The Ignored Room

I mentioned we were going to be targeting the dining room next.  We really haven’t taken too many pictures in this room.  We don’t use it very often, and it has been completely ignored.

So let’s see it in all it’s glory.

I do like the big picture windows in this room.  It means I can go with a dramatic/dark color and it won’t be too powerful.

Especially since opposite the window wall, it is completely open to the living room.

I actually picked out the paint color and bought it two years ago.  Hope I still like it!!

Someone was getting upset that I wasn’t taking any pictures of him.  So I indulged him.

Now we are happy!

The main reason we hadn’t started on this room was the tiny opening from the kitchen to the dining room.

I want to enlarge the width of the opening, but can’t unless we are ready to remodel the kitchen.  And that’s not happening quite yet.  So it remains to be seen if we will eventually open this up.

But for now we are going to go ahead and start this room.  I mean, it still has the original carpet in it.

Well that is the complete tour of the existing dining room.  Want to take any bets on how long it takes us to finish up the room.  Making the list is:

1.  New paint.

2.  Chair rail and bottom trim.

3.  New flooring (still debating what type).

4.  New light fixture.

5.  If adventurous, painting the ceiling so you can tell it’s a tray ceiling.

6.  New window treatments.

Family Room

I’m going to do it.
I think I’m going to do it.
Yep, let’s just do it.
I’m going to say the family room is complete!!!

New trim added to the mantle.

A closer look at the new hearth.

Let’s remember where it all started.  Here the room is before we started any projects.

First we painted the paneling and the back of the bookcases right before Bella’s second birthday in Sept. ‘09.

Then I decided to jump in and paint the brick, bookcases and create a new mantle in July ‘12.

 

Then we decided to flip flop the room around and rearrange all the furniture and electronics.

And lastly we needed to finish up the hearth.  Which has turned into a great place to play cars!

Taking it all the way back to the beginning, here is the room when we did the final walkthrough with the old owners versus our brand new bright and funky family room.

 

We even made a small area for toys that just needs a little organizing in the near future.

Now it’s on to the dining room we go…………….

2012 Spending

For those of you who like to see how we continue to dump money into our house….here is our 2012 spending graph.

The major home improvement expense was our new circle driveway.  The daycare expenses jumped up since we are still paying for 2 kids in part time daycare.  I would hate to see how much that would be if they were in full time daycare (although then I would be making more money too).  And travel jumped up this year.  This includes trips back to Nebraska and our two short weekend trips to Colorado and Chicago, oh and my girls trip to Vegas.

After that the spending all gets to be about the same for each category.  A new category added was work related expenses for me to be working from home.  This means I had to pay for some things myself that normally a company would pay, the biggest part is paying for my own continuing education classes.  Those things can be pricey.

I secretly expect our home improvement category to be 50% of our income this coming year…..it should be a big year of costly improvements around here.

A little dose of hope

That's what I took away from my meeting with a priest on Wednesday. In raising a child like Bella, it can be really taxing and leave you with more questions than answers. When things continue to domino as they typically do with Bella, Kristen and I often wonder what we did wrong in our lives leading up to having Bella. It really does make a person reflect on every situation in life where I could have been a better person... and for me thats a lot of reflection.

I was very impressed with the knowledge of scripture, books, and stories that the priest shared with me... Not that I would expect anything less, but I was having a hard time trying to remember everything he was throwing at me. It was a very uplifting discussion. He provided me with some information to help me learn/remember more about Catholicism to strengthen my faith and help me be a better husband and father who lives in that faith, which up to this point in my life has been pretty difficult. I hope to improve.

We discussed our family situation with Kristen being Lutheran and myself Catholic, as well as life with Bella and Oliver and the daily struggles/challenges we have. He continued to quote Matthew 25 throughout our discussion which up until Wednesday met nothing to me.

35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

This scripture is everyones's path to eternal salvation, he reminded me.

He said that Kristen and I live this every day of our lives with our little angel Bella. He commended us for this. He related our situation to other biblical stories as well as real life. He tried his best to understand our situation and how attending weekly mass and keeping God first in our lives has been very difficult at times.

He reminded me that too often we get caught up in trying to figure out why, that we need to stop and just have some hope that the future will be better and God will help us along the way. Since Bella is such a unique case with no medical understanding of what to expect as she grows older, we have always lived off of hope.

