We're really doing it!

Tomorrow is the big move! Brandon spent last night finishing up the kitchen in the new house. I almost think moving somewhere kind of close is harder than moving across the country. We can "almost" live in both houses - but not quite comfortably in either one yet! Some of the kids' things are in one house, some in the other. Some of our food is at one house, the rest at the other. I'm pretty sure my brain is packed up tight in a box at the new house - I'm almost positive it's not here anyway!

Here's a quickie picture of Brandon working on the kitchen last night. This was right before the first Formica went on the counter-top! It's getting pretty exciting!!

It'll probably be several days before we can update the blog again - and even then, it'll be with *gasp* dial-up services, so who knows how long it'll take! (Never fear, we are looking in to our highspeed options - it just wasn't a priority this week!)

Sewing Class

Our two older girls have been very lucky - we have a dear, dear friend who has volunteered to give them sewing lessons! Madilyn started a couple of years ago, and Megan finally got to start this year. It's amazing to see how quickly they are learning. They've made some wonderful things too! Let's see if I can remember them all - Maddie has made a dress w/ a vest, a pair of pj's, a sweatshirt, a quilt, a jewelry pouch, a stuffed bunny, and an apron ... Megan, so far, has made a jewelry pouch and is working on a quilt.

These pictures are from a sewing day they had a couple of weeks ago. As soon as we get unpacked (ha ha) I'll scan in a picture of their sewing teacher, Shirley. She is truly an angel!

Part Human, Part Orangutang

Joseph has progressed to about 85% walking now - he will still drop and crawl when he wants to get somewhere fast...and there is his little trick of drop and sit on the floor with his hands in the air when he wants YOU to pick him and and do the walking! We're enjoying watching him walk with his little hands up over his head. He does it every time. He has also cut 2 more teeth on top and two more on bottom for a total of 8 (4 top, 4 bottom).

Math is COOL

Jacob had another Math Team Competition yesterday..."The Masters"

The top four teams competed. Jacob's team didn't do as well this time (2 of the 4 members had to be replaced with alternates because they were out of town.) But Jacob did GREAT in the individual competition! He placed 4th!! I know the sound isn't great, but I was able to catch his award being presented on video.

May 14, 2006 & May 18, 2007

It's amazing to see what can happen in a year!

2006 - This is what our house looked like one year ago:



2007 - This is where we are with the house now:




We stayed the night in the house Friday night! We had a large work party (ha, hardly a "party") on Saturday. Family came and helped clean and helped with kitchen cabinets. Ron the carpet guy finished all of his odds-n-ends up. The furnace guy came and installed our thermostats and everything he had left (except the grills which he'll do Tuesday).

Colors...

Just for kicks, I thought I'd share the colors going in to our house this week! Ron the carpet guy is at the house right now laying the kids' bedrooms and their hallway and he thought he "might" get the master bedroom done today!! I'll share pictures of it all tomorrow!

This is our kitchen cabinetry. Natural Hickory. Sorry it's so small - I had to snag the image from their site.


This is the formica that will go in the kitchen...again, sorry it's so small!



This is the carpet in the kids' rooms.


This is the carpet in the master bedroom - berber.


This is the carpet in the study.


And this is the carpet for everywhere else - living room, music room, stairs and landings.

How cute is this?

When I was growing up I spent countless amounts of time at my grandma's house. I now have a love for nature that I know she's responsible for!

I was thrilled a week or so ago to see that we had a couple of hummingbirds buzzing around the woods! I quickly put up a couple of feeders and hoped they'd stick around!

Sure enough, they did! They are so fun to watch! Buzzing around, bombing each other, bombing US! I just love them! And I love my grandma for making wonderful memories with me of sitting on the porch watching hummingbirds and appreciating their beauty!

Help me pack!

Wouldn't you think that the thought of moving in to a much larger, new home would be motivation enough for me to get this house packed up and ready to go? I just can't get moving! I dont' know where to start! I packed up the entertainment center today and it took four boxes - FOUR BOXES! Holy Cats! We're going to need a thousand boxes to get the rest of this house packed!

So all of you packer/mover type people out there - where do I start? I think my mom and sister are coming to help me on Saturday - but even then I'm not sure where to begin? Do I just take a boxes into a room and fill them until the room is empty? Is there some secret to packing that I don't know? I feel like I'm drowning!

Hi, we're the Lee's...

