Our House

As promised, here is an update on our ever evolving project! :)
 I was looking through pictures to post here just now, pictures that we just took recently, & they are already so changed I didn't even want to post them!  The progress has been wonderful & we really are encouraged that we'll have it livable by the Spring at least.

Okay.  So here's the deal.  If I share these with you, you've got to promise me that you'll try to have "the vision."  At first glance, it totally looks like crap & I'll be the first to admit it.  But seriously, all it takes is a little bit of imagination & you will be able to see how cool this house will be when it's done.  Promise?  Okay.  Here goes.

This is a picture of the house itself as of today.  Siding is up!! :)  Yay so much better!!  Unfortunately we didn't get this step done until after it started to get cold, so this is pretty much how it's going to look until spring.  We'll paint as soon as we can.  We plan on a sage green color for the siding, white for the windows & trim, & black for the shutters.  Can ya see it?  I tried to use that Sherwin-Williams app that "paints" your photo so you can see what your house would look like with a different color, but it was pretty crappy.  So this is all we get for now.  (Anyone know of a different app that's good?  I'd love to play! :))

Here is a closer up picture of our front porch being re-built.  It's been an empty hole for quite a while now.  That was another project that ended up being bigger than we expected.  All of the concrete needed to be re-poured.  Fun times.  But now that is all being put back together & will be so pretty when it's done.  By the end of the day today, the other column should be put back up.  It's been down since we saw this house 10 years ago!  (Which means god knows how long before that it's been down...).

This used to be a great big gaping hole.  All sealed up & brick re-mortared.  Looks small, but it's a big deal! :)

Okay.  Huge deal here.  ELECTRICITY!!!  Hallelujah!  (Pre-siding, so as you can see this picture is a tiny bit older).  We had to route electricity from the pole to the house & re-do everything.  What was there was so old it was very unsafe.  So the ditch you see is freshly dug to ground the wire all the way to the pole & the box is all brand new.  Natalie is sitting on the spool of wire to give you an idea of just how massive this stuff really is!  Such a big step!
And here's the very best part on the subject of wiring electricity.  (God I love this town!)  So anyway, Matt & I ended up at the house last week on an unplanned 5 minute drop-in.  (He took the afternoon off & we were planning to go see a movie that didn't end up playing, so we shouldn't have been there).  Anyway, not 2 minutes after we pulled in, a car pulls in behind us in our driveway.  Umm, okay  Who's this?  Well it turns out it's a couple of seniors from the Academy.  They were looking for a project for their class & were directed to Mathew & our house by their instructor.  They are offering for their whole class (and their instructor's very strict supervision) to come in the next few weeks & wire our whole house for us FOR FREE!!!  Are ya kiddin' me?!?!  Hell yeah!  Sign us up! :)  So of course we said yes & we're working on getting things ready for them inside to get that started.  Yay Yay Yay!!

Final exterior picture: the porch/mudroom.  (Again, a picture before the siding was finished... well it's still not on the porch, but we're not going to dwell on that. lol).  This took pretty much all summer.  What is now truly another room of the house, used to be a sunroom type thing that was falling down.  It was so full of junk we couldn't even tell how badly it was in disrepair.  So that got yanked out (with the exception of the roof) and got all re-done.  Because of the angle, that entire foundation was re-poured with concrete one bag at a time by poor Matt.  (Couldn't fit a mixer in where we needed it).  He estimates it probably took 500 bags!!  Walls replaced completely, brand new windows, awesome.  We plan on it being a four-seasons room with mudroom storage for all of our winter gear before entering the house (it is Vermont you know! ;))  


Okay, next up: interior photos.  Remember, you've gotta use your vision, okay?  It's not as far along as you might picture.  BUT, there has been a lot of work going on getting things ready to all be put back up.  You wouldn't believe what it takes to make a house safe & able to withstand another century & a half!  Plus, there was a LOT of junk in this house that took a long time to remove.  So keep that in mind as you look at the nakedness that is our walls.  It'll get there I swear! :)

