the new {old} house

About halfway through my pregnancy with Finn, we suddenly realized that our house was too small.  Well, actually, we'd known that for a long time, but we had made our small space work pretty well for us.  We had about 1,200 square feet with one real bedroom and a loft that was perfect for our three little boys.  We did a lot of renovating in that little house (much of which STILL isn't finished...) and we never felt like we could put it on the market without fixing some things we didn't have time to fix, so we just stayed there. We knew we needed more room, eventually, but it wasn't until we were preparing for the arrival of a fourth child that it really sank in.

So, one cold night towards the end of January, Kevin called me into his study (which was actually more like a glorified closet) points to his computer screen and says "I want this house."

I laughed and waddled my pregnant self over to see what he was talking about.

"There's a fireplace in the master bedroom.  I want this house." he said again.

You'd think after 10+ years of marriage, moments like this wouldn't surprise me, but they still do.

"I didn't know we were in the market for a house" I said jokingly as I took a closer look.  The house was nice, built in 1920 and in a nearby neighborhood that we always admired as we strolled by on evening walks.  And it was HUGE. 5,200 square feet to be exact.  It had almost all of our non-negotiables: a garage and shed for Kevin, old house character for me, a big yard for the kids, fireplaces (3 to be exact), more than one bathroom (5, actually).  It even had some bonus things like a great big walk in closet and a huge master bedroom that you wouldn't expect in an old home.  And the price was very reasonable.

(All pictures are from the original MLS listing)

"I'm going to go look at it tomorrow" Kevin told me.

So he did, and then we all went to look at it a few days later when they had an open house.  And then we put an offer in on it that was immediately accepted. Voila!  Well, that was easy, right?

Wrong.

Everything was done on our end and on the seller's end, but now the bank had to appraise the house...which took FOUR months.  No joke.  We were sitting in packed boxes at our old house waiting and waiting and waiting.  We brought Finn home to a house full of boxes and we were STILL waiting.  My maternity leave ended and we were STILL WAITING. The bank ended up doing 3 separate appraisals and the day after the third one we finally got the go ahead to close.

Part of the problem was that the house had been used for many years as a daycare, and the back bonus room and basement bonus room below it were just weird...as were their adjoining bathrooms with two mini toilets and two mini sinks each.  That's right, folks, this house had a total of SEVEN toilets in it.  We went from one...to SEVEN.

The rest of the house was fairly normal.  There was a nice sitting room/sunroom just off the main entrance...

Which led to this dining room with eight foot pocket doors and an AMAZING built in with original craftsman woodwork.

That little door on the right side of the dining room led into a strange passage which led into the (sad, dated, gloomy) kitchen.  I may or may not have had a panic attack one night thinking about this kitchen...

Do you see that brownish "trim" near the ceiling?  That was actually brown plexiglass with florescent lighting behind it.  And then there was this little railing on top of the cabinets at the far end of the room with fake grapevines sticking out of ancient floral foam...this is the stuff nightmares are made of, people.

Then there was this vast empty, purposeless room with more fluorescent lights.  It led into the daycare/bonus room on one side and the garage and living room on the other...

Here's the living room.  More beautiful woodwork, built-ins and a fireplace.  Also, notice the LOVELY fluorescent lighting.

This completed a big loop back to the front door, foyer, and the staircase leading to the second floor. That was when the carpet started...most of it TEAL.

Upstairs there were a total of four bedrooms...however the MLS listing only had pictures of three of them.

The Guest Room

The "Gym Room"

Guest Bath

And then there was the master bedroom. This was the PINKEST master bedroom you've ever seen. Pink wallpaper. Pink carpet. Pink tile. Pink rug. Pink blinds. Pink bedspread.  But, oh, look at that fireplace.

But the pink was quickly forgotten because it was outdone by the most hideous green wallpaper I've ever seen in the master bath.  And it was ON THE CEILING!  Also, the only washer and dryer in the house was located upstairs in the master bath.

BUT there was a walk in closet...a big one, and it was the size of our bedroom at our old house.

We saved all the money we could to start the many renovations we had in mind, and promptly had to spend it ALL on three fairly major plumbing leaks, two of which involved the only working showers, relocating the washer and dryer to the empty room off the kitchen and putting a full bath into the "daycare bathroom" on the main level so we would have a working shower/bathtub.  We also put in a privacy fence to close off the backyard so we could trap contain our littles, and painted the mauve-ish house exterior a light greenish gray.

The third plumbing leak was in the kitchen.  The sink had a leak that just POURED water onto the counter anytime the faucet was on and, judging from the damage to the cabinets and floors it had been there for a LONG time.  Kevin had to rip out everything down to the floor joists...and while he was at it he gutted the kitchen and knocked out two walls.  But that's a long story for another post.

