I can’t believe this! I thought it must have been a fluke on Valentine’s Day, as it was 40 degrees here that day.  The next day is was the normal 10 degrees again, but since Sunday, it has been raining and 40 degrees again!  Our temperature today was within a few degrees of what my grandparents in Utah had!  I am SO getting spring fever too because of this.

Speaking of doing things, my wonderful, handsome, sweet, dear husband got me cabinets for my laundry  room  for Valentine’s Day!  I was/am SO excited!  For those of you who don’t know me well, I don’t even have KITCHEN cabinets, so ANY cabinets is TOTALLY awesome!  I have had one cabinet in my launry room/pantry where I kept literally ALL of the chemical compounds, so they were out of reach ofthe babies, since again, I don’t have kitchen cabinets.  Everything from laundry to kitchen to cleaning to home building to camping and baseball, you name it, if there is a chemical solution for it, it was shoved into that one tiny cabinet!  Also, all of my hand towels, placemats, cloth napkins, rags, bibs, faceclothes, dishtowels, etc.  were all neatly (usually!) stacked on top of the washer.  ALL of that is now neatly tucked away INSIDE of my new cabinets!!!  YEAH!!!  Oh, except for the home building, camping, and baseball chemicals.  They are all going to stay in the old cabinet which is making it’s way  downstairs to the utility room!

Ok, so picture time, eh?!  I kind of got excited and forgot to take a before picture, so I found this so you can kind of see what it was like.  The white thing there is the old cabinet.  The walls were the same color. The  cream thing has been gone since we moved it down the road,  and the washer and dryer have also been unstacked since then. Anyway, you kind of get the idea….

And now for the AFTER picture….

Isn’t it beautiful!  The color isn’t quite that green.  It is more like a deep sage green, really pretty.  Anyway, I am MORE than happy with it!

PhotoHunt

This is a picture of our house being moved down the highway in Alaska.

It was definitely HEAVY!

I guess I need to clarify this post.  This picture was taken through my windshield in September of 2006.  I merely posted it as part of a Photo Hunt I was participating in.

We have since raised it up 10 feet, built a basement under it as well as a large entryway off of the front of it.  I will have to post  a more recent picture, as it truly is a work in progress!  I really do love this picture though. The Lord certainly provided a glorious day for our fantastic move!  Oh, and we took a field trip day for school this day too!  Gotta love real life learning!

Hello again!  We had a fabulous time at our friends’ home.  It was just what I needed before starting our schooling back up.  Today is our busiest day though, so this will just be a quick entry.

We got the ceiling to the boys’ rooms finished last night!  We are doing a drop ceiling, but with OSB (similar to plywood) so we will have about 2.5 feet of storage above their rooms.  We will have SO much storage! Next, dh will have to do the electrical work, then we can sheetrock!  The boys are so excited, and are already exerting their ownership of their rooms, even though there are only studs dividing the rooms.  Micah decided he wanted to move down with the boys, so we moved his toddler bed down last night.  While dh and the boys were finishing putting the OSB on the floor of the storage area, Timmy and I cleaned, rearranged and organized Naomi and Timmy’s room.  Just taking the little toddler bed out and rearranging gave them so much more room in there!  It looks much more like a girls room now too.

Well, I’m gonna get everyone fed and ready to head out the door.  Hope you all had a great weekend and are having a good week!

Grace (who is in a much better mood this week!)

Well, we got our first snow of the year last night!  My poor husband had to drive into town this morning for meetings, otherwise he would have worked from home, as the first snowfall is notorious for many of accidents on the highway.  I guess people forget how to drive on snow in 6 months.

Well, the house plans look like they will be changing once again.  It looks like we will be calling the project to an abrupt halt, and just getting it livable again.  The bank just doesn't want to work with us on how we want to do it.  We don't want to put cheap stuff into it, just to have to redo it in a few years.  What a waste of money!  And we certainly don't want to take out a huge mortgage, when we have been working for the last 6 years to get out of debt.  So, I guess we will just move back in and keep chipping away at finishing it ourselves.

The main two reasons for the move were location and space.  Both problems are now solved, so if we can get the heat, septic, and water going again, we will be set.  Here is what the house looks like now.  The grey part is the old house that we moved 70 miles down the highway, raised up, and built the basement and entryway onto.  Now all we will have to do is enclose the entyway and basement, and get the heat, water, and septic working again.  We already have power, so we can move back in when we have accomplished those details.  At least now we will have plenty of room for the kids to run around in, for my hubbie to set up his tools to work on the place, and we will be much closer to dh's work.

We are doing ok with this change, trying to trust God and what He has planned for us.  It is a bit of a set-back as we were excited to be finishing it, but it certainly isn't worth going into a huge amount of debt to do so.  I will be glad to be back in our own place with plenty of room for the kids to play outside with minimal supervision again.  I don't know how people who live in town do it!  We can't stand living in an apartment with a parking lot for a back yard.  I guess we are spoiled….

Yea!  It made it to our property safe and sound!  It is now 12 feet up in the air though, and that is the bottom of it!  From the ground to the top of the house is 28 feet!

They had to raise the house up on one side with air dollies to get it over several bridges and that made my stomach rather uneasy, and then it took them 15-20 minutes to get around one 90 degree turn on our narrow dirt road back into our property.  The driver also had to contend with two power poles and a guy-wire that was pulled taut, all on the same corner!

Oh, we also had a narrow miss with a black jacked-up Blazer that decided to run a stop sign, and pulled out right in front of the semi pulling the house!  Then he had the audacity to make rude hand signs at the rear pilot car, which happened to be the mover's wife!  Praise God that he protected us from what could have been a disastrous accident.