Here, I just need to illustrate the rediculousness we've needed to go through to rebuild this house.  Where Natalie & Matt are standing?  That's where our kitchen table will go.  If you look behind them you can see where the bottom of the wall should be.  Beneath the floor?  A ginormous obnoxious slab of slate.  OMG.  It's insane.  So in order to do a whole lot of things to make the floor stable, the rock needed to be chiseled down.  On the right of the picture you can see Natalie at the top (about where she's standing in pic #1) with me taking her picture from the basement below.  Who knew you could go rock climbing in your own house?! lol

This is the basis for our fireplace.  I have no idea where along the line of this house's long life that the fireplace was taken out (I'm certain there was one.  There was a chimney... and hey it was 1860!  Of course they had a fireplace).  At any rate, we needed to build a new one from the ground up & here is where it finally met the main floor.  The chimney is being built over to the right of the picture.  (it will connect at an angle above the fireplace itself).  The chimney is now all the way up through Natalie's room above.  (See!  Progress!)

The top of the stairs.  (Ehh.  They can't all be winners! lol)  Behind the wall with the oddly placed window (what will be stained glass when Matt is done with it...) will be the boys' massive closet.

Speaking of the boys' room, this is it!  They have the biggest room in the house & the best views.  We're pretty sure it was intended to be the master bedroom.  But because of how we wanted our house to flow we decided to give the front room to them.  (And they are not allowed to complain about sharing because they get this awesome room!)  That doorway is to the aforementioned closet.  We think it might end up being a closet/game room.  Seriously.  It's that big!

Next to them is Natalie's room.  View is from what will be the bathroom and you can see through to the boys' room.  Chimney needs to go through one little corner, but we should be able to still have plenty of room to make it cute.

(Across the way is the guest room.  I have no idea why I didn't take a picture of that.  But hint hint.  We have a guest room! ;))

And this is our room.  Behind that wall is our walk in closet & through that door and across a little stairwell is our master bath.  (This is why we chose the back room.  So we could have all of that space).  We think the house was designed so that the family could live in the front rooms, & this could be the servant's quarters.  That's what we've been told at least.  Oh well.  We like the back.  It's quieter! :)  That stairwell I mentioned goes down to the kitchen area.

Yikes.  This will be our kitchen (as viewed by the back stairs I mentioned above).  It's a hell hole right now & has become kind of a storage center for all of the stuff it takes to re-build the house.  So there will be a full state of the art kitchen where Mathew is standing, including custom built cabinets by Mathew himself.  The center doorway enters into the dining room and the doorway on the left is a giant walk-in gorgeous pantry.  One of the beautiful attributes to an older home.  (In need of some love though).

I didn't take a picture of the office, dining room  & living room right now.  They are filled to the ceiling right now with insulation.  You can see why here:

The picture on the left is when the insulation was all delivered.  I think it was six palates?  Whatever it was, the stuff is massive!  But even though it's overkill, this house is going to be the best insulated in town!  (All part of our energy efficiency plan).  The picture on the right is the insulation already going up in the house.  I think this is the wall of our weight room, which is located just below our master bathroom.  Slowly but surely this is going up on all of the exterior walls of the house as we speak.  WooHoo!

So that's it!  That's where we are right now.  (And when I say "we" I mean Matt.  I haven't done a damn thing! lol)  I can't wait until I have even more to share with you! 

So much to be thankful for

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We certainly did!  We've lived up here for 15 months now, & finally had our first visitor: my dad! :)  We all missed him so much & it was so great to spend a few days with him, and also get a chance to meet the new lady in his life, Nancy! :)  Here are a few highlights of our visit.

