Seriously, ANOTHER tree.....

So I was putting the children to bed, when all of a sudden, Michael says, "what was THAT??!!" I said, "uh- I don't know, what was what?" he proceeded to tell me it sounded like some cars crashed in our backyard..... looked out the window to see, the above tree in the middle of our yard...... AGAIN! This is at least the 4 or 5th tree (we stopped counting) to fall in our yard..... this one did not hit the house, it is about 4 feet away from the house and 4 feet away from the fence. So far, only one has hit the house. Iyayaya..... this is not what we need right now!! What a mess.......

Sledding

We took the kids sledding yesterday. Most of us had fun... Chase stopped having fun when I pushed him. Now, let me explain-- I think that pushing is part of sledding, he apparently does not. So we went up the hill and he was all ready, so I thought, then I GENTLY pushed him..... he completely misunderstood and thought I PUSHED him, which I didn't. However, there was no changing his mind! Even this morning, when I asked him if he had a good time sledding, he said "No", when I asked why, he said, "because YOU pushed me"! Later I found I out that I pushed him when he wasn't ready..... again, I thought he was ready..... it's all a matter of perspective!!

By the way, I am not really good at this blogging stuff. As you can see I can't seem to figure out how to get the photos to the right off of here. Any ideas??

The Politician

A few people have told me that my blog is sorda boring..... not that I am boring, just that the blog itself is boring and they added that I should post things about my children. So, although I do have an update on the house thing, I thought I'd first start with why we believe Sophie will be a politician some day. For those that only know Sophie by her pictures and have not had the pleasure to meet her and interact with her, here is your warning to never ever vote for in her for any office, because if you did, she would be the stereotypical politician who does not listen to her constituents, namely her parents, AND she is a really great debater! So there is your fair warning- she will never listen to you if you vote for her!!!

Last night we meet with our contractor, who by the way is growing on me as the days go by. We went over line by line (yes, tediously, line by line) everything they will be doing..... it took SEVERAL hours. Anyway, one of the things we were able to do is save money- my favorite thing of course! We saved money by deciding what things WE want to do. This includes things like removing the baseboard, installing the insulation in the walls, taking out cabinets, etc. Most of this stuff is easy enough for us, but most importantly, it saves us some money that we can use elsewhere!! I keep reminding Michael that this whole thing started with me wanting to redo the kitchen and so it is only fair that all the left over money go directly to my kitchen area!

This is going to be a great week (if you say it enough times, you actually start to believe it!!) Anyway, the engineer is suppose to be done by Wednesday of this week, which means we can submit our plans to the city for our permits- which will really signify the beginning of the project!!

I have to say, I am a bit overwhelmed by this whole process. So far it has all been on paper, so we have been relatively removed from the whole thing. In about 3-4 weeks, I will have a "crew" in my backyard, digging and building........ that might be a little stressful for me.

Well, we'll keep you posted!

Engineer

I have been meaning to get you up to speed on our process.... sorry for the lag time here!! So last Friday as I was leaving work, I noticed that the contractor has been trying to reach me.... so I call him and he says he has the final drawings completed and needs to have us/me/one of us sign off on the project..... okay I suppose I can do that. So we meet at Krispy Kreme's- got a few donuts for the children while I was there. I was really nervous to sign off on this without Michael, but we had talked and in the interest of time, we decided that I COULD DO THIS!! So, despite the fact that I really don't know what I am looking at with these drawings that are as large as my kitchen table, I signed off. So now, the drawings are with the engineer. Once the engineer signs off, then we can submit to the city for our permits. So we are moving along. The contractor hopes to start by mid February or so.

By the way, I think I have a taker for all my wood- sweet!!

Everyone is interested......

Seems that everyone is interested in our project..... like the city, the homeowners association, etc! Don't get me wrong, I am glad they are interested, but it sure seems we need alot of approvals! Today we met with the architect. We have actually met with him before, he and his crew were here a few weeks ago measuring (everything- even things they aren't going to touch). Once the preliminary drawings are completed, we are allowed up to 3 revisions. A revision includes as little as one line being drawn up to a complete re drawing..... so it is in our best interest (as well as our budgets) to get all of the revisions in one fell swoop. Our contractor is good with this, he has helped us to avoid many ongoing revisions. So, today was the last of our revisions. We left there with the architect only needing to do a few minor things on the inside- like moving my extra large island over a few feet. I am concerned the island will be too large--- this keeps me up at night. I digress..... once these revisions are completed, then we will have the final drawings and then will be ready to submit our plans and drawings to the city. In our area it is taking about 2-3 weeks to get the permits to when we can start the demolition/building.

The other people who are interested are the homeowners association. I have to be honest, I am more afraid the HOA will say no to our project than I am with the city not approving our project. The funny thing is that Michael and our contractor have complete faith in the HOA, but are more concerned with running into issues with the city! Luckily I had submitted our intentions of our remodel to our HOA several months ago. I tracked down the gal who is in charge of the "architectural committee"- she happens to live around the corner. When I got a hold of her tonight to let her know we know have a complete set of drawings for the outside, she said "if you can get them to me tonight- we are having an architectural meeting tomorrow and I can get you approved by tomorrow"!! WAHOO- so I quickly ran them over to her house and as we chatted, I explained the "scope of our project" ( our contractor uses this term all of the time and I am cracking myself up that I just used it!! could also be the Tylenol kicking in- I have a really bad cold.....) anyway- she said that it sounded fine and that I can consider ourselves approved by tomorrow afternoon!! WOW- that was WAY easier than I thought!!

The next step is the city- certainly it will not be as easy as Sky Island's Architectural Committee!!!

The Children

Here are a few pictures of the children :)) Sophie and Chase are in the same preschool class and were in a play. Chase was a shepherd and Sophie was a star. I thought they were pretty cute. My mom made both of their costumes- good thing she is around otherwise my kids would look nothing like they are supposed to for their school plays and other things. I also added a picture from Christmas morning...... these are my kids waiting for mommy to wake up....... I thought they displayed an amazing amount of self discipline!!! Poor kids...... and then the last one is of Sophie putting "make up" on her face..... nice huh?? She is so naughty.

More tomorrow- we meet with the architect tomorrow.

How we got here

How exactly we got to this point of remodeling our house, is probably like most people. We really like where we live, we wanted more space and upgrade in the kitchen, and move some things around. We did look at buying another house for quite some time, but we just couldn't settle on anything. And plus, the price of houses these days are pretty darn expensive! So, we decided that remodeling was the way to go. Essentially we are taking the roof off of part of the house, adding another room upstairs, extending our lower living area out by several feet and doing a major kitchen renovation..... should be fun.

Right now, we are in the design and permit phase. Our contractor (which b the way- the choosing of a contractor is a post in itself- for another day), anyway- he says, we will likely be permitted by the end of the month and then the labor work starts. We have actually been working on this for several months - we decided to remodel in the summer and then slowly started deciding what we wanted, and soon realized it was more than just a kitchen remodel!

Anyway, since this is an expensive project, we are trying to cut costs as much as possible. Michael and his brothers and nephews recently took out our back deck- the first of many demolitions! Here are some photos of that!