The 12 days of Christmas 2011

On the First day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

1 can of hot cocoa mix.

On the Second day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

2 Marie Calendars Pies

On the Third day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

3 Chocolate Oranges

On the Fourth day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

4 Yummy Snacks to share

On the Fifth day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

5 pairs of Gloves

On the Sixth day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

6 bags of Candy Kisses

On the Seventh day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

7 Clemintines!

On the Eighth day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

8 AA Batteries....but the kids took them and used them right away!

On the Ninth day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

9 Beef Sticks

On the Tenth day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

5 Pairs (10 socks) of Socks

On the Eleventh day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

11 Bags for a Poppin good time.

On the Twelveth day of Christmas our True Friends gave to us

A FEAST!

with a very sweet note from our Secret Santas who were

found out to be a couple of friends of Bryce's

We were very blessed with lots of love this Christmas!

Tis the Season!

I know, I know this post has been a long time coming.  So much has happened in the past few weeks since we moved into our new home.  We are still getting settled in slowly since I have been working fulltime and it's all I can do to come home and just try and unpack a few more boxes here and there. There are still several things to finish in the house, but it is beautiful and we love it already! 

Christmas has just really crept up on us.  It's been so hard to finally get myself in the Christmas spirit because of the move and working, and on and on.  The biggest thing that happened though, happened this past week.  Mike was laid off....again.  Yep, that's right, 2 weeks before Christmas.  So, he's been working for Miller Construction for one year.  Unfortunately they just couldn't keep enough work coming in to keep Mike busy.  Funny how just as we began to build he got a job and just as we finished he was laif off.  So, here we go again.  I feel hopeful however, because the Lord always seems to take care of us and things seem to always work out. 

I was a bit stressed there for a couple of days, but then all of a sudden I caught the Christmas spirit and now I'm excited!  I am thankful I still have my job, (which I love) and I guess we are lucky for someone to be working at this point.  I feel very blessed even though Mike and I worry a bit about how it's all going to work out.

So, for now I will leave you with some Christmas cheer from the Nelson home to yours!  Enjoy!

A view down into the basement.

A touch of Christmas!

Mike in his favorite place...watching movies on his laptop in bed:)

This year I decided to do something different with my tree.  I usually put up all the many ornaments I have collected over the years.  This year I decided to go with something a little more color themed.  So, now I need another tree downstairs next year, so I can put up all the rest of my ornaments.  I invited my kids to have their friends over to help put up the tree and decorate.  The girls did a great job!

Now I'm excited for Christmas!

Feeling Thankful

     With one week til thanksgiving I think it is a good time to talk about how thankful I am for my wonderful, difficult, crazy, unpredictable life!  I think I can pretty much safely say that we will probably be in our new home by the first week of December!  It has been over a year since we began to tear down the little house on this peice of property and we began the building of our home.  At that time Mike had not found a job yet and he was so looking forward to helping his Dad build.  Well, about a month later he landed a job which was good news but bad news.  That meant that Dad(82 years old) would pretty much be building our house himself with some help here and there.  It has been a very long journey with lots and lots of ups and downs.  Tears of sadness here and there and tears of joy too.  There have been many sacrafices made to get to where we are today. 

     How blessed we are to be surrounded by such hard working dedicated men in our family.  Building homes is what Dad knows best.  It is his life's work to build and in this way he expresses who he is.  Lucky for us we will benefit from his love, his talent and his hard work.  I will be so happy the day that my kids really really get how blessed they are to be part of this family.  I think we all often take these things for granted.  We are not wealthy people, not by a long shot.  We have all struggled to have just the bare minimum at times.  To eat, to clothe our children, to go to school, to take a vacation or to make it to an important family event.  We haven't been able to do everything we would have liked to have done.  But, we are together, we have made it through some very tough times and we have learned so much along the way.

     Most of all we have the Gospel in our lives and we have eachother.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ is really the glue that keeps us together and going strong.  Without it I think so many of us would have given up so many years and so many trials ago.  But with our Faith and with hard work, we have all made it through.

     For most of us life usually turns out to be so very different than we think it will be, but for me it is better than I ever dreamed.  Hard times and all!  So, today I am thankful to the Nelson Family for being who they are, as imperfect as we all are....we are so very blessed! 

Cabinet Doors

Well things are looking up again.  We were able to get back to putting the finishing touches on the house now that the flood put us behind about 2 weeks or so.  Not good, I know. 

But just look at my beautiful cabinet doors that are being installed.

I seriously have drawers coming out of my ears in my kitchen.  The shows just one small area of drawers. 