Natalie was my #1 helper in the kitchen for our Thanksgiving meal.  She's always so willing to help & I've learned with parenting the third time around to let them now or else they'll get bigger & quit asking! lol ;)  So not only did she help me out, but we were extra cute in our matching aprons.  He he! :)  I'm silly, I know.  Can't help it.  In case you're wondering what the heck she's doing with those sweet potatoes... well she really wanted to help me make them, but didn't think they smelled too good before we added the sugar! lol  That girl is too funny.

Yeah yeah, everybody had the same meal last Thursday night.  But I'm especially proud of mine!  I made everything from scratch.  Everything.  The rolls, the pie crusts, the cranberry sauce, everything!  Right down to the loaf of bread I used to make the stuffing.  And not only that, I made it all gluten free!  I was *terrified* that no one was going to like it.  That the gluten-free-ness (yes that is totally a word.  I said so!) would ruin it all if nothing else.  But it was good!  And not only that, my kids actually liked it all!  And the even bigger test: my husband actually got seconds (and thirds... lol) of stuffing & sweet potatoes!  He has *never* liked Thanksgiving food. Yay!! 

But now I'm exhausted.  Still. lol ;)  

Okay, this one was too funny not to share.  Way more funny if you were actually there, but I'll explain anyway.  So my dad used to do this thing when I was a kid with this silly voice.  He'd play three parts with this Vaudville-style dialogue that lasted all of about 10 seconds & was totally dumb.  But it always made me giggle.  He'd have one bow (or pretend to have one) and he'd put it over his mouth like a mustach & say, "You must pay the rent!" Then he'd put it on his head like a hair bow, & in a girls voice would say, "I can't pay the rent!"  The two would go back & forth & then he'd put the bow like a gentleman's bowtie & say in a deep voice, "I'll pay the rent!"  (girl) "My hero!"  (landlord) "Curses!!"  Totally dumb, I know.  But ohmygawd how that would make me laugh as a kid.  Apparently my kids are no exception!  (Why is it so funny?!)  Anyway, three kids, three parts, three bows.  After-dinner entertainment.  Awesomeness. 

So then we spent Friday showing PaPa & Nancy where we live.  A beautiful day for November in Vermont, so we took advantage of the sunshine & went for a walk. 





And now we have a bit of a tradition going where the boys make spedini with PaPa.  They love to cook! 

And again... gluten free bread crumbs were just as good. ;)  So fun.

Best part of visits with PaPa is getting to be just plain silly. ;)

So all in all we had a great visit.  Entirely too short, but great just the same.  We miss him already!  

So my plan is to make another post in the next few days about the house.  SO MUCH has been happening that every time I take pictures & plan to post about it, it's even better by the time I have time to type something!  So I keep putting that off, but I promise I'll update soon & give it it's own post so I can overwhelm you all with even more pictures! ;)  Stay tuned! 

Stickin' it to Nationwide!

Things are finally moving along with our lawsuit against Nationwide insurance.  Yay!  No fun drudging it all up all over again, and no fun that preparing has to take Mathew away from working on the house so much, but for real.  These people have no idea what they're up against!! lol  We knew from the very beginning that this wasn't going to end well by the way they were handling things from day one.  So the diligent, lawyer-wannabe hubby that I have saved everything & I do mean everything in the event that we would need it.  In the photo above is a copy of every single email that transpired over that year & a half of hell between us & them.  So many examples of how they said one thing but did another, recanted on what they said they would do for us, denied us coverage for things that should have been paid for, and on & on & on.  Two full reams of paper, and two cartridges of ink, & we're just getting started folks! lol  He still has boxes of papers to go through & he'll need to copy most of that too.  (I don't even want to know what that will cost to ship to our lawyer once it's all said & done! lol)
But the point is, we're not just any Joe Schmo who wants to try to squeeze some more money out of our insurance company & filed some frivolous lawsuit.  We have more evidence than they're going to be able to count that we did everything we could on our end & they did everything wrong on theirs.  I SO wish I could be a fly on the wall when they get a good look at everything we have against them.  That would be pure awesomeness.  Oh well.  Here's hoping that it will scare them outta their minds & they'll want to settle generously before it gets ugly.  And for the record, we have no problem with it getting ugly if that's what it comes down to.  :P


On that note, moving on to happier things.  Halloween has come & gone & so has Hurricaine Sandy.  The kids had a great time on Halloween trick-or-treating with their friends.