Back in January '03, Brandon's insurance company changed. It wasn't a big deal - I was pregnant with Malorie and my doctor took the new insurance...no worries. Then on January 3rd, Malorie was born, to the tune of $88,000.00! I felt like calling the insurance company and saying, "Hi, we're the Lee's, you don't know us, but we need MUCH money from you!" - well, yesterday,I had that same thought as we walked in to the ER in our new home town. "Hi, we're the Lee's, you don't know us, but will you sew my son back together again?"

Jared was crawling on the floor at grandma's house and lost his balance and fell against the air vent cover thing on the floor. He hit it just right and popped his arm open. I heard him call from the dining room, "MOM! I have blood!" Never what you want to hear! So I took him into the laundry room and found the paper towels. I held one against his arm for a couple minutes and checked it again - it was SO GROSS! But the bleeding had stopped long enough for me to see how deep it was...ewwww, it was way deep! So off we headed for town. Nice to know that from our new house we can get to the ER in about 10 minutes.

Brandon stopped on his way to the house from work. I realized that I am very brave, and calm and level headed when my kids are hurt...so long as Brandon isn't around! He walked in the room and I all but curled into a ball in the bed next to Jared's! The doctor came in and told me to stand by Jared's head (the doctor had seen me be all calm and collected earlier)...Brandon let me try to be the cool mom and stand up to the table - after about 30 seconds, he was standing at the table and I was sitting on the folding chair with my head between my knees! LOL

Jared came home with 10 stitches (pretty impressive actually - he had guessed 2, Brandon guessed 3, and I guessed 4, boy were we wrong).

Since he was sure his brother's would want to see his wound, Jared had me take pictures with my cell phone.

I'm going to add them here at the bottom.

But I'm going to stall long enough here so that you won't have to see them if you don't want to.

They're gross.

They're coming up.

Navigate away from this site if you don't want to see them.

Maybe it was just me, maybe they're really not so bad.

No, they're bad...you've been warned!


Jared became pretty brave after the numbing kicked in. I think once he stopped hurting is when I started losing it - good to know I can hold it together when the chips are down!




A little old heat register - who'da thought?

Boolah, Boolah, Boolah...

Boolah is our version of the "warmer, warmer, colder" game - the hiders chant "Boolah, boolah, boolah..." and closer you get to finding what you're looking for, the faster the other people say "Boolah, Boolah" - for some reason, it also gets LOUDER in our house! Anyway - our kitchen is Boolah'ing!! Here are Before and After pictures! Ron comes back on Tuesday to start on the carpet - we'll pick up kitchen cabinets and appliances (won't install anything until next week though) this weekend, and Brandon is working on the stair railings (which have to be done before the carpet can go in, eeek!).




This is the floor in the main floor bathroom - you really can't see anything, but Malorie and Melanie were so cute dancing around on the vinyl, I couldn't resist the picture!

Maddie has been busy!

Last week she received this award at school. We're very proud of her - she is so active in so many things and is doing so well! Way to go Maddie!

Then last night she had a band concert - they sure have improved since the beginning of the year! She's the flute in the pink dress!

Happy Birthday, Brandon! May 5th!

Yesterday was Brandon's 37th birthday! It's funny to think back when 37 was "old" - now we're smack in the thick of it and it doesn't seem any older then the day we were married.

Madilyn gave him a cute basket that she made at school. He also got a nice cordless screw-driver (he said he needed it to install the 200 light switch and outlet boxes). And he also got (ok it was really for the whole family) a DVD of Brian Regan's "I Walked On The Moon" performance. Holy smokes it's funny! Without reservation I would tell each and every one of you to buy that DVD for your family - HYSTERICAL! We had tacos to celebrate both his birthday and Cinco de Mayo last night. His brother Carson and his family came over for dinner and watched the video with us.

Happy Birthday Brandon!

OH NO!!!!

Ok, there is just no way to explain this teeter-totter / roller coaster ride that is the "Is Joseph the last baby?" nightmare! Every little milestone he reaches now just breaks my heart! Oh sure, I am happy to see him get teeth, they'll come in handy I'm sure - but that just moves him that much farther away from being my "baby". I told Brandon that we'd live on separate levels of the new house if he DARED cut Joseph's hair yet. Sure, the poor boy looks like a girl - but it's his BABY hair! Once you cut that off, there's no going back. He'll always look like a big boy!

Now nobody has said that he's for sure our last baby - but you get to #8 and odds are you're closer to "being done" then you are to "just starting". We could have another baby - and in that case, I have ruined Joseph for no good reason! He will grow up a cuddly, long haired, mamma's boy for no good reason! However, if there isn't to be another Lee baby, then it's a darned good thing I created this monster who will most likely never let me out of his site....ever!