 In my opinion you just cant have enough drawers and cabinets!

I especially love my built in cabinets in the master closet.

So, when you walk in the closet, this is what you see:)

All the cabinets are made of hickory wood.  Mike stained a finished them and I love them!

So, for now it's all the finishing touches.  A lot of the downstairs is having to be redone so I will have to wait to show you the finished product in a few weeks.  But for now it's fun to see it all coming together.

We will be very happy when we are finally in and celebrating Christmas!

(It will probably be close to then when we are finally in!)

Last but not least, here are our hanging pendent lights along the side bar.

We will also have another side bar to eat at on the other side of that collum.

There should be room for about 7 or 8 people total to eat along the counter tops.

We do that alot.  We will also have the kitchen table area but this way we will have lots of room

for visitors and friends to come and eat with us!

Mike says this looks like a Party HOuse....I say...Bring IT ON!!

The Flood

So, Tuesday we had just had brand new carpet put into the bedrooms and finished the plumbing so that it would be ready for the final inspection on Wednesday morning.  I dropped Bryce off at school at 8:00 on Wednesday morning and returned home to find that the new house had flooded overnight. Mike rushed right home from work...and we all frantically vacuumed and whiped up the water.

I wish I had pictures of the water, however, it was just too stressful to even think about taking pictures at that time. However, we did call a restoration company and they came to our rescue right away.  Here is a picture of my upstairs office being dried by these enormous fans we had all over the house.

The biggest concern for us is the upstairs hardwood floor.

I told Mike that it looks like our poor house is on

"Life Support"!

This is crazy!  They taped all these pads down on the floor with all these long air tubes hooked to them to try and save the floor.  It stayed like this overnight last night.

Last night they closed up the house with several of those big fans

 blowing warm air throughout every room of the house overnight.

Early this morning I got up and walked downstairs to find that they had also wripped
out the sheetrock in our basement and had fans blowing there all night as well.

And here are the stairs after they ripped out the carpet. 

Hopefully we wont have to replace the wall that they stair case is connected to.

Cross your fingers!

So, basically the whole house was flooded, due to a technical glitch in the plumbing...(plumber to remain un-named). The top floor flooded and was creeping into the newly carpeted bedrooms about 1/4 of the way in.

But the water seeped thru the entire top floor and completely flooded the entire newly carpeted downstairs bedrooms and basement area.  We will have to redo the basement rooms and that will definately put us back.  However, we may get our main basement floor carpeted now if all goes well. 

 We may just do the work ourselves....ugh!

So, I guess you just never know what is going to happen when you take on a big project like this. 

My mother in law and I just hugged eachother and cried as we tried to figure out what to do next.

Luckily Mom discovered that the flood insurance on the construction loan expired on November 1st.

In just 4 more days!!!

My father in law looked like he had just lost his best friend for a few hours and then he was back at it again.

Working his tail off!  Love that Man!

Carpet is coming!

Okay, so I haven't really let myself get excited til now! Because carpet is coming and that means that we will getting a final inspection very soon and once we pass the final inspection we will be finishing up and getting ready to move in! In this picture you can see our new light fixtures above our mirrors in our master bathroom.

We originally wanted the mirrors centered and framed....one of those things that happens when you weren't there and you go ugh...oh well....we will just live with it. We are just happy to have mirrors....right?

Here are the stairs going down into the basement.  We wont be carpeting the main area of the basement right now however, the bedrooms are all about done and will be carpeted!  But!  I wanted to show you our staircase...Love it!

And here is the top part of the stairs...so pretty eh?

Another fun touch.  Our frameless shower doors....love them showcasing our tiled shower!

And last but certainly not least is the mirror tiled into the backsplash behind and above my kitchen sink!

And today we get our carpet in the bedrooms! Dad still have a few cabinets to make and install and then we will be done!  We will do a good cleaning and be ready to move in.  I am sure the Robinson's are anxious!

Trim and Baseboard

Mike is finally starting to put some baseboard and trim up in the house upstairs.  We couldn't stain the doors because they are not hardwood.  So we decided to paint them the same color as the walls.  We think we like it so far.

And here we have the inside of the master bath so far painted the dark, dark brown...no,
it's not black but it almost looks like it at first glance. 
We thought it was the best choice of color next to the hardwood color we have.

This color baseboard, trim and casing will be all throughout the rest of the house besides the hardwood stain color that is upstairs in the family room and kitchen. 

Here is a close up of the fireplace all bricked out and with the rustic wood mantle.

The colors are really starting to come together....slowly....but it's getting there.