Christmas in Iowa - 2007

Well the holidays are almost over. Just one more "holiday" to go, and Andrew's birthday (29.....he's almost old!) We went to Andrew's family for Christmas and spent the day with Grandma Shirley and all the cousins. Thought I would post some pictures for you.



Here's Grandma Shirley and Andrew!



And Nathan. If any of you remember him, he was the ring bearer in our wedding. My, what a difference 4 years makes!



Well I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday! Merry belated Christmas, may you know the reason for the season and have a wonderful New Year!

Oh my gosh, we are finally finished! :)

Ok so after two years, and a few soap operaish moments (ie Andrew trying to chop his arm off with the chop saw, instead of the piece of wood he was attempting to cut), our basement is finally finished! Unfortunately, I don't have any before pictures (bad me! I have an excuse. I didn't have a camera until July of this year!!!) So you'll just have to use your imagination as I describe how it USED to be.

When we moved in back in November of 2005, you would walk into the room and half of the room was just the cement wall and the other half was covered in the 70's most popular style of wood paneling! The stairs were completely closed in so you had about a doorway's amount of room to get into them and it was just one big huge dark, dirty room. The furnace and hot water heater were just sitting one side of the room, completely open.

So we decided to take the one big room and give us 4 smaller rooms. One room became a storage area. We moved the washer and dryer hook ups to a different corner and made the 2nd room a laundry room/utility area. The third room enclosed another small storage space while closing in the hot water heater and furnace. The largest room is now our third "living room." We already have a family room and formal living room upstairs. Our already large 1700 square foot house just became an even larger 2000 square foot house. Yikes. I don't know what to do with all the space! We already got lost in all the space we had before. We also knocked out half the wall along the stairway in order to make a nice bannister area.

Adding all of this space also allowed us to move the office from our third bedroom to the basement. So we now have two guest bedrooms! :) I am so thrilled. It looks wonderful. Andrew did the bulk of the work with help from my father, his father, our friends Mike, Paul and John, my mother and I. So... Here are some pics!

Snow!

We had our first snowstorm of the year on Thursday! Didn't amount to much, but I love inclement weather! Everything but regular boring old rain. That's just boring. Freezing rain is expected today. I'll post some photos if it gets to be anything good. Too bad it's cancelled our Christmas party for this evening, but oh well. A nice day to just sit inside and look at all the pretty snow and freezing rain!

I have to brag.

Andrew just landed his student teaching assignment! He begins January 7, 2008! I am so proud of him and know that he will be the best teacher! He will be working with a kindergarten class at a school near our church.

Yay!




My Hero.

So it's been awhile

Ok. I realize it's been almost a month since I last posted. But you have to forgive me, I've been incredibly busy!

To start, at the end of October and the beginning of November, I had a total of 2 weeks out of the office and away from home. So I get back in town, for the first full week in the office and at home and catch up. Then I have a half week because of the holidays. One day of the holidays was spent with my parents and brother, then one day with some of Andrew friends from out of town, then 2 days up in Iowa with his parents and to see his grandma who is unfortunately in the hospital. We found out that week that she broke her knee and had a softball sized tumor in that area! It also unfortunately came back that it was malignant. But at last word, they found that it was just localized to that area and have since removed the tumor, so the hope is that all is out now and she will make a full recovery! We are continuing to pray for her, but at this point in time it appears all will be well.

So I get back from that trip and then I have to leave immediately for Huntsville for business for 3 days. So that puts me to the end of November already! And immediately upon my return, I am working like mad in my family room and my basement! For Christmas, my parents have completely remodeled my old wood paneling room. (pictures will be posted as soon as it is completed!) And our basement is at the point of needing carpet so we had to do the last minor detail work (staining the bannister, painting the doors, painting the trim, covering the ugly poles in the middle, cleaning it out of all the junk that has been used to work on it).

And now, I have to find the time to sit down and write out a Christmas letter (We've been married coming up on 4 years and have yet to send out Christmas greetings) and create an invitation to our New Years party!! Oh and somewhere in the last month, I had to go visit friends of ours who just had a baby! Well I didn't have to go, but who can pass up looking at little ones?? I won't say it was easy keeping the green eyed monster at bay, because it wasn't, but was worth it in the end.

