Remodeling Blueprints

Since we decided to go to the library and grocery shopping on Friday night, we had a "free" day on Saturday. E didn't have band in the morning, but Josh went to work til lunchtime (where he found that one of his servers had crashed, but he got it up and running again before coming home to eat).

As I think I've mentioned before, Josh's work has a computer program where you can design houses and buildings to scale. Josh had taken all the room measurements beforehand, and we had a pretty good idea of how we wanted our remodeling plans to be, but we still needed to get all the measurements down and see how things looked to scale.

After lunch we all went over to Josh's work. E and G did some homework, and the kids watched a movie and played in the halls while Josh and I spent the afternoon working on the remodeling blueprints. It was fun!

The computer program is pretty awesome because you can view what your plans look like in 3D, complete with furniture even! Josh said he could make a video walk-through of our plans and send it to me, but for now, I can show the 2D blueprints. (None of the plans I'm posting have measurements on them other than the total square footage of the level because we didn't print them with those options for now.)

Our house is a tri-level with an unfinished fourth basement level under the living room and kitchen level.

(Our house last fall)

The washer and dryer are currently in the basement, and we will be keeping them down there. Here is a picture of what we plan on doing.

The bifold door in the boys' room gives access to the back side of the furnace. The stairs go up to the family room level (lower level with walk-out patio doors you can see in the above house photo).

Now for the upstairs ...

Here's the way the bedroom level is currently laid out. (I drew in the bathroom fixtures on this plan at home, so they aren't to scale, but you get the idea.)

Here are our plans for the upper floor. (This time the bathroom fixtures are to scale.)

The door between the master bedroom and master bathroom is a pocket door. It's a bit odd to have 2 windows in the master closet, but we are keeping all the windows in the house as is.

After getting back home and pouring over the plans some more, Josh decided to move the wall separating the master bedroom and master closet into the closet another 6 inches. We'd also like to put a corner electric fireplace in where the master bedroom jogs out toward the master closet.

The funny thing is that we designed the floor plan and then took a look at how many square feet each of the bedrooms would be. Both our bedroom and the girls' room was the exact same size ... 189 sq ft! (Although ours will be a bit bigger now with bumping that closet wall back.) When we took a look at the sq footage for the boys' room, it came out to 188 sq ft! Wow! We couldn't have done that if we'd tried! Funny how they all worked out that way!

Josh still has some tweaking to do to the blueprints, specifically in regard to the electrical plans, before he can submit them to the building inspector to get the needed permits, but he said that he'd like to start by digging the hole for the egress window in the boys' room around May 1.

A New Twist on the Lenten Supper

E rearranged the pepperoni on tonight's pizza to fit with the Lenten season.

A No-School Monday

There was no school today due to the teachers having meetings at the high school.

I took the kids in to work with me, but I only worked about 3 hrs. Then we went to Cousins for lunch and used a gift card I'd gotten for Christmas. All the kids loved it except for S. He wouldn't eat any of a sub (I was just going to share mine with him.), but he was happy enough to just drink a cup of water with a straw. I made him a pb sandwich when we got home.

I gave G and F their piano lessons today while E practiced her clarinet. Then the girls and I went up to their room and cleaned up a bunch of it. We didn't finish, but got about halfway done.

I also got all of the dark colored valances washed and put back up (except for the one in the boys' room) and dusted the whole house except for the kids' rooms. In fact, the dusting is what sparked the cleaning of the girls' room because I wasn't able to dust anything since everything was covered with toys, projects, papers, etc. The boys' room needs to be cleaned out, too, but I'll get to that.

... And, yes, my kids do clean their own rooms, but their idea of that is usually to shove things under their beds and put the rest of their papers and projects in piles rather than cull through them and toss them or find permanent places for them. The toys do tend to get put away ... or atleast make it to the family room.

A Valentine Message

We're CRAZY for you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Basketball Weekend

Friday J and G had their yearly checkups at the dr's. Josh took them. Apparently the 2 boys were quite the comedic duo for the dr while they were there.

E had a basketball game in N. E, F, S, and I went to that E could be at the school 30 min before her game while Josh and the other 2 drove separately from the dr's office.

The other team had some 6th graders who also had to play A team basketball later in the night, so they had to take them out for part of the game. At halftime, we were down 12-2. The other team didn't play their 6th graders during the 3rd quarter, and in those 6 min, we scored 20 pts, and the score at the end of the 3rd quarter was 22-12! Then their 6th graders came back in for the 4th quarter, and we lost 29-24. It was an interesting game!