Mark: The Zombie Sock Monkey, Gavin: The Annoying Orange (It's a show.  I'm not calling my kid annoying I promise! lol), and Natalie: Olivia the Pig! :D  These kids are so silly.  Copper also dressed up as a devil, and I truly risked grounds for divorce with that costume on the animal! lol  (Mathew doesn't exactly think that's as entertaining as Natalie & I do...)  You can see some more pictures on facebook if you're interested.  I don't want to continually be too redundant between here & there.  But I couldn't resist adding in a little cuteness! :)

Anyway, Hurricaine Sandy was no big deal at all here (thank you Vermont luck!) and we've been able to keep moving on the house.  We still have a few more warm days before winter weather truly hits, so we're hoping to get even more on the outside done before we're forced to quit on that.  Hopefully I'll have some more update pics on that soon. 

Say some prayers for us on this lawsuit stuff.  I truly cannot wait for the day when anything & everything from this stupid storm is completely behind us. 

A House With History

So I've told you guys before how this little house of ours is like this conversational magnet. People stop several times a day to see what we're up to, compliment us on our hard work, or even to ask us if we want help. So nothing new when an older gentleman stopped Mathew the other day to chat about the house.
Except this wasn't your everyday visitor. This guy's family built this house!
He was in town for the big high school rival football game (because that's what all small town America folk seem to get excited about! lol) and his fellow alumni were invited to the game as the class of '52.  He doesn't live in our town anymore, but learned that we were renovating it & wanted to stop by.  (Editor's note: Matt just told me he drove all the way up from Virginia!  Did not know that.)

So Matt stopped what he was doing & talked with this man, Dick Johnson, for quite a while. He even took notes!  I hope I can decifer them well enough. Here's my best shot.

A man named John N. Gale (1838-1916) of a town called Hardwick, VT built the house in 1860. He had a woodworking shop & built furniture & cabinetry. He was married twice. His first wife, Anna P. Johnson, lived from 1839-1888. They were married for just 7 years before her passing. He then married Bessie Farrow-Higgins a year later. Bessie, a widower 15 years his junior, had one child from her previous marriage: Julia Belle Higgins (born in 1884).  John & Bessie had another son together, Lyman, in 1891.  Julia was this man's grandmother. He says she graduated from the Academy (where my kids will go to High School) in 1903, majoring in the classics, and she tutored him in Latin all the way through High School. (That is very cool for that time period!).  Also noteworthy, the 1900 census shows a Albert Gale listed as his son living in the house... Born in 1870!  Makes me wonder if there was another wife before Anna living with him when he originally built it... Hmm...)
Anyway, Julia married Bernard Albert Johnson, Dick's grandfather. (I'm not sure if he was any relation to Mr. Gale's first wife Anna). (Another editor's note: Matt says he asked & they were not related.)  Bernard ran a fine men's clothing store called Moore & Johnson which was known as the place in New England to buy men's clothing. John & Bessie sold the house to Julia & Bernard in 1913, just three years before John died. Julia died in 1941 according to Dick, and the city records show that the front 8 feet of the property were deeded to the city that year to build the bridge. Dicks dad, Clark Johnson, executor of Julia's estate, sold the house in 1974.