So all my disjointed rambling here is to share that Joseph has *sniff* taken his first steps. (And probably to tell you that he cut more teeth - I'm not sure if I mentioned that he cut his first teeth on March 31/April 1). It's so amazing to see him just standing in the middle of the room! The older kids have turned his new found skill in to a game - "Who will Joseph walk to and who makes him fall". Apparently you get points if he walks to you and lose points if he falls walking to you...oh brother!

Another house milestone...

Brandon got the entry tile all installed yesterday! It looks amazing! I took a quick snap of it from upstairs with my cell phone camera...it wasn't finished when I took the picture, but it'll give some idea of how it's going to look.

So this week's plan is to get the kitchen and bathroom floors installed! I think Wednesday and Thursday are the days Ron is coming out to do that. Then we have until Tuesday (I think Wed, but Brandon thinks Tuesday) when Ron will come back to do the carpet. In our perfect little world, the toilets and kitchen cabinets will get installed by the time the carpet is done - so the only thing really keeping us from moving in would be silly things like lights - heat (apparently the furnace guy was coming this week, not last -lol). There are days when we're sure we can be moving in by the end of the month and days when we think we'd better just shoot for July to be safe!

Happy 7th Birthday JARED! May 2nd!

So that painful shock of having your "baby" turn one is pretty much the same when you have a "baby" turn 7!! Where has the time gone! I'm sure part of my problem is that I spend the two or three days surrounding my kids' birthdays thinking "On this day, X number of years ago, I was...at the hospital in labor, or I spent the day canning and thought my back hurt from standing, or the doctor handed you to me for the first time...etc". So I know I bring all of these sentimental issues upon myself! LOL

But 7 years ago - They gave us Jared! He was almost a "false alarm" labor. I know I rave about my OB pretty much ALWAYS - but thankfully, he helped us out. After HOURS of walking the hospital hallways and seeing no progress, he came in and said, "I think the baby needs a scalp monitor." GASP! "Why do you want to monitor our baby? What's wrong?" With a slight smirk, his reply was,"To attach the monitor, we have to break your water, and once we do that, you can't go home." AHHHHHH! And an hour after the monitor was attached, Jared was born!

We laughed at breakfast when I looked at the clock and said, "Jared, right now they had you in NICU because your blood sugar was too low." Then Brandon and I started laughing out loud as we looked at what he was eating for breakfast - Pop Tarts and Easter Peeps. (Before anyone calls CPS, we don't always feed our kids that way! The Pop-Tarts were a special birthday treat, the Peeps...well, for those of you who know Brandon...suffice it to say, those were his fault). So, low blood sugar on Jared's birthday 7 years later was a non-issue!

Here's our "little boy" and Dr. Richards - "7 years ago today"


Breakfast of birthday champions!


"Don't hate the player!" (with a picture of a Nintendo machine) Sadly, we've created a gaming monster in Jared...we're slowly trying to wean him back to normal!


CAKE! (Just to round off his day of highly nutritional meals!)

House Update #4,203

The flooring has begun! Oh, first you have to hear this little "coincidence" that happened to us. We have ALWAYS tried to use friends when we've had jobs bid at our place. If they had the supplies we needed, or a crew who could use the work, we offered them the opportunity to bid - when it worked out for them and us, we'd give them the work...we'd just as soon give our money to someone we know and like, kwim? Anyway, for as long as I can remember, Brandon has been saying things like, "When we have the flooring done, I want to see if Ron McM. needs the work. Ron is a guy that we've known for years. He and his wife joined our church back when Brandon was a bishop. They are a wonderful family! When we went in to purchase carpet (from a whole-in-the-wall shop a co-worker old Brandon about), we asked the guy if he had installers. He told us he only uses 2 installers. They are the only two that he trusts enough to stand behind. So we figured, "Hmmm, at least we asked" - having a guarantee on the installation was pretty important to us. So we walk to the counter w/ Doug the carpet guy to see which of his installers could start our job first. Doug flipps through his calendar and says, "Looks like I can have Ron there May 1st" and he hands Brandon Ron's business card. Much to our "surprise", Doug's Ron and our Ron are the same guy! We had NO idea Ron worked with this little carpet shop - we were stunned - not to mention relieved that someone we KNOW and TRUST would be the one working in our home while we aren't there! What a blessing!

Ok - back to the update for reals now.