E had a basketball tournament in H today. Her first game was at 9:00 am. We lost. G was invited to go with his friend in the interim time between the girls' games, so we let him.

When E's game was done, we drove 30 min back to the kids' school for J's C team basketball game. They lost, but J scored his second basket of the season.

Then it was a 30 min drive back to H for E's second game. We ate a lunch of sandwiches in the van on the way.

Our girls won their second game, and E made her first basket during a game for the season! The look on her face was great, and it was neat because all of our fans really cheered loudly for her when she made it. In addition to that, E really played a good game, sticking to the person she was guarding, shooting alot, and not just standing in one place.

Since it was the end of E's season, the coach treated the girls to custard at Culver's. We all went along and had some, too. Yum!

Then we had to go to a ballroom in H. Josh's work's charity auction is going to be held there again this year, but the ballroom has gotten a new sound system since the last time we had an auction there. Since Josh is in charge of the sound stuff for the auction, he wanted to check out the new system, so we stopped there for about 15 min before.

We still needed to go grocery shopping for the week, so we stopped at Wal-mart in H, and did our shopping there before heading back home.

February Snow Day

Thank you, God!

I really, really needed a day "off", a day where I didn't have to be anywhere but home. So did E who needed a day to catch up and get on top of her homework. And God provided!

E spent much of the day doing homework that is due later in the week and in the weeks ahead.

I was able to get caught up on money/budget/banking stuff and clean up and organize the bookshelves in the family room closet. I sorted through the books, culled out the ones that were beyond repair, set aside the ones that I could repair, and pulled out a bunch of the baby board books with the intention of giving them to a friend. Later I fixed the books that needed it.

I also pulled the toys out of the other closet in the family room and had the kids put the toys away in their proper places. There were lots and lots of Legos, K'nex, and Playmobile pieces that were just shoved into the closet, quite a mess! But the kids did a really good job of cleaning up and putting away what I took out.

First Place!

E had band practice early this morning.

Then she came home, and I spent 45 minutes doing her hair for her cheerleading competition. (All the girls had to have high ponytails with curls.)

I worked concessions at E's cheerleading competition but was able to get into the gym to watch her squad perform. They did a GREAT job and ended up winning first place in their division!

E is on the right with her back to the camera.

E is in the middle holding the 2 girls' feet on her shoulders.

Meanwhile ...

Josh took the rest of the kids along to LF's funeral.

Then they went home to eat lunch before taking G to his classmate NT's birthday party at a bowling alley. G got 6 strikes!

While G was at the party, Josh and the remaining 3 kids went to Menard's to get a new service door for the garage, some paint, and a whole bunch of drywall.

When I got home, I discovered 6 peachy pink roses in a vase on the kitchen table. Josh bought them for me because he knew I hadn't had a great week, and he thought they'd make me feel better! :)

What a Week!

... and it's not done yet!

I don't mind having a busy week sometimes, but it seems like every week has been really busy lately. This week was no exception and seemed even more hectic than the last few weeks have been, especially the end of it.

In addition to working at church M-F this week ...

Wednesday:

• E had cheerleading practice.


• Josh had a special church council meeting.

Thursday:

• I had a dr appt to address the stomach pains I've been having (most likely an ulcer).


• E had basketball practice.


• I worked concessions at night.

Today:

• S and I went to the library and grocery shopping.


• E had a basketball game.


• Josh and I had to supervise for 2 hrs during the games.


• E and the cheerleaders performed their competition routine at halftime of the B boys' game.


• I went to LF's (Josh's coworker whose grandchildren I used to babysit) wake/visitation since I won't be able to go to her funeral tomorrow.

Rethinking Remodeling Plans

Josh and I have been planning to finish our basement this summer, adding 2 additional bedrooms down there. Before getting our building permit, Josh had to contact someone with our county's planning dept and get their approval first because we have a septic system. In doing so, he found that the number of bedrooms our house has determines the size of septic system we are required to have. Due to the size of our septic system, we can only have 3 bedrooms in our house. If we want to add more, we have to put in a bigger septic system. Ironically, we can add more bathrooms with our current septic system. (How much sense does that make?!)

We need the bedroom room. The boys are okay in their room now, but it's tight, and as they grow older, we will definitely need more room for them.

Even though the plan was for E and J to each have their own room in the basement, G and S to share upstairs, and F to have her own room upstairs, it looks like we will have to stay with a boys' room and a girls' room.