We really didn't get to complete any of the fun renovations we had planned, and now, two years later, we are still making very slow progress on a lot of areas in our home.  But it's worth it to have so much room for our family and we really love our new (old) house.

I'll be posting before and afters of what we have done, and (hopefully) some new work-in-progress posts as well :)

finn's vintage baby shower

While I'm catching up, I HAVE to share photos from Finn's baby shower.  It was the first time I'd ever had a big baby shower, and it was wonderful!  The best part was, Finn came early so he was able to attend as the guest of honor :)

My friend Jentry hosted the shower in her beautiful farmhouse amongst all her vintage amazing-ness.  Some of my very best friends in the world made sure every detail was perfect. I am so blessed to be surrounded by such thoughtful and creative women!  It was an unforgettable day!

vintage sock monkies

tea bag shortbread cookies

stacks of vintage books

sweet vintage baby clothes that my dad wore as an infant

lovely photos from Finn's photo session were everywhere!

my friend Jennifer made a darling bunting out of an old book

Jennifer also made this beautiful cake with pineapple flowers

my lovely friend, Molly

my beautiful friend, Missy

my lovely friends Melanie, Jentry (hostess) and Cathy

the food was to die for!

my amazing friend Jennifer

my lovely mother

sweet friends

the guest of honor!

catching up...

I'm way to OCD to just pick up this blogging thing from the present moment, so I'm going to do a few posts just to catch up...it's actually just a good excuse for me to look at old pictures :)

So, when I fell off the face of the blogosphere I was just a few months pregnant with our fourth child.  I didn't know I was once again incubating a man-child, and had secret visions of sugar plum fairies and pink tutus and names like Adelaide, Olivia, and Sophia dancing through my hormone-riddled brain.  I figured my odds of having a girl must be increasing as, technically, it's a about a 50 percent chance of squeaking an X chromosome in there every time.

But oh no.  Not in this gene pool. We only make boys.

I tried not to be disappointed. I mean, really, there are people dealing with so much worse.  I was carrying a healthy, growing, normal baby boy, and shedding tears because I, once again, was not having a daughter.  I know moms of all one gender can surely relate to the angst I was feeling :)

My pregnancy was fairly uneventful.  My OBs watch me like a hawk because I have a history of severe pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome with my second pregnancy.  I've been able to behave myself through my last two pregnancies, although I have noticed how much harder each one gets on my body.  This time around, by my third trimester I was waddling around VERY slowly, and wearing all sorts of supportive apparatus.  I felt OLD.

At thirty-five weeks on the nose my water broke.  I had to go to the hospital and bribe my fellow OB nurses to let me have a little of the nitrazine paper we use to determine if a patient's water has truly broken or not.  I didn't want to get checked in to the hospital if it was a false alarm, and if it wasn't I needed to go home and pack (you'd think I would have done that already).  The nitrazine was positive and I left, promising to return within an hour or two.  They warned me they would come looking for me if I didn't.

I distinctly remember going home and having to go down to the root cellar at our old house that was piled high with boxes and had no light and spiderwebs and scary things all over and dig around trying to find the boxes with newborn and postpartum essentials.  I was pretty sure something was going to collapse on me and my nurse friends would finally come looking for me when I didn't show up at the hospital, and find me in hard labor, trapped in my root cellar...but I made it out unscathed.

I wasn't having any contractions at all, so as soon as I got checked in and settled, my OB and I agreed to try a little Pitocin to try to get things going.  By noon I was starting to feel contractions.  By four thirty I wanted an epidural.  By five nineteen we had a beautiful baby boy! He had a rather rough start (as in he didn't want to breathe). My good friend Jen was there as my labor support and was a little horrified that Kevin was remarking on his son's lack of "spontaneous respirations" to the NICU nurse as if he were talking about the weather.  I tell you what, you don't get much sympathy when both your parents are nurses. But after some persuasion, the baby did decide that he wanted to live after all and he started breathing and crying and he was finally bundled up and handed to his mama. I kissed him told him I loved him very much, boy parts and all, and then he was whisked off to the NICU for observation.

We named him Phineas David (David after my father) and it was decided that we would call him Finn for short.  I had a great deal of angst about the spelling.  I wanted to spell it Finneas to avoid confusion regarding his initials and to help those poor people in the general public who still don't know that "Ph" says the same thing as "F".  But Kev insisted on the Biblical spelling.  I'm glad he did, it looks so much better even as I'm typing it.  I've really only started calling him Phineas since he turned two anyway...it sounds MUCH more serious than "Finn" when you yell it.

He was so sweet and tiny and precious.  He got to come home with us despite a 24-hour stint in NICU.  He was a perfect baby.  He ate and slept like a pro and loved to be held.  I was happy to oblige as newborns are my favorite kinds of humans.

