One more piece to the puzzle, Our Dining Room Is Finished!!

YES Jeff & I were hard at work the last two days!! He had two days off in a row & THIS is what our dining room looked like. The carpet was badly stained, the walls desperately needed some paint & it was the dumping grounds for flattened down boxes, several misc. boxes that had heavens knows WHAT inside, and boxes that were supposed to go to goodwill. Plus my desk corner stunk like cat pee & I really wasn't happy with how my office stuff was organized on all those track shelves. SOOOOOO - We've been hard at work the last two days going through boxes, taking things to the goodwill & cardboard recycling center, and FINALLY ripping up all that old carpet. Jeff found me a FREE desk that they were getting rid of at LTI that worked wonderfully for my needs! I painted the whole room in an entire afternoon, and made a trip to the lighting store in Sunnyside (I found a great deal on a floor model. It really was a PAIN to install that chandelier, but so very worth it!). Finally, after so much heartache, frustration, and backbreaking labor, this afternoon we finished! To celebrate, we put a turkey in the oven, made some pumpkin pie, and had some friends over for our very first sit-down dinner in our new/old house! It really was so nice to feel like one more big piece of the puzzle was put into place, and having a dining room all set up really made a huge difference on how homey our house feels! Now maybe I can take a break & relax tomorrow?

And the race is on!!! A bit of a rant

OK, so many of you know that EVERY pregnancy has came with a major upheaval in our household during the last month or two of my pregnancy. Keira=Major room remodel, Keanu=House flood & all new flooring, Kalani=House addition/Sunroom remodel, and so THIS pregnancy is no exception!! This time we've moved & our whole lives have been turned upside down. So I have between 1 week and 10 days maybe? And the race is ON to get everything situated in this house so I don't feel like I have tons to do when I get home with a brand new baby. We've still got those two rooms/dumping grounds that need to be set up, a bit of painting, organizing, and putting up decorations, wall hangings, etc... I know myself well enough to know that I NEED to have some kind of control over my life to keep myself  from being an emotional wreck after having a baby. So this week we're racing to get as much done as we can. Don't worry! I have some help & will try not to overdo it! I'll just have to pick & choose the minimum that can be done to have our house livable & comfortable.

At the same time, I've got appointments for stuff I'm selling through Craigslist. I'm trying to clear off our property a bit, so IF anyone is interested in any of the following, contact me OK?   2 used couches, 2 cheap bookshelves, 1 entertainment center, a little TV, a dryer, a stove, a dresser, a crib mattress, 2 older snowmobiles, 40 boxes of artificial stone for use on fireplaces or the exterior of your house, 200 square feet of patio blocks, and WHO knows what else is in that barn~!~ Eventually we'll get around to sorting through everything!

Moved, and on to new beginnings!

YES, we did it!! Over the course of two weekends we moved into mom & dad's old house. And when I say old, I really mean OLD. It's almost 100 years old in fact, but they've done a lot of work on it and the downstairs is pretty nice. We plan on making a few cosmetic changes to the inside pretty soon, but other than that it's pretty comfortable.

The move was quite possibly one of the hardest things I've ever done. Between two houses to clean, TOO MUCH STUFF, taking care of kids, Jeff working 7 day weeks, and being very pregnant, this was a very emotional time for me. I want to extend a BIG THANK YOU to those sisters from the ward who came to help me clean my old house & pack up. And also the sisters who came to help clean the house we're moving in to - as well as sisters who brought meals!! Although there are still boxes here and there, and two rooms are still in a constant state of chaos, we're finally getting settled in & able to actually LIVE in this home. If anyone wants to help me, I still have a room that needs to have it's carpet pulled up & a couple rooms that need painted!! I'll probably end up having to do it myself so I could really use the help!

Our old house will be up for sale shortly. There's a guy in our ward who is going on a mission in January. We've made an agreement with him that he can live there & take care of the place, clean it up, paint etc... for us. So our house won't be empty, and I won't have to worry about painting & making repairs to the old house. This is an enormous blessing for us since the baby is coming so soon!!

The baby's crib is all set up, and we have a changing/nap area at the top of the stairs. The bedroom set I found on Craigslist was so adorable!! So now I'm KIND OF feeling like maybe the end of chaos is in sight & possibly I can be ready for new beginnings.

Shortly I'll be posting pictures of our home (something wrong with Blogger today - it won't let me) We're still in the last moving stages!! Most of the rooms in the house are 90% set up, but there ARE a couple rooms that ended up being the DUMPING GROUNDS. The dining room & family room still need lots of work. But all in all, we're happy to be here & the kids really like it here! There is so much more room for them to run around & play than our last place. Living in the country will take some getting used to though!

17 yrs since the Brain Tumor & counting!

17 years ago today Jeff called me up on the phone (we were dating, but only had been together for about 5 months). For the entire month previously, he had been very sick. He'd had a lot of dizziness, nausea and vomiting, and was unable to keep anything down. I'd visited him every few days to keep him company & he'd been in to see the doctor a couple times (and sent home with tylenol). Well, his mom finally decided to take him to a different hospital, and this was where he called me from.

"They say I have a brain tumor", were his words. It was in the equilibrium section of his brain and they would need to operate immediately. They told him that if he had came even one week later that it would have killed him. Before he went in to surgery, they made him sign all kinds of releases. He was made to understand that he possibly wouldn't survive this operation and that if he did survive there were great chances of brain damage. His recovery time would be months, and he could end up essentially, a vegetable.

So he went into surgery. His famous last words to the nurse before he went under were true to his character, "Silly rabbit, tricks are for kids".

He had an experience while he was under, where he saw his Grandpa who had passed away a few years earlier. His Grandpa showed him a graveside, and he saw me and a couple children (a boy and a girl). He understood that it wasn't his time to go yet, and that he needed to go back.

The tumor was the sized of a triple yolked egg with a cyst around it the size of a grapefruit, but luckily it wasn't cancerous.

When he was still unconcious, his mom began to tickle his back (a very relaxing thing in his family). The nurses came running because it was making the monitors go all wacky. A short while later he awoke. Within a matter of days he was joking around with the nurses and walking up and down the halls. They released him 10 days later, with a bald head, staples up the back of his skull, much weight lost, but with a new lease on life.

I believe that Jeff was allowed to survive this experience for a reason. If he hadn't been given the chance to live his life, he would never have had children, we never would have this wonderful eternal relationship, he never would have been baptized, gone to church, or been to the temple. And I have NO CLUE what my life would have been like! Probably not as good as it is now. I'm grateful to have Jeff in my life. He's an incredibly patient, loving, forgiving person. I'm grateful that the Lord saw it fit 10 years ago to give him another chance at living, the allow him to develop himself, to grow, to have a family. So "happy anniversary" Jeff, may you have many more years with us. Your family loves you with all our hearts!