So now, the plan we're considering is to remodel the whole upstairs so that the 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom up there are turned into 2 larger bedrooms with 1 regular bathroom and 1 master bathroom. Then, the 2 bedrooms we were planning to put in the basement will turn into 1 large bedroom for the boys.

We were all disappointed in learning that we couldn't do what we'd been planning for quite a while, but we can't put in a new septic system and add the bedrooms. It's one or the other. Although the revisions we're considering will still cost more than our initial plans, they're still more feasible than dealing with the septic system.

Last night Josh and I played around with layouts and plans, measuring things, etc., and trying to come up with a way that we could get things to work. I think we've got about half of it worked out, but Josh needs to play around with some kind of program they have at his work that can draw up accurate building plans.

Basketball, Basketball, and More Basketball

Thursday night I worked concessions again. Even though it was dead on Tuesday, we were really busy that night.

E had a basketball game last night. Her team lost.

G was at a classmate's birthday party all yesterday evening.

J had a basketball game this morning. I finally got some pics of him playing.

His team lost, too.

After J's game, we hurried home for lunch before taking E back to school for an extended cheerleading practice. Their cheer competition is coming up next week Saturday, so they had a special 3 hr practice this afternoon.

While E was at practice, the rest of us went to the library and grocery shopping. We also picked up Josh's college diploma from Hobby Lobby. (Josh has been talking about getting it framed for years. It's an odd size, so we knew it wouldn't be cheap. At Christmastime, I'd told him that part of his present this year was to get his diploma framed.)

We got home just in time for me to drive back to school to get E from cheer practice.

I cut Josh's and all 3 boys' hair tonight.

Movies, A Party, and Good Deals

Josh and the kids watched Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs last night. I peeked in here and there while working on the computer. From the bits I saw, I wasn't real impressed.

Then, after the kids were in bed, Josh and I watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We both liked it, but, as with most books-turned-into-movies, the book was better. There's just so much more to a book that doesn't lend itself to screenplay and/or would make a movie extremely long.

Church this morning, then back home to eat lunch.

E was invited to classmate SP's birthday party at the roller rink in C this afternoon. I took her, and, instead of going back home and picking her up when the party was done, I went shopping at some stores nearby. There wasn't really anything in particular that I was looking for other than a valentine card for Josh which I ended up not getting because I couldn't find one I liked. However, I came away with some good deals from Kohl's.

I'd gotten a $15 Kohl's gift card for Christmas that I hadn't spent yet. I'd been thinking about getting some dark brown dress pants for work, and I found some on the clearance rack for $14.40 (70% off the original price). I also found a church dress for next winter for E on the girls' clearance rack (60-70% off) and some long sleeved t-shrits with Lego Star Wars on them for J for next winter (about 50% off). I even had a coupon in my purse for 15% off the whole purchase which I'd forgotten about, and yesterday was the last day it was good for. I came away only spending $22 of our money. Good deals!

I picked E up at 3:30. It was only her second time at the roller rink, but she had fun!

In Which I Earn the Bad Mom Award

E had basketball games at her school last night. It was also our night for our "compulsory volunteerism" in which we had to supervise at the games for 2 hrs (make sure there are no problems with fans or students from our school or the other team's and help as needed).

E's team lost, and when her game was done, I handed over the blaze orange supervisor's vest to Josh to wear while I went and finished proofing and printing the bulletins for Sunday since they weren't ready for me yet while I was working there earlier.

After putting the kids to bed, Josh and I watched The Soloist. I wouldn't recommend it. It wasn't horrible or anything, but it was R.E.A.L.L.Y. slow. I think it could have been a good movie, but it just seemed so drawn out when it didn't need to be. I watched the whole thing, but Josh fell asleep during it.

J had a basketball game this morning at P, H. Josh took J and S to the game while I took E, G, and F grocery shopping with me. E and G wanted to come with me and pick out presents for their friends whose birthday parties they will be attending soon, and F wanted to spend the remainder of her $10 money from Christmas. E was scheduled to have a 3 hr cheerleading practice this afternoon (or so I thought), so we had to get the errands run in the morning which meant we couldn't all go to J's game.

J's team won his game.

After lunch I took E to school for her practice. We were about 5 minutes early. Pastor's car was the only one there, but that didn't really faze me since the other cheerleaders usually get dropped off, and the coach gets there right when practice is supposed to start. I watched E open the door and go into the building.

On the way home, I had to stop at Piggly Wiggly to pick up a couple of things that they had really good deals on.

