December 2nd WE HAVE MOVED IN!

We got rid of that really ugle temproary door and have our new cool front door.

Here is our finished house. Now in the spring we will start the yard and grass.

Here are the shelves in the kitchen finished with the lights behind them.

Our mud room where we come in from the garage with the lockers to the right.

We are waiting for the hooks to hang the coats and stuff in the lockers to get things organized.

Here is the fireplace in the family room with the TV above it.

The wet bar is to the left and all the TV/stereo equipment we need to touch is in the bracket in the wall. All of the big equipment and wiring is under the stairs behind this bracket.

We bought new furniture for the family room. Everything reclines so there is no more fighting over the recliner.

Here is the craft room almost finished with all the doors and drawer fronts on. I am so excited to get this room organized and start enjoying it.

The wine sitting room with the new furniture that is the same stuff as the family room.

The game room that is behind the family room. We have a game system for the kids that they are getting for Christmas. This is all their board games in the room right now. The spent the entire evening last night playing with their games because they haven't seen them in a while.

The hockey room has already had several hours of use. They played hockey while we moved boxes and stuff into the house.

Here is the exercise room. I have owned a treadmill for a while, but never used it. I guess I have no excuse now, I have a room big enough for it.

I don't know how these pictures got out of order, but here is the other half of the wine sitting room with the new furniture.

Goalie

At the Mite level, each kid has goalie pads for a week at practice to they them out and see if they are interested in being goalie. Declan had the pads last week and loved every minute of it. We are still hoping his love for scoring beats out being a goalie.

My proud goalie, Declan.

November 20th Finishing the House

Here is my craft room still in progress.

We had the floors and walls stained of the wine cellar.

Finally we were able to take all the cardboard off the stairs because people were basically done going up and down with stuff. These stairs go from the main floor to the upper level both of which are hardwood.

We are doing shelves with these brackets around our kitchen window. We didn't want to do cabinets and close off the view and light.

The fridge panels are now on.

We ordered a bed from Beds by Design in Fargo. Our mattress has been horrible for a couple years and we are very excited to have a new one that is very comfortable.

The stacked ovens are also installed into the wall in the pantry. I have had people ask me why they are in the pantry. You can see the opening to the kitchen to the left of this picture and our cooktop is on the other side of this wall. The fridge is on the opposite side of this doorway. It just seems to work and we don't have to have the heat from the ovens make the kitchen really hot.

Here is the doorway I discussed above. The ovens are to the left of this picture. The full fridge or drink fridge and deep freeze are also in the pantry. You can see all the storage we made to the right for food and extra kitchen stuff. These go up to the ceilings and the ceilings are 9ft. Yes, I will need a step stool and I have to plan carefully what I put up there.

The storage cabinets.

To the left of the picture with the fridge and deep freeze is this doorway to our mini laundry area. The main laundry units are upstairs. I was trying to avoid carrying everything you need to wash up the stairs like hockey clothes, coats, etc.

Here is our library with the lights installed on the post. We are going to have a couple of comfy chairs on 2 sides of the post for reading and relaxing. The steel floor above looks really cool at night with these lights on. It looks like stars in the sky. I tried to take a picture of it, but it didn't work.

The beds for the kids are still in the process of being made by a friend. We bought the full size mattresses for the kids and they are using them on the floor right now. Here is Isaac.

Here is Declan. The kids were very excited because these new mattresses are way more comfortable than what they had.

I was on the upper level taking pictures of the kids beds and couldn't resist taking this one looking at the library.

We are so close!

I don't really have any new pictures to post because there haven't been any real big changes in the last few days at the house. Most of the stuff in the house will be done by the end of this week. Our woodworking stuff will have to push into next week a bit because he is only one person and can only work so fast. He does awesome, good quality work so we are totally fine waiting for him to finish. We are going to move some stuff out to the house this weekend and maybe slowly during the week next week. We are planning on moving beds and clothes and stuff next week after Thanksgiving. So I guess I would say the BIG MOVE IN DATE would be FRIDAY NOVEMBER 28th. I want to wait until the weekend to give the kids a couple days in their new bedrooms before we have to throw school into the mix. I will be sending out emails when all of the internet and stuff will be switching and when to send stuff to the new address.

Nov. 14th

The fireplace looks much better without the white next to it, doesn't it? Our painters were out last week doing some touch up painting.

Here is my craft room with the cabinets getting installed. He has the countertop on and again I didn't have my camera with when I saw them tonight. We checked things out after the kids' hockey practice this afternoon.

Here is the other wall of cabinets. The ceiling is lower on this wall for ductwork, so we made these taller for a work area. There is going to be a big table in the middle of the room.

We are hoping everything will be finished this week and we can start moving in this weekend. The electricians are waiting for some shelves to be installed so they can come and put up the lights on those shelves and lights in the library. Then they have a few odds and ends to finish up and they are done.

I believe the plumbers are done. The contractors guys only have a few more things to finish up, but nothing big. And our sound system guy has more speakers to be put in the ceilings and to bring in our equipment. We ordered it all from him because all of our stuff is really outdated. Cross your fingers all goes well this week!

November 7th

Here are cabinets going into the craft room. I need to take a more updated picture in that room because he now has the ones in the middle of the room in place.

The mantel on the family room fireplace is finished. We made a smaller version of the wine cellar one on this side.

The family room. The suede paint needs to be done by the mantel and they are going to be doing touch up painting tomorrow. The darker color through the doorway is the wine sitting room. The next doorway is the craftroom. There is a double pocket door between those rooms.

The doorway you see to the right is the mechanical room.

Jeff and Bruce, cabinet guy, designed the library together. If we were to do all wood book shelves between the windows it was going to cut off most of the view. You would literally have to stand in front of each window to see out. Jeff designed these steel rods and brackets for the wood shelves to sit on. These are more open and doesn't cut off the view as much as the wood did.

The boys said right now it looks like a bunch of fishing poles hanging. They are kinda right. It will look better after the shelves get put on.

Kindergarten Projects

In Kindergarten you bring home lots of crafts. Here is all the stuff Isaac made for October and Halloween. We take pictures of our projects so mom can put them in the scrapbooks. Then we keep only the most favoite ones in a tote and the rest get thrown away. Yes, choosing favorites is not easy.