So that's what we know so far. Pretty cool, huh?  (It's okay if you don't think so.  But we do! LOL)  Matt got to sit & talk with an elderly man who says he spent every Thanksgiving & Christmas of his life in our house. He told Matt stories about how he'd go & visit grandma and how every Saturday night shed soak beans to cook in our kitchen. What a privilege!  How many people are blessed to have a home with such rich history, and how many people are so lucky to be able to talk with a man who made so many memories throughout his life in that home?  And then, have him give his blessing with everything we're doing to restore it!  Amazing. And I'm so sad I missed meeting him. I hope that once the house is complete we'll be able to invite him over for dinner sometime & he can tell us more stories. He's going to try to get us more pictures, and he directed us to good people to contact for maybe some more historical info. In the mean time, I did find this one picture online. It's a postcard from 1907, and juuuuuuuust immediately to the left of this picture is where our house is. So close! :/. But still cool!

As I finish typing here, it is early Monday morning. I'm sure you all have heard about hurricane Sandy heading our way. We expect it to hit tomorrow, maybe this evening, and as far inland as upstate NY. Logically, I can't imagine it being too bad where I live, but I've learned from experience not to underestimate big storms. ;). They're saying we should expect wind gusts up to 80 mph, so who knows!  I'll be sure to update you all as soon as it's over. Fingers crossed that our good luck in VT still stands! :)

New England Fall

I think Fall has always been my favorite time of year. But now that we live in the northeast?  Oh. My. Goodness. I can't even begin to tell you how gorgeous it is every year!  All of these trees and all of the colors across the mountains... Just breathtaking. And there's a couple week span each year where the colors really hit their peak and the state is at its most beautiful. It's one of the areas biggest tourist times too.  (Here they call those folks the "leaf peepers." He he!). But alas I'm not a tourist. I see this out of my own window every day, but I also have responsibilities.  Kids, full time job, you know. Life. It seemed like any day it was gorgeous & perfect for photos I was working, and when I was off I either had entirely too much to do, it was way too overcast for pictures (because it's mountains & the clouds actually cover up the landscape! Lol), or I didn't have my friggin camera with me!  Grr. Well then it rained a lot, the leaves fell, and I missed my chance. Bummer. :/. Next Fall I promise I will make it a point to take some better pics of the trees. I promise!

The view from my son's soccer practice.  Doesn't even do it justice...

But we definitely did take some time to enjoy this time of year. One afternoon, I was sick of looking at all of the leaves covering the driveway, & Mark wanted to earn some cash, so we went out to rake. Poor Mark ended up with a nosebleed about ten minutes into it (darn allergies!) but Natalie was loving being my big helper, so we kept going. Gavin didn't realize what fun it would be, so he chose to stay inside. Anyway, once we got the big pile all raked, Natalie couldn't wait to jump in & throw all of the leaves around again!  LoL

Then daddy came home & helped... Helped her play I mean! ;).

Mark finally felt better, & decided he wanted to be buried in the leaves.

Then Gavin came to his senses & finally decided to join us.

It was so fun!  I've never had so many leaves from one tree to work with!


And last week we headed out to the pumpkin patch. We ended up a little late to do the hay rides & all of that, but that's okay. We'll catch it next year. But we did have fun picking our pumpkins. All organic of course. Because Vermont's cool like that. ;)

Picking out their pumpkins

Always with the coffee in his hands!

My three cuties (who desperately needed haircuts but they're cute anyway! lol)

Our big helper! lol

So about this time last year, it had already snowed once, and it was certainly cold enough to stick. But even though they are calling for a super snowy winter this year, somehow the cold weather has held off. In fact this October has been just beautiful!  I happen to think that God is doing it just for us so we can get some more work done. ;). And Matt is taking full advantage. He's been getting so much done these past few weeks!  Lets see... Back room is all framed in, floor is rebuilt in our bathroom, all of the concrete work is complete, mud room walls are rebuilt, all of the windows are placed, back roof is almost done, trench is dug for electricity, fireplace is being built, basement stairs are being built, boiler & tank placed in the basement, driveway is clear of all of the tear out... And probably a lot more that I haven't listed!  So much progress!!

Our mudroom is back up!

