Well tonight was a long one. We went to work on the new house. Tonights projects: Jenny painted the laundry room and I tackled the expansion of the cabinets for the stove. The kitchen had an older drop in (or pull out depending if you are installing it or removing it) stove which happened to be... well... less than the width of the newer ones. So, I had to take 3/4ths of an inch off of both sides of the cabinets. Yeah, I could have just done the math and told you a before and after. It is after midnight after all.

Got all the top cut only to realize that the rear-most part of the countertop is nailed down and didn't want to come off even though I sawed all the supporting countertops off. So, its chisel time when we get back home from Midway Sunday night. Well, probably sometime after that.

We are going to a family reunion this weekend. Its more spending time with my family than a reunion but its that too. We will be heading down to GA tomorrow, spending Saturday, and coming back on Sunday afternoon.

Yesterday, we closed on our house. So, having closed and having the keys, we went to clean. Vaccuumed most of the downstairs, cleaned a good bit of the kitchen cabinets, and Jenny deep cleaned the master bath. Its already feeling more like home at that point. Then, since we are getting new appliances, I pulled the oven, the dishwasher, and the oven hood out. The dishwashers in the front yard in case someone wanted it before we get Lowes to haul it off.

We have duck friends that like hanging out on the pond side of our fence. It was raining hard last night and that made having a garage even better! No loading or unloading in the rain.

Jenny is spending some of the day there. We have to meet the chimney inspector that was hired by the past owners. I'm not really up on chimney technologies. Did I mention we have a fireplace? Fireplace, check. Garage, check. Kitchen on order, check. Huge house, check. We will try to post before and after photos as we get stuff done. That may be a while though.

Watch for updates!

As of 5:15 tonight we are home owners again. Just a quick update before we head out to start cleaning the new house. At least now everything we do is for equity again. We'll keep you posted.

So we have not updated any of you on the real estate life that we are living recently. Our house in Bluffton finally closed (a week late) and its nice to know that part is over and the money is in the bank. We are supposed to close on the house in Columbia tomorrow so far we have not gotten the phone call we got about Bluffton "looks like the lender screwed up and its not going to close tomorrow, sorry but we don't know when it will close." Those were very stressful words to hear as I loaded the car for the girls and I to go to Statesboro and Florida. I have been carrying the cellphone around the apartment all day today waiting and wondering with every ring if that is what is going to happen up here. Overall we have both lost trust in mortgage lenders (which we didnt have a lot of trust in to begin with) and in general real estate people aren't that great either. Sorry to any of you out there that are into this profession. We just haven't gotten to work with anyone that wasn't out to see his wallet grow.

Well enough of my little soap box. We have the final walk through tonight and hopefully everything will go smoothly tomorrow. We get the keys on Thursday and will start to make it home. Its wonderful to think of finally unpacking all of these boxes and getting the rest of our belongings out of storage. There are things we haven't seen in over 3 months now. It will probably be like Christmas all over again, finding things we forgot we owned.

This was the best of Emma she was much more interested in trying to take off her bonnet and play with flowers. 

Kate posed so well for this one. The hard part is that they hold still for maybe half of a second so you have to take a 100 just to get 5 good ones it seems.

A few weekends ago we took the girls to our botanical gardens (attached to our zoo) after church. They did very well though they wanted to pick the flowers not just sit in front of them. They must have looked cute though because numerous strangers asked if they could take their pictures also. What they are going to say once the picture is developed I can't figure out... "These are some kids that were there..."

The girls have gone to Florida to visit. They left last Tuesday and they get back sometime midweek. I've not done a whole lot since they've been gone. I fixed my u-joints on Tuesday night. I brought the whole thing upstairs and worked while watching NCIS and the Unit.

This weekend, I signed up for fence post duty. My parents are putting up a barrier between them and a cheap college neighborhood. The barrier also will serve as noise and trash abatement so that the things that float around the yard in that neighborhood wont float into their yard. We put 41-42 posts in before stopping. We had to fix the auger that we had rented several times. The throttle wire slipped off a couple of times and then the pull starter stopped engaging when we were about halfway done. Its frustrating to have to stop and also a little relieving to have a break.

Sunday, I went to Trinity with the family. It feels really strange going places without Jenny and the girls. Everyone always asks where they are. So I probably had to explain to about 30 people. Tonight, a trip to Walmart for some supplies and a deep cleaning of the apartment. My hopes in cleaning is that it won't need to be done again before the family gets back!

Jenny signed me up for a Lowes workshop on laying hardwood flooring tomorrow afternoon. We have a room in the house that needs a different floor than it currently has. Hopefully, it will be fun, interesting, and a learning experience. I've never been to one of their workshops. The only one that I've really seen at the Lowes where we used to live was "Birdhouses for Kids" or something like that.

Tonight, we may head to the mall so Jenny can blow some birthday money. I have to go to Circuit City to buy some ram and a hard drive for my project for my dad.

It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow so we may end up going to the mall or napping or some rainy Saturday afternoon type thing. Have a good weekend.

I realized it has been almost a month since we have posted any pictures of the girls. While it has been a busy month thats no excuse. So now for all of those who have waited so long here are four pictures for you. This first is of our bookworm Kate. She loves turning pages and has started babbling while turning as if reading them to herself. Here she is reading her lift the flap Bible, currently on the page of Moses parting the Red Sea.

















This is also Kate, finally she got to be the first to do something before Emma. This is her standing which has become more and more common. She has taken one step on her own but then proceeded to fall. I don't think it counts as a step though until she can take it and stay and standing.


















Here is Emma posing for the Camera just looking cute. Emma has also started standing, though it is on her terms only. You are not going to be able to stand her up and get her to stay. She will let go of furniture and stay standing.
















James with Emma at the Botanical Gardens that are attached to our Zoo. Note the "our" we still feel that it is our personal zoo and so far have made 6 trips there. The last trip as we walked inside Emma realized where we were and let out a very happy squeal. It's good to know that they enjoy it as much as we do.

James has been waiting to post this, but he's not here now and well I say we have waited long enough. A lot of you already know but we have put a house under contract here in Columbia. It is Northwest Columbia near Lake Murray (we can walk to the lake in probably 5 minutes maybe less). It is a very large house but we seem to be a quickly growing family (that and we're pack rats) and probably will have no problem filling it up. A few specs on it... it is a 4 bedroom 3 full bath. Has a bonus room over the garage (known in the real estate world as a FROG). 2700 Sq ft. Back deck that over looks a little pond. The above picture of the backyard is looking from the back deck. Imagine the yard though without the play house or play equipment as the current owners have grand plans of moving all of this with them... we'll see, we won't mind if it is still there when we move in though. The smaller members of our family would probably love both of them. All in all we close on April 26th and will move in a few weeks after.