The house was moved to the property on Wednesday and then on Thursday they came back and rolled it over above the foundation and raised it up into the air.  We are building a first story under it, so that is why it was raised up.  On Friday, our framer raised the walls up under it, and he and his crew are supposed to put the sheeting on tomorrow.  It should be ready to lower the house onto the walls by Tuesday!

The kids spent Wednesday with me in the van watching the house move down the highway, and then Thursday the younger kids went to my Mom’s house, and the older two boys went with me to the property to watch them roll it over.  They asked lots of questions of the mover (he has an 11yo son, so he didn’t mind them being there), and even got to help them haul the posts for the cribbing when they raised the house up!  I guess we are unschoolers for the first month of this school year!  How many kids get to see that?!?

I got all of the highlights on video too, so we can share the experience with all of our friends.  Dh hasn’t watched it yet though.  He said that he can’t watch it until it is all set down and secured.

Hopefully I will be able to get some video of them setting it, but I have to take the kids to get signed up for swimming lessons on Tuesday afternoon, so we will just have to see how much we get to watch.

More later….

They have our house loaded onto a trailer, and are supposed to move it tomorrow at 9am!  Wow!  Finally, a four year project is coming to fruition!  Yes, you read that correctly.  They are moving our whole house, all 30x48ft of it, down the two lane highway!  I will post before, during and after pictures when I get a chance, but right now, the kids and I are getting ready to head up there and finish up some things that the mover didn't bother to tell us needed to be done beforehand, even when I specifically asked him!  Grrr….!

Anyway, it is all loaded on the trailer, and off of the posts and beams where my dh built it.  It will be moved 70 miles down the highway to our new 6 acres, and set on first floor, more than doubling our living space!

I have an entry half written which has more of the background of this project, but for now, you will have to just follow us on this journey from today.  If you want to see the house how I left it on Saturday, I have pictures posted of the front of the house from when I was doing the Clean Heart Clean Home Challenge with Amy at Dandelion Seeds.  I will take pictures of the house up on the trailer when I get up there today.  Tomorrow, I will be video taping parts of the house moving down the highway!  There is one train trestle that it will have to go under with only 3″ clearance on one side, and 7″ of clearance on the other side…and several 90 degree turns on small gravel roads going into our property.  The mover says he can do it though, and he has the reputation of being the best, so our home is in his hands…and a whole lot of our money too!!

Well, the Lord appears to be closing windows and doors that we thought were wide open, and re-opening a door that we thought was closed.  We will probably not be moving to Palmer next month like we thought.  It just isn't going to work financially now that these other doors appear to be closing.  Like how I am qualifying all of these statements?!?

Proverbs 16:9 says, A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.

We can plan our lives all that we want, but the LORD is ultimately in control, and if we truly listen to Him, and not forge ahead with what we think or feel should be done, we will be better off for it.

Jeremiah 29:11-13 says, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

What more can I do?  Nothing.  I can only pray and ask Him to give me the strength to follow His leading and be content with His plans.

We went to look at two rental houses last night.  The first one would definitely work, but then we went to see a house that one of my midwives owns.  Her dh is being sent to Mississippi for two years, so they are going to rent their house while they are gone, but plan to come back.  It is SO nice, especially compared with the one we saw first.  The first one has more room, but it is an older house, and dh isn't sure how well it will heat, and it is quite a bit farther out than the second one.  The second one has a pretty large garage which is nice too…can double as a playroom in the winter!

Anyway, they said they would rent for $1350 with a 2-year lease, but that doesn't really work for us.  I asked Jessica to see what her dh would rent it for a 1-yr lease and then month to month after that.  If it is $1450 or so, we'll wait for it.  It will be available in July.  Otherwise, we will probably go with the one out KGB.  The “office” is HUGE, but it smells like it was used as a dog wash (it was!).  If we do rent it, we will ask that they paint it and bleach the floors.  Hopefully that kills the smell.

Overall, I am with Inigo in Princess Bride, “I HATE waiting!”

We designed the house we are currently in, and the new one is pretty similar to this one, but the draftsman tweaked a few things and made it really nice!  One drawback I have with his plans is he changed my big pantry that I had!  He said it was too long and narrow.  The new one is not really any bigger than what I have now, which is not nearly enough, but a lot of it is used up with paper towels, kleenex, muffin tins, griddle, serving dishes, etc.  I will have a finished kitchen in the new house though, so I will have a lot more cupboard space, and he put in a linen closet next to the pantry that I will probably mostly use for pantry space, so I guess it will all work out.

The entryway is pretty awesome though!  He has some nice big windows in it, as well as the staircase going off to the right, and then a small landing, and up into the house.  It will be so nice to have all of the stairs inside!

The master bathroom is fabulous, with a corner spa tub, double-headed shower,  double vanity, and toilet, and there are three rows of glass block windows!  He also changed my one walk-in closet in our bedroom to two – his and hers (and mine is much bigger, btw!)

Anyway, over all, we like the plans.  A few things have to be changed, such as the roofline, the door to the eventual garage, and a few windows, but overall, we are really happy!  Yea!

Dh and I did meet with a draftsman to have our house plans drawn up last Sunday.  The preliminary drawings should be done this week!  I can't wait to see them!  We have always seen the layout, but it will be so exciting to see them all drawn up.  He had some really good ideas for different areas in the house, so it will look like REAL plans when he is finished.  Now I have a year to dream about things and decide what I like and might not like.

We have only thought about what the outside or roofline of the house would look like, so this way, dh and I will be on the same page with things instead of so much just being in our heads.  I am really looking forward to seeing them!