome it!

I am not going to yarn shops uncontrollably, though I'd like to be....I do have only one project going right now ( I know, tisk, tisk)...that is breaking one of the cardinal knitting rules!

In lue of the fore mentoined conversation,  I fully appreciated the Panopticon's recent blog post about Fibertariens! 

It's Closing Time...

We have an official and definite closing date....this Thursday at 3:00 p.m!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Finally.

Of course I can't wait and I am beginning to think about paint colors again and it still doesn't seem real! Whew, what a relief. More later....