From Safety Monitor to counter top maker

Here is Mike Lookinland (aka Bobby Brady, of Brady Bunch fame) with one of the counter tops he made for our new house. We made him pose for photos and autograph some of our Brady memorabilia (including DVDs, book and even a Bobby Brady action figure). Instead of letting our kids grow up with Jesse James or Joe Namath as their heroes, they are growing up idolizing the counter top maker.

Not in Kansas anymore. . .

Photos from Bert & Myrn's bathroom. Yes, its a Toto Hi-Riser!!

limeade, powerade, cotton candy

The two different sides of the girls room. The lime green carpet on the floor is going to cover the stage. Uhm, an interesting choice of colors. Jill actually painted the dark blue and lime green walls.

the balcony

This is looking off the balcony out over the great room. We're going to have desk/computers and bookshelves up here.

a kitchen sorta like the one in our NYC apt.

Here is what our kitchen looks like as of 9.20.09. Notice there are no chairs or cereal bowls near the island; thats because we don't live here yet. Hopefully in a few more weeks! The appliances are sitting in the garage waiting to be installed.

I want a hamburger, no a cheeseburger. . .

In the basement we created a little play area under the stairs. I'm thinking we should paint McDonald's drive up windows on the wall.

Here is what the house looks like as of mid-August. We are hoping to move in by mid-September.

Mia in the girl's room

Nothing subtle about this choice of color. The painters came back and put an extra coat on to try and tone it down, but its still pretty sassy. This is the girls room, a bonus room above the garage that they are going to use as their bedroom for the foreseeable future. There are two dormers on the right of this photo that will each contain a bed. The girls one request was that they wanted a stage in their room to perform on (fashion shows, karaoke, etc.), so the framers built the stage that mia is standing behind.

Alright, so now that we have recovered our camera, fast forward five months on the house. Here are Jill and Ainsley in the great room circa the second week of August.

Pre-school graduation

Here is Ainsley on pre-school graduation day. We thought our camera was stolen/lost this day because we could not find it for the next four months. Alas, last week a friend of a friend produced our camera that they had found on the side of the road and wondered whose it was. We must have left it on the top of the car following this preschool graduation and drove off. The camera has some nicks and scrapes, but we are just happy to have recovered the 680 pictures that were on the memory stick!!

Ainsley's fantastic finish. . .ta da!

Here is Ainsley finishing off her gymnastics routine in her year end performance. She loved her pretty pink and purple velvet outfit so much she wore it around the house for weeks. She would ensconce herself in velvet if it were socially acceptable.

Easter Egg Smash Off

Each year at Easter we have a smash off. When you take two hard boiled eggs and smash them end on end, one or the other will break. We create a bracket, the trash talking kicks in, and we start smashing until only one egg (or one end of one egg) is left standing. This year Grandpa's John Deere green/yellow egg was the grand champion.

Here is the hole with the coils inside. Pretty cool technology if you're smart enough to understand it (I am not). For Christmas I gave Jill a series of certificates related to the house (one half hour of discussing flooring without rolling my eyes, etc.). One of the certificates was for one free environmentally-friendly upgrade without me even asking the cost. I never imagined she would choose something as big (and OUCH expensive) as this!

This is the hole they dug in our backyard to put in the geothermal heating/cooling. It was roughly 9 feet deep, 30 feet wide and 100 feet long.

timbers over the front door

Master bedroom to be

This is the master bed and master bath. Over on the left is the cutout for the two-way fireplace.

concrete for the patio

Here they are pouring the concrete for the patio and the footings for the posts for the deck in back.

The interior as of 2.22.09.

Here is what our house looks like from the back as of 2.22.09. There will be a deck that the door in our bedroom and the door in the kitchen walk out on to.

Here is the garage with the bonus room over top. The girls are going to sleep in the bonus room when we first move in, with each of their beds in a dormer. Mia has ambitious plans for this room (which fluctuate from day-to-day, but at times include a catwalk from the closet to a stage, movie star vanities, different tv/video game arrangements, etc.).

One week later, the trusses did become a roof! Its amazing how fast this part seems to be going, although plenty of people have warned us that the first part will seem so fast and then the rest will seem to crawl. . .

So here is what our house looks like as of Valentine's Day 2009. Master bedroom on the right, garage on the left. Dumb home teacher room in the middle (off to the left of the front door). A bunch of trusses on the ground that will soon become our roof. . .

Last week we got some stairs going up and the beginnings of some upstairs rooms. We still can't decide where to put the study. The study will either be off to your left or right when you come up the stairs. It will be open to below, whereas the other will be a bedroom and will be walled off.

Is it any surprise Bert would be attracted to a scene like this one?

And they took the rocks and started our retaining walls.

Here I am in the kitchen. Behind me will be the deck. If you look hard you can see a couple of Charolais (mixed in with the half dozen Angus) behind me!

They have started the framing of the house. Here is how it looks from the back yard. Jill, Ainsley and Jeffrey are standing in the kitchen (Sonny, I'm in the kitchen!)

There will be a deck that comes out right where they are looking at the main level, over the top of the walk-out basement. The doorway in the back leads to the master bedroom to be.

Mia was the Book Battle champion for all of second grade at Stansbury Park Elementary!

Here is the walk out basement view from the patio to-be. Jill is in a bedroom, there is another bedroom in the corner (each with a bathroom) and then a family room right in front of the door.



This pile of rocks is going to become a retaining wall or two. I figured if Bert saw the Bobcat ("hey there Bobcat") maybe he would want to come play and I could get some free labor out of the deal!

The future THEATER ROOM! Its going to be underneath the small part of the garage (the one-car side).

Jill is standing on what we expect to be the center circle of the future basketball court.

Foundation and ducts are in!

Here is Dan out digging the hole before the foundation is poured. . . NOT!

This is a test. If it works, maybe we will keep you posted on the developments on our new house here.