When I pulled into the garage, Josh came out with the phone in his hand and said that E was waiting at school and didn't have practice. Oh, no!

I drove back and picked her up, but I went into the office and checked on my computer there. Practice was scheduled for 1:00-4:00 NEXT Saturday afternoon!

I felt so incredibly horrible! Bad mom award for the day? Yep, that would be mine. :(

At home once again I spent over 2 hrs cleaning the house and folding laundry. Not fun, but productive, and now the house looks much better.

With our permission, J has started reading the Harry Potter books. Someone at school is reading the first one. Because it wasn't in the school library, J started with book 2. When we were at the community library this morning, I checked for book 1, but all the copies there were checked out there, too. Guess I'll have to put it on hold for him.

J just started reading the Harry Potter book this past Wednesday and is already almost done. Pretty good for a boy who mainly enjoys non-fiction!

Random Thoughts and Happenings

This week really got away from me as far as blogging goes. It's not that we've been up to anything especially interesting or out of the ordinary, just busy.

E had basketball practices on Tuesday and Thursday and cheerleading practice on Wednesday.

I had to work concessions Tuesday and Thursday.

Around 10:00 on Thursday night, there was a knock at our door. We couldn't figure out who could be knocking at that time of night. Well, it was my sister R! I'd completely forgotten that she was coming to spent that night and Friday night at our house after working at her waitressing job!

Elizabeth had band practice this morning.

R came with me while I went grocery shopping. Fun sister bonding time, right? :)

Josh tried fixing R's computer this morning, only to find out her hard drive was kaput. Poor Josh ... that's the 5th computer this week he's tried to fix that had that problem!

Tonight we're all going to a contemporary Christian band concert at a local church. I'm looking forward to it. It's the same band we saw back in August. This time Josh is able to come, too.

I've been trying to get back on track with eating better and exercising. I'm doing okay. Not the greatest, but not horrible either. I wish it wasn't so hard. This isn't really a new year's resolution, just a realization that my pants were getting tighter, and the holidays are over, so it's time to do something about it!

And Now It's Just Winter

After church, Sunday School, and Bible class this morning, we drove out to the site where some of our friends are having their new house built. We'd been out there before anything was done, but now the outside walls are up and the stud walls are in place. It was fun to see and imagine what the final product will look like.

Later in the afternoon we took down the Christmas tree ...


... and Christmas decorations ...

... and put the "regular" decor back up.

It's kind of nice to have things back to normal and not have Christmas tree needles all over the floor, but now we still have the longest part of the winter ahead of us.

After the Snowstorm

Our town ended up getting hit the worst in the area with the snow totalling 12". Thankfully for those shovelling and snowblowing, it was a light, powdery snow instead of heavy and wet.

Because the roads still weren't in great shape on Friday morning, school was delayed 2 hrs. I was able to work it out with S's sitter that, since I went in 2 hrs later, he could stay til the end of the school day when I would bring her son home from school when I picked S up. I took our kids to and from school Friday, too.

Josh had the second day of his conference on Friday.

Friday evening E's basketball team played in G. Her team lost 24-20. It was a pretty good game against a good team.

When we got home after E's game, I headed over to the high school to work concessions for Thursday's make-up game. We weren't very busy. I got home a bit after 9:00.

This morning E had group band practice at the high school again. When she finished, we all left for J's basketball scrimmage. It was supposed to be a game, but the team they were supposed to play didn't have enough boys at that level to field a team, so J's team scrimmaged against itself. They played 5 quarters because there was time before the C girls' game. J's team lost after 4 quarters 10-8 but won 12-10 after 5 quarters. J did a good job of getting into the action, getting the ball, dribbling. He even got off a shot or two (which unfortunately didn't go in).

From there we went to WB to go to the library and grocery shopping. We'd gotten some Applebee's giftcards for Christmas from Josh's parents, so between Aldi and Wal-mart, we all went to Applebee's for lunch. Thank you, Mom and Dad! :)

Josh is gone tonight at something for work, so I'm home with the kiddos, overseeing bathtime. Josh won't be back til late, and I'm debating whether I should cozy up with a book or watch another episode of the Love Comes Softly DVD's I've been getting from the library. I've watched the first 6 so far, and Josh has been watching them with me, so maybe I'll just wait.