(That picture makes me want a baby...bad.)

A sweet friend of mine gave me the gift of a newborn photo session in her studio.  Here is her blog post with some of the beautiful photos she took of Finn and I.  I used them to design his birth announcements which went out....wait for it.....with our Christmas cards in 2012.  Yes, he was born in March. Hey, it saved on postage! That's how I roll.

here i am.

I've thought about this post for two and a half years.

Two and a half years full of life.  Full of mothering, working, loving, crying, making, moving, birthing, traveling, cooking, schooling, and just living.

I knew I was falling behind on my blog posts, but I also knew I was barely keeping my head above water every day trying to keep up with...well, LIFE.  The longer I went without updating, the more I knew I had to catch up on, so the more I avoided thinking about it.

And now it's been two and a half years.

I actually don't regret it in a way.  I am a firm believer in the wisdom of recognizing changing seasons of life. What works now might not work in six months, or a year...but then it might work again in five years.  Part of living life to it's fullest is recognizing the season you are in, and embracing it.

Now I'm not saying I've always embraced this last season with joy, but I did have the wisdom to let some things go.

One of them was my blog.

I had another baby boy. We moved to a different house.  We changed jobs. My boys grew inches, then feet. Time marches on...

As I look back at my past posts, I'm overwhelmed by how much bigger my boys are, and how fleeting the moments I have with them are, and I know it's time.  They're not ALL babies anymore.... I have a little more time than I did.  I want to take advantage of the occasional quiet moments I find to help myself cherish the season I'm in, and the moments and memories that are forgotten all too soon.

A lovely friend of mine is moving away this week.  She's moved away before, but always came back.  This time it's different, they sold their home and bought a new one a whole state away. I'm going to miss her.  A few days ago, we were chatting about how we each need to blog so we can keep up with one another.  I made some joke about my blog, and the fact that my last post was announcing my pregnancy with my now two year old.

"I loved your blog!" She said.

Then she said something that I haven't stopped thinking of since.  She jokingly suggested that maybe all the mothering, pastoring, worship leading, nursing, etc. just needed to stop so that I could write more.

I think she's right. Maybe I can't completely STOP those things, but I can make room in the midst of them to be intentional about writing.... contemplating....savoring.   It's time to stop and MAKE time to remember.  Time to MAKE time to process this season and these sweet moments.

So here's to seasons.  New seasons and old.  Living presently, cherishing the past, and looking forward to the future.

the boys' room...

summer milestones...

It's been quite the Summer, with lots of momentous events.

Josiah lost his first two teeth...but not before the permanent ones started coming in and made him look like a shark (freaked this mama out!)

He also ditched the training wheels on his bike!  That really made me feel like he was a big boy...I don't know if anyone else sees that as a major milestone, but he went from little kid to big kid in one fell swoop in my mama brain.

Elijah is now wearing underwear...after a long struggle he finally succumbed to his parents' iron will. The final straw for him was getting a "Lullypop" for doing his thing in the "tulet"

I'm willing to take the stigma of being known as "that mom" who lets her kids ride around the block in their underwear, just to prove to all that my kid really is potty trained.

Noah is FINALLY starting to talk a little more.  I think he's stringing us along, and could probably speak in paragraphs if he wanted to, but just talks to us enough that we're satisfied that he's not completely deaf or in need of intervention.  Two of his latest additions are "Popeye" and "mine" the latter of which we hear incessantly as he is two.

And the last great milestone of the summer is that I am pregnant with our fourth child!  I'm starting to come out of the first trimester fog...it's been rough and my house has suffered a lot of collateral damage. Fortunately I have some wonderful young lady friends who have helped with watching the boys and keeping up the house. I'm due around the beginning of April.  This pregnancy came as something of a surprise, although we were considering adding to our number again, and were about ready to think about "trying"

That's really all we have to do is think about it.

checking in.

Well, I have been conspicuously absent from this spot for several months now. The summer has flown by! The biggest reason I haven't posted is that my computer's power cord died and I had to wait about a month for a new one (long story), so I haven't been able to use my mac or upload pictures from my camera. So, I have a camera full of photos to sort through and post...sometime. We have come to the decision to homeschool our eldest son for Kindergarten this year, which is adding to the sense I have that blogging may be slipping down on my priority list.

I am feeling a mounting sense of urgency to get my butt organized, and hope to incorporate blogging into the mix...but as of this moment, I need to just clear a path through my laundry room and find the sink under all the dishes!

I do want to share a new favorite blog. Don't look unless you have half a day to oogle.

And I have found this blog most helpful in journey toward beginning to homeschool (as well as inspiration for getting organized...this gal is amazing).