What I Am Grateful For This Week - Our New House

The time has FINALLY come! Those of you who know me, know that I have been looking at houses for two years. I am sooooo excited. Mike and I have finally agreed on a house that we both like. This house is so big that we will be able to live in it for a long time. We put a contract on it this week.


It is over 4100 sq. feet and sits on over an acre, it has 7 bedrooms, 4 1/2 baths, three of the bedrooms are master bedrooms. It has a cute porch. When you first walk in there is a living room on the left with doors. We are going to put built-in bookcases in there and make it a library. There is a dining room on the right. When you walk a little farther there is an open circular staircase on the right and a 1/2 bath on the left. When you walk farther you go in to the family room. It has walls at the opening of the family room which we are going to tear down to make it more open.

There are two masters on each of the back corners of the house. The one on the left will be me and Mike's the one on the far right will be the office. When you go down the hallway where the staircase is you go into the kitchen. It has a little hallway to go into the dining room. There are triple the number of drawers that I have now and there are double the number of cabinets. There is a walk-in pantry!!!! There is also a really cool 500 sq. ft. deck on the back that is covered and has ceiling fans. When you keep going past the pantry you come to the 3 car garage on the right and dead in to the laundry room. I have never had a laundry room! You then turn left to go into the office.

Upstairs has 5 bedrooms including a huge FROG with a walk-in closet. There is a master upstairs that Abby is going to get. She is so excited about having her own room AND having a bathroom in it as well.

The exterior is all brick so we will not have to power wash ever again!

Anybody and everybody is welcome to come visit! We will definitely have the room now.

Map

My Evil Plan

I am so tired of my children not only not cleaning on Saturdays before 4pm, but I am tired of them making huge messes until that time too. So, I have come up with a PLAN!!!! I am sure this will go down in history as mom being the meanest person on earth to make them work on Saturday before they play and watch TV. I have devised a Saturday morning chore chart. They will have to do this before playing outside, playing on the computer or watching TV. I will print off a new one every Friday night of the new things that need to be done. Here is what I did this morning:

Saturday Morning Chores

Everybody has to:

· Clean their room
· Pick up 4 buckets of gumballs

Pick Two

· Wipe baseboards in kitchen
· Wipe baseboards in family room & hallway
· Dust family room (tables, bookcases & piano)
· Windex kitchen (oven, microwave & windows)
· Windex wipes all pictures in house
· Wipe down inside of kitchen refrigerator

They have to write their names down by the two that they pick. I will post a new chore chart on the kitchen wall every Friday night. When they get to be teenagers and actually sleep in past 7am this will be a good incentive to get them to get up and not get the very last two "BAD" chores.

We will see how this goes tomorrow. I will post and let you guys know.

52 Things I Am Grateful For

I am stealing this idea from Cindy Reed's blog. She is writing something she is grateful for every week this year. Thanks for the great idea Cindy!

This week I am grateful for such a sweet and loving Abby. She is always trying to do her best in whatever she is pursuing. She is a hard worker (which she got from me) and somewhat of a perfectionist (which she got from Mike). This morning I went in to her room to wake her up and there was a poster on her wall on top of her bed. This is what I saw when I came in:

This is what I saw upon closer inspection:

I guess it could be worse, she could have a poster of the Cheetah Girls up on her wall :)

Way Too Much Fun!

We had a very fun December. My children are still so sweet and innocent. They asked for the cutest things from Santa.


Abby asked for "101 Things to Make with Cake Mix", a book on how to grow flowers, artwork and some cherry coke. Santa surprised her with a digital camera. She has loved taking all kinds of pictures at all kind of angles. She is quite the artist.



Ben asked for a battery powered toothbrush and a down pillow.




Emma asked for the High School Musical 2 Barbies.




My nephew Ryan was born on December 28th. He is Jenny and David's first child. They are so excited and cute.



We had a New Year's Eve Party at our house with my family. We took a cute picture of Emma and Emily (her 6 year old cousin) with their two front teeth missing.