The Beauty of Falling Snow

Did you ever notice how it can be so quiet when it snows, so peaceful? And there's just something beautiful in falling snow that makes your heart swell with the gorgeosity of it. (Yep, I made that word up, but it seemed the most appropriate) :)

I took this video clip of it snowing yesterday when the kids left to walk out to the bus stop. You can see F at first and then the other kids way off on the left before I panned over to the right.

New 'Do, Take 2

At the risk of appearing narcissistic, I took another pic of myself with my haircut today. It looks better today since I did it rather than just taking a pic after getting it cut. (My hair never looks the way I would do it after coming from the salon.)

I can't believe how curly it's gotten! All of the waves/curls in the above pic are natural and are from letting my hair air dry this morning after washing it. (By the way, the "M" pendant was one of my Christmas presents from Josh this year. More on that in another post.)

My hair has always had a bit of wave to it, but I think it was when I was pregnant with S or Grace, it started to really curl. It seemed to be getting more curl in it recently because I was starting to even get ringlets when it was long, but I was afraid that they'd disappear once I got it cut shorter. (I had curls as a toddler til my hair was cut, and the same happened to E and F.) I'm glad to see the curls and big waves are still there.

Yesterday I said I'd gotten about 5" cut off. After comparing the above pic to this one E took of Josh and me on Christmas Eve, I think it may have been even more.

6"? 7"? I'm not sure, but it looks like a lot.

Hosting Christmas

As I mentioned yesterday, today we hosted a Christmas celebration at our house with my brother and his family, my parents, and my sister.

All 5 of the grandsons received remote control cars from Grammy and Grandpa (my parents).

My dad putting batteries into one of the cars

Once the batteries were in the cars, our family room became the open road ... or maybe the demo derby arena!

Since the 4 older boys' cars were all the same except for the color, the controllers would make more than one car move. At one point, there was a car up in the living room that someone had forgotten to turn off, and it was driving around because someone was in the family room driving another car.

Brother J and nephew E putting together E's Lego gift

The whole clan (except for me) just before eating

Grandpa and Grammy with all 9 grandchildren

A pic of the whole crew (including me since we used my camera's timer)

Father and son

Sis R, E, and SIL L playing Bananagrams. E got the game from my parents as a gift.

(It appears I got off on my numbering for Project 365 somewhere along the line since this should be Day 363, but I've only got it as Day 361 in my sequence. However, since I've got plenty of pictures in this post, I'm going to count this as Days 361-363 to get back on track.)

Christmas Eve 2009

(My 3rd entry in the Christmas Journal photo challenge -- I try not to use the flash so much indoors because I don't like the shadows it casts, but then my pics tend to turn out yellow and grainy in the low light. Any helpful ideas?)

We went to DS's Christmas Eve service where Josh did the A/V for them once again. It had just started to rain when we left home, and when we returned, the rain was coming down pretty hard. Temps were about 35 degrees, but the roads weren't too bad.

Once we got home I took our traditional pic of the kids next to the tree on Christmas Eve. It turned out really well (on the 3rd try)!

As our family has grown, it's gotten harder to take a good picture with everyone looking and no one having a goofy look on his/her face. However, I've learned that the trick is to bribe the kids by saying that if I can get a good picture of them, I will take a picture of them in which they can act as crazy as they want.

Here's the bribery pic of the kids hamming it up.

E took a picture of Josh and me.

After we changed clothes, we set out our supper of sausage, crackers and cheese spread, apple slices, and Christmas cookies, milk and wine, which we ate and drank as we opened gifts.

E was very excited about her new digital camcorder.

Buy Josh tools, and he's a happy man! Actually, he asked for this heavy duty ice chopper.

J has decided he doesn't like getting his picture taken anymore, but I got this one of him with his Lego Millenium Falcon.

G really, really wanted Anakin's Y-wing fighter. He got it!

He was pretty happy about his new Lego Star Wars shirt, too!

E's godmother sent her the cloak for her Elizabeth American Girl doll.

S was super excited to find that he'd gotten some Star Wars Galactic Heroes.

(Are you catching this year's pervasive Star Wars theme?)

But almost nothing can beat stomping on and popping bubble wrap!

F wins the prize for the best expression captured on camera!

She's been saying for weeks and weeks that she wanted an iPod (something to play music). We got her an MP3 player, and she was beyond thrilled! F spent much of the night walking around with the earbuds in, dancing and singing. (I'd asked her the other day what some of her favorite songs were, and last night Josh downloaded a bunch from online to her MP3 player.)

After all the gifts were opened

I love this one of the girls together. E is showing F her camcorder.

Hard at work already

(Day 356 of 365)