Yes I still struggle with the whole miscarriage thing. I keep thinking that I'd be 6 months along now and probably showing. Every time I hear of another pregnancy successfully carried to term, I want to just cry. But my day will come and I am determined to leave it in God's hands and rely on Him to provide us with the children we want when the time is right. There must have been some reason that I had to go through this and I am just waiting on God to show me why.

Andrew is still looking for a place to student teach. We are praying it will be this spring so he can start teaching his own classroom next fall. I am keeping up the hope!! Pray for him on that! He is down to his last "class" before student teaching so it is very exciting that he is just that close to being done!

Well I think I wrote a book trying to catch you all up on the King's. Next blog will be with pics of my new family room and basement!

New Orleans Volume 3, 4 and 5!!

Yes, I know. You can yell at me now, I can take it. But I have a good reason to have not posted the remaining reports until now. That is I was soooooooooooo exhausted from sanding, painting (well priming) and ripping up floors that the last thing I wanted to do at 9 at night was think! So please accept my sincere apologies. Here are the updates!

Well Wednesday, Thursday and Friday consisted of the same tasks as before. We began priming the house on Wednesday while Leanne and Dennis continued sanding and adding more mud to the already indecent amount that was currently on the walls. Of course, this was after Leanne took off the 3 inches of mud so that Dennis could add the final coat. Three of us went off to a different house to install cabinets, so that left 8 of us to finish up in the shotgun house. We finished by Thursday afternoon.



On Friday, since we finished early on the shotgun house, we headed to a different house that was right behind one of the canals that broke. Forgive me please, I don't remember which one it was. This house ended up being placed on cinderblocks to prevent further flooding should an event of Katrina's magnitude strike again. However, judging from the water line on the house, it seems that this area also received 6-8 feet of water before it was all said and done.



We spent the morning here pulling up the original subflooring. Boy was that fun! Destruction has an odd way of being much more fun than construction! :) Don't ask me why, it just is.













And last, but not least, here is a photo of most of the crew. This crew was the one that worked in the houses.




Linda's phone-dialing skills have been given a workout, as she's been spending most of her time contacting clients. She's heard some really heartening stories as well as some sad tales. Over and over again she has heard how much people appreciate the work of the volunteers who come to help them. It is good to know that we really do make a difference in the lives of people.

Peggy and Joyce served us just wonderful meals. They received a much deserved break on both Wednesday and Thursday nights as the church provided the meals that night. Neither one was as good as the food that Peggy and Joyce cooked up for us!!

We all arrived home safe and sound on Saturday evening. We were all exhausted but gratified by the experience of helping to return two more families to their homes. There is much to be done still, and we are looking at again going back next spring.

New Orleans Volume 2

Day 2 down! Today we spent the majority of the day sanding and mudding. Our goal is to get to the priming by tomorrow so that we can begin painting before we leave! We all arrived clean and spiffy and left looking like we had massive dandruff and Pig Pen's brother/sister.

Above shows a combination of mudding and sanding! What fun!

To the right, is more mudding. The house is what is known as a double shotgun. It is a duplex with the separate houses running side by side in a long and narrow passage. They appear to be one bedroom, maybe two bedroom houses with a kitchen and living area on either side of the bedrooms. We don't know too much about the home owners yet, we haven't had a chance to meet them, unfortunately. We do hope to!

After we did as much as we could do today (we had to wait for the mud to dry before we can move onto the next step!) we decided to take a couple of the newbies on a trip of the devastated areas of the city. There is still MUCH to be done, but we were very heartened to see that many areas are starting to come back. We visited the house that we worked on last November and were thrilled to see the homeowner is finally back in the house! It just made our day! I'll post a lot of the photos on my facebook site, but here are a few:












Linda spent a good part of her day talking to clients. She talked to one lady who is back in her home, and another who is close. It's so good to see that people are putting their lives back together.

Now we are waiting rather patiently (so I say, but I know I'm not waiting patiently!) for a wondrous meal of roast beef, potatoes and yummy chocolate cake. Needless to say, we are NOT going hungry. :)