Our Rallying Cry.. the reason we can renovate NOW!

Over labor day, instead of living it up by the pool, we moved out of our house into a rental down the street.

 

Why? Because instead of building a house, we decided a while back to just renovate the house and make it the home that we want and need. Our location is ideal and the house is great. It just wasn't OUR house... it was my parent's home.  That's one of those weird things that I never thought about until living in the house I grew up in as an adult and parent!

So, while the start of the school year is the absolute worst time of the year to start a home renovation, we are doing it. I really started back in the summer with the girls rooms and have been slowly building to the level of insanity we are at now.

But we are surviving. Primarily cause we are good at living in chaos. ;) But more than that, we are surviving because we have a plan and a rallying cry!

A what? 

A RALLYING CRY!!!

Doug brought home the book The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family by Patrick Lencioni

This book was the difference maker. I read it in one sitting and then ran out to staples and bought our white board!

Doug and I bounced ideas back a forth a couple of days and ended up with this as our family board.

It was a great experience and really got us on the same page so that we could move forward together. I often feel like while we are on the same path and absolutely on the same journey, we are often taking turns leading and following, rarely walking side by side.. hand in hand.  And maybe that is exactly what we are supposed to be doing within the the give and take of a relationship, but I truly enjoyed hashing out our family rallying cry with Doug!

With "Make the House Our OWN" as a rallying cry, it was easier to walk into the insanity of packing our entire house and moving us four houses down the street for 4-6 weeks. I want to see our plans and dreams fulfilled. And how do we know that we are on track? Well, the defining objectives are things that we want to accomplish along the way. 

The kid's rooms are done: CHECK! 
Because the moving out to renovate we used this as a chance to simplify and sort for a garage sale. So CHECK and CHECK!!

The only piece that we are struggling with right now is the Plan the Week objective. That will get better, but it is hard to plan the week and prep meals in the middle of the start of school and moving!

And since I am sure you are wondering, the Standard Objectives are things we want to do or continue no matter the goal or rallying cry. These are the things that we value as a family and don't want to neglect.

Tuesday morning the renovation started.

It's going to be very different. I'm not sure yet if that is good or bad...

but it will be OUR home.

So I guess mid October we will be looking for a new rallying cry. Hopefully this next one won't involve a move!

Another MOOOOVING post.

It's another moving post.

 

Not one that illicits tears (other than mine..) but about moving, packing and unpacking.

 

Christmas came and went with lots of fun and packing/moving. The girls were not much help.

 

The  moving company came Friday morning and moved all of the furniture and some of the boxes. But... the garage stuff wasn't ready and with the crazy transition of houses there wasn't a place to put it even if it had been.. so that will come mid-January... so, while we have moved, we are still in the old house too. All of the pictures are still on the wall and some of the china is still in the built-ins.  It will make for an interesting showing I'm guessing. (please, please be a showing soon!!)

 

Here are a few pictures from the move.

 



 

 

And here are a couple in the new house. A FIREPLACE!!!!!!!!Yippee!! We have already had a few fires. I love how cozy a fire makes a living room. Thanks Lexi for the great picture...

 

 

And here you are looking from the living room into the kitchen/dining room. Lots and lots of work ahead of us, boxes are everywhere! But at least I have the kitchen pretty much completed.

With the move, we have new living room furniture ordered and lots and lots of ideas and projects ahead of us. But for now, we are just enjoying the 4 bedrooms!!

Moving... part 1 of 130923849273593 plus a tip or too

We are working on moving into our new house! 

 

I first took off the kitchen cabinet doors as I am going to paint them. 33 doors later I was kicking myself for doing this, however, I am finding that loading stuff into a kitchen without cabinet doors sure is nice! I figure that in a smaller kitchen it would totally be worth taking the doors off the cabinets in order to clean and unpack.

 

With the doors off, I cleaned the cabinets and put down 40 yes FORTY rolls of shelf liner.  That is truly one of the hidden costs of a move!  I used the vinyl liner that doesn't have the paper that has to come off the back. Sure am glad, that would have been a nightmare with allllllll of the cabinets. 