Other side of the house, roof almost done on the back, ready for siding!

What will be our kitchen... yeah we've got a little work to do! lol

He's had countless people approach him asking if he needed help (lots of unemployment here unfortunately) and just recently he's agreed to give a couple of guys a try. I figure for the amount of pay they're asking for & the amount of time they're saving him by doing some of the tedious tasks, we're saving at least that much rent so it evens out!  For the most part it's been working out great. These guys work hard & don't complain & I think that's all Matt could ever ask for.  Now, fingers crossed that everything gets done enough outside & the electricity can get wired before the first snow so we can keep things rolling! :)

My little Natalie is FOUR!

I know every mom looks back on every birthday their kids have & says "where did the time go?"  But seriously!  Where did the time go?!?!  I feel like it was just last week that we were holding that tiny little baby girl in our arms, and now she's so big I can hardly carry her!

So her birthday was actually the 8th, but I had to work, like, constantly since then, so my apologies for the late post.  But here's some highlights of her birthday fun!

First, daddy treated her to some pretty pink roses & a Tangled balloon for his little princess.  

Cheese!

Momma had to follow suit in her typical neurotic style & make a ridiculous cake for just the five of us... (well the four of them, because I can't eat it! lol)  But she loved it anyway & that's all that matters! :)  Since I can't have a big family party for her like I did for the boys at this age, it's the least I could do!

In case you didn't know, those are characters from her favorite show, the Bubble Guppies!

While daddy was making her a special birthday dinner, we let her open her gifts from her Pa-Pa that came in the mail.  Cinderella & a homemade Hello Kitty blanket!  She was thrilled!

Poor girl had to stare at that package for two days! Like I've said before, I'm a mean mom! ;)

Happy Birthday to You...

"Hey Mom!  When you cut the cake, I want to eat Molly's head!" lol  Silly girl! ;)

Then it was time for presents from Mom & Dad & "her" boys!

She's not spoiled at alllll.... :/

She had a couple of favorite gifts.  Her big gift was her very own camera!  She always wants to steal mine, & I never want to give it up because, well, she's little & breaks things. ;)  So she got one she can go nuts with!

Well of *course* it's Hello Kitty!

This little girl tells me she wants to be a "doctor for kids" when she grows up.  Warms my heart! <3  So she got her very own baby doll complete with stethescope & syringe!  I don't think she's put it down since she got it!

Giving baby her medicine.  Too cute!

And, it is also noteworthy what she decided to name this baby.  The other day, I told her "love ya bunches!" and she was very confused.  She said, "Mom, why did you call me Bunches?"  I said, "no sweetie, that just means I love you a lot!"  Well she still thought that was pretty funny & has been calling me Bunches ever since.  Now, she says that's the name of her baby!  rotfl!  Love my silly girl!

Finally, one of the only things she actually asked for was some bubbles.  Not an easy task in October, but daddy found some cute ones, & she took them out for a spin the next day.

Such pure happiness right here! :)

 Not necessarily an eventful day, but we had a very happy girl & we all enjoyed celebrating her!

Hopefully we'll be off to the pumpkin patch this afternoon, so I hope to have a post of Fall Vermont Fun really soon!  Thanks to all of my faithful readers out there.  I'm up to 5,000 hits this afternoon!  Love you all! :)

"Good Fences Make Good Neighbors"

Or in our case, Mr. Frost, a good fence brings out the batshit crazy in our neighbor!

On the 19th, I finally put up the fence that I've been meaning to put up for months. There's not much that I'm able to contribute to building this house, so I was ÜBER proud of myself for getting it done & doing it right.

Ta-da!  Fence is up, round #1

It transformed our otherwise blah little yard & made it look somewhat pretty... or at least that we were trying anyway. ;). We had so many people who were parking in the next door lot stop to tell us how nice it looked, or to thank us for fixing this house. Super sweet people who are the epitome of this town. We left for the evening feeling pretty darn good.