All in all it was a very positive and spiritually uplifting conversation and I couldn't wished for anything different to come away from our conversation. I look forward to taking the whole family in to meet with him in the near future. Thanks to Kristen for the constant reminder of me not receiving communion for the past 8 years, to get my butt in gear and go talk to a priest about it... And thanks to the priest for welcoming a lost sheep back to his flock and turning it into a positive uplifting experience.

Jesse

It’s hard to part with money

At least for us it is.

We are having issues with our foundation.  Part of our solution (self-diagnosed) is to remove some of the large trees closest to the house.

Jesse has removed trees before.  He took down the large pine tree in the front yard, and a bunch of smaller dead trees around our property.  So when it came to the decision to remove the three large trees, it was hard to decide if it was worth the time it would take Jesse to do it himself, or if we should part with some major cash, but have it done in one day.

In the end we decided to go with paying someone.  Not only will it be done in one to two days, but with cutting down large trees as a novice, there is the risk you can hurt yourself or send a branch/whole tree into your house.  Definitely not worth the money savings then.

There is currently two men high up in our trees, systematically cutting down branches.

They tie a rope around the branch they are cutting, so they can slowly lower it to the ground after it’s been cut.

And there are no ladders nearby, meaning they both climbed all the way up there by themselves and I’m very interested to see how they get back down!

This was Jesse’s fortune yesterday.  Oh how I wish it was true.  But with our current house expenses coming up….I don’t think there is going to be any money left to vacation with.

Sleep

I’m not sure if you noticed, but I added a little sleep days counter to the blog on the sidebar.  This way I can keep track of how many days of continuous sleep we will get in a year.  The rules are, we can not get up with the kids for the core hours of 10pm till 5am.  If that happens, then it’s a continuous night of sleep for us, regardless if we don’t actually get to bed by 10pm ourselves.  That’s our problem not theirs!

Hopefully the number will just keep creeping up and I will be embarrassed by all the days of sleep we have gotten.  I might mean I have to eat my words about complaining about no sleep, but more importantly it would mean we would actually get sleep!

Single Parent

Yesterday I was a single parent.  Jesse was up with Oliver in the morning, but from 7am till they went to bed, I was in charge. 

I take care of them pretty much everyday.  But rarely do I have to take care of them all day long and then also feed them dinner, get them both baths, and put them to bed. 

On top of that, Bella was not having a good day.  She was pretty much fussing and crying all day long.

Some people have spouses who play weekly sports, do weekly poker nights, work late hours, etc.  I’m lucky because Jesse doesn’t do that.  I know he would like to do it, but it’s the sacrifice he makes to help out around here.

And I’m thankful.  A few days here and there I can do, but to be a single parent all the time.  That has got to be the hardest job EVER.

Although I still have hope that someday it will get easier and we can have more freedoms to do activities again that we enjoy!

Behind the scenes

If you were lucky enough to get on the blog early last Thursday morning you might have seen a post by Jesse.  I ended up taking it down, because someone spilled the beans about the next big project I have been working on.  His post will go back up once I finish, so if you missed it, it will be back. 

Here is some of the mess created by the big project.  It’s something I have wanted to tackle forever.  This is old upholstery fabric that has been taken off something???

We have also been busy putting the finishing touches on this project. We thought we were done, and then decided we needed to do some more trim work. So it looks like one more weekend will be needed to complete the project.

We are also getting more quotes and making a decision on our foundation repair.  Unfortunately we have to address this issue before we can start working on Bella’s bedroom.  And we really need to start working on Bella’s bedroom.

I’ve hinted that I might be starting something new.  It’s all pending on my finishing the big project shown above.  I’m hoping to launch this new venture at the beginning of February.  Stay tuned.

Bella

I complain a lot about raising Bella.  I often think “woe is me” and “why me”.

I have lots of hard decisions to make.  And even harder decisions to make in the future.

But as often as I think about myself, I do think even more about Bella.

Why was Bella chosen to be like she is?

Why does she have to observe and watch life happen around her when she can’t participate?

What must it be like to have no one understand what you want, what you need, or what hurts?

Bella has to trust in us completely, to make all the right decisions for her, because she will never be able to.

And I do think we are lucky to have Bella.

And I think Bella is lucky to have us.

Because even though it’s hard.

I love my daughter and I try to do the very best for her.

And in this world, I’m not sure everyone else would do the same.

Family Photos

I meant to post these earlier.  We took them back in October.

Thanks to my sister for being flexible and quickly coming over to take these while we were in Nebraska.