Ron has the underlayment down for all of the vinyl. It's amazing to SEE where my kitchen really starts! He'll be back on Wed & Thur next week to lay the vinyl. Then Wed, Thur, Fri of the next week to lay all of the carpeting. "So when are we moving in" you ask...well, we hope by the end of the the month - for sure by mid-June. Not bad when you consider that May 18-ish, 2006 is the day we had the basement dug. We've gone from a big hole in the forest to a fabulous home in one year. Man, Brandon is amazing! He'd hate to see that I put that in here - but it's so true. He had help from a brother framing last summer - help from a crew of brothers and friends roofing - and help from my aunt doing odds and ends all along - but that's it...the rest has been all him!

Here are a couple of pics of the kitchen! Can't wait until I'm showing you the carpet!

This is the kitchen from the livingroom - there's Brandon standing at the sink doing dishes! :)


The kitchen from the top of the basement stairs.


This is looking out to the livingroom from the far corner of the kitchen (the wood stove GOES some time this week - it's served it's purpose...the furnace man comes this week to hook up real heat for us).

Walk America 2007

Our morning started out with some rain - enough that I offered to let Brandon take the kids home, after the kids got to see the set-up at the starting line, and I'd finish the walk with my sister-in-law, K. Luckily, just before the walk started, the rain let up and the sun poked through the clouds. It was actually perfect walking weather!

THANK YOU to everyone who sponsored us! We raised over $1,400.00!! Everyone got a T-shirt (which you know IS the most important part of all this). We really had a blast and we're looking forward to doing this all again next year!


Here they are - our three little preemies!
Malorie 33wks
Melanie 33wks
Joseph 35wks



Here's Team FamiLee (minus Jason who had a BSA camp out)


A great day for a walk!



Jacob & Megan stopped for a water break



This is Malorie's NICU pal Abby. We knew Abby's parents before the girls were born - so it was kind of a weird coincidence that we'd both have preemies the same week. Abby was 24wks.


Joseph decided to wake up and catch the last 15 minutes of the walk!


The kids loved the jumping castles! After the great lunch that was provided, the kids jumped and jumped (and everything stayed down)!

Joseph Barry Lee

I can't believe it's been an entire year already! His birthday is still so vivid in my mind! We're so blessed to have this little man! He's a joy, he's a love, he's a mama's boy - what more could I ask for? Happy birthday (yesterday) my sweet baby!

Brand new and so helpless...



Now he's just one of our rough-n-tumble gang. What a difference a year makes!

(Playing w/ one of his birthday presents and getting lots of help!)


There aren't words to describe how very much our family loves this little boy!!

This and that...

We're still pluggin' along. The drywall is almost done (today is Tues) and we're still on schedule to paint on Saturday. Brandon and I were able to decide on a color of paint to use (the drywall crew also doubles as a painting crew) so they're all ready to go. We're painting throughout with a grayish/whitish/beigish color figuring it'll go with anything - and also double as a good primer color if/when we ever get around to painting rooms different colors in the future!

We're planning to go and choose flooring tomorrow or Thursday.
The security company comes Tuesday and finishes their job - all they did was wire the system last week (I was horribly disappointed) - they don't fire it all up until the painting is done so they can put the panels on the walls.

The weather has been nice lately and we've all enjoyed spending time out at the house playing. We took the kids on a walk the other day while we waited for the drywall crew to finish up and leave. Here are some pictures.

House Update

So kind of, this is like being on a roller coaster! There have been days when we've felt like this house was all just a big pipe dream and we'd never really actually LIVE in it - then days when we felt like we didn't have enough time to get ready to be in it b/c it was coming together so quickly. I think it was Wednesday of this week that I thought something along the lines of, "Hmmm, hope we're in it before school starts up again in September!" The drywallers (Is that an actual pronoun?) have been hanging rock all week. Today is Saturday - they started last Saturday. About mid-weekthough, even though they were clipping along rather smoothly, I just felt like there was still so far to go. Now, fast-forward to yesterday. Brandon and I picked the kids up at school and took them out to see the house. The crew doing the walls is really funny. It's an Unle (Chuck), his son (Charlie), and two of "Uncle's" nephews...(Brother and Brother). No, their names aren't actually "Brother" but that's what they call eachother and it's really kind of funny. "Hey Brother, you need to take a half inch off that board." "Brother, you look tired." We also heard reference to Chuck as "Uncle"..."Hey Uncle, aren't you going to open your birthday card?"...followed by a gruff "@#$@ No!" LOL

Ok, so I really