Side note: The kitchen is completely trashed because my parent's are moving out of the house as we are moving in. Neither my mom nor myself would ever live with a kitchen that was trashed in our normal world.  Just had to make sure that you knew that!

 

Once I finally had all the shelf liner in, I went back home and started to pack the kitchen. I've never moved over a few days where you could pack some stuff and reuse boxes. I must say, it's a much easier process that packing the entire house before moving. 

 

A tip that you might know.. but as I was packing up the plates, I first used my plastic plates between the glass plates for cushion, but I quickly ran out. Then I used the Styrofoam plates that I had bought for transition times and loved how easy they made packing!!  I reused the same 20 or so plates a dozen times placing them between platters, bowls (you can make the Styrofoam bend..) casserole dishes and more. It was sooo easy and sooooo much cheaper than purchasing "dish saver" moving supplies!

 

And here is a glimpse of part of the kitchen at the end of day 1. Lots moved, lots to go.  I had to finish up early as was my anniversary and Doug and I were going out to dinner.

Now I'm off to start day 2!! More tips and pictures to come!

A Little Christmas Crazy

As always, this time of year is CRAZIEEEEEE. With parties and concerts, exams and projects... December has to be one of the best and hardest months of the year!!

Last week Maddie had her Holiday Band Concert. I looooove that she is on the end. This means something special in band world.. too bad I don't remember what it means to her. For me, it means I get pictures :)!!

The concert was great. The band played well and they didn't keep us forever.

 

As soon as the concert was over, Doug and I high-tailed it to a Christmas party. I really wanted to get a picture of the two of us all cute and all, but no time.  Hopefully I will get at least one good picture of us during the holidays.

 

The week ended with Lexi's school Christmas party. It's the one party of the year that I seem to be able to make! We had to take a gift card and the kids played a left/right game. It was a great success! Then the kids had lunch and we quickly made it back to my campus so that I wouldn't be late and get in trouble!!

 



With the end of the fall semester here, I am turning my energy to getting us moved. (well, Christmas buying and wrapping and all that toooooooooo.)

To be honest, I'm not really stressing over it. I probably should be, but it will be what it will be and so I'm enjoying being with my girls, I ran this morning, Doug and I went out for lunch and I'm helping Maddie pack and sort her room.

The move will happen one way or another. And I am more than aware that if I stress and yell over it, I'll just make everyone miserable and get the same or less work out of them. So, I'm trying to not stress and enjoy the season.

Feel free to pray for a buyer for our house!
 

We are MOVING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's been a long, long time coming.

But, or house has finally sold and we are moving!!

Not out of our town..

Just into a FOUR BEDROOM HOUSE!!!!

Yes, that is cause for major celebrations!

If only there was time.

Funny, it took like three years to sell and we had to be out in less than 3 weeks!

So, come June 1st we are out of here.

The house we are renting won't be ready until closer to the 10th,

so we (and our stuff) will be in limbo for a little more than a week.

But so what... we will manage.

Cause we are moving into a FOUR bedroom house.

And then, after we get settled.  I'm going to find some time to craft and blog.

right?

Moaning Monday.. are pregnant people really supposed to remodel houses?

So for the last week or so I have spent every waking moment outside of the workday working on our house. It is begining to look incredible, I must say. But the cost is my feet, my back, my hands and my exhaustion.

It's all my fault, I am very aware. Doug (my husband) would have never dreamt up finishing off our to do list on this house and trying to sell it and buy a new one before baby comes in August. But me, yeah.. we bought a new house while I was pregnant and Doug practically gutted the thing and made it a show place before Maddie was born. That was almost 9 years ago. I still remember the aches and pains from removing staple after staple from carpet so that our hardwood floors could be refinished.

Move foward about 5 years and we moved to a new town and bought a house. We only did the painting then.. for I was pregnant with Lexi. Over the last few years we have just almost completely remodeled this house. But here we are with baby #3 coming in just a few short months and something in me says MOVE!!! So, that's what we are working on.

Tonight I am posting between cleanings of the brand new tile floor in the den. My dad spent a good bit of the last few days over here installing the new tile floors with Doug and now I am doing the clean up, buffing and final mopping. Man, this is hard work :) But the result is so worth it!!

Thanks for letting me moan and I can't wait to post pictures of our house!