Our neighbor, however, did not have the same good feeling.

I had to work the next day, so Matt went to the house alone. Sometime overnight the jerk put up a string indicating that we were over his property line on one corner. Did I mention that said property is a PARKING LOT?!?! (And a poorly maintained one at that). If it were somebody's home, I would be falling all over myself apologizing for my error and would rectify it ASAP. But a parking lot??? Even the space I did use left plenty of grass between the fence & the gravel. So... I don't get it. Why the big deal?

Matt called him in the morning to try to work it out. He started out trying to be as nice as possible about it, even offering to maintain all the grass on the other side & plant flowers, but he was quickly attacked! The guy went crazy!! He started yelling about how we did it on purpose, that he's sick of us walking through the lot (you know, so we can take our kids down the street to the gas station to the only bathroom we can use... silly us), that he was mad we drove through the lot when we moved here to park our construction trailers behind the house (on our property). He said he was sick of our mess & was going to call the city on us for it (as so many residents are overjoyed & complimenting us on how much better it looks already... Mmm kay...), and then he starts questioning our permits... Simmer down dude! Well I don't know exactly how that conversation ended, but I can tell you I did see the later text. "I want that fence removed TODAY or I will remove it for you." Well considering he already dented the fence somehow when he was putting up the ridiculous string we didn't want to take any chances. It just wasn't worth the argument. So that evening Matt took it all down. :(

We probably could have made a huge ordeal out of it. Should have demanded to see a survey, given him the opportunity to destroy our property & go after him if he wanted a fight. But the truth is we just don't have the energy to fight anymore. We have had to fight for so much that has been owed to us and for all the ways we've been wronged over the last couple of years that this one just seemed so trivial. This is not the place where we wanted to ever have to deal with those kinds of problems ever again. Besides, from what I understand, the Chinese restaurant has a ten year lease on that lot, which means this man is going to be our "neighbor" for a very long time. We'd better make nice now.

So even though I wasn't at all happy about it, today I finished putting the fence back up.

Pardon the construction mess.  We built the back room today too!

 
I was getting more & more angry as I kept finding rocks & humongous roots that needed to be hacked so that I could properly place the stakes, a problem I didn't have the first time. I was thoroughly annoyed that instead of my pretty right angle that fit perfectly up to the house I had to put it at this stupid funky angle that left a space of useless grass for no reason at all. Grr!!

The difference of space that all the fuss was about.  Notice the amount of grass there still was, not to mention the general crappiness of the property in question...  Whatever dude.

But it's back up now, and it still looks pretty good. And I now have one very happy puppy who can run & play.

Copper hugging my leg saying "Thanks Mom!" ;)

And if this man even lets "his" grass grow a fraction of an inch too long? Lord help him. ;)

Ballerina Girl

I don't know about you moms of girls out there, but for me, one of the first things I looked forward to as soon as the doctor told me "It's a Girl!!" is ballet lessons.  It's something I grew up with & loved, & I very much wanted to share that with my daughter someday.  I'll be honest, I would be pretty heartbroken if she was never interested, but thankfully for me it's all she's talked about for at least a year, & the time has come!  Her first lesson was on Thursday, & she was SO excited! 

Getting ready at home

Gotta try on those fun tap shoes too! ;)

Look at my pretty tutu!

I got this, Mom...

A little shy & nervous.  She needed a little pep talk from Momma, and finally teacher's hand to hold, but she did great!

Natalie & her new friends!  About time to close the door Mom & Dad!  See you soon! :)

Once she got over her shyness & jumped in, she had a great time!  I was so proud of her, and I think she was proud of herself too.  It's still pretty hard for her to meet new people & step away from mommy & daddy, but she did such a great job.  And she's been talking about all of the things she learned ever since! I think tutu's & costumes, tights & dance shoes, rehersals & recitals will all be in our near future!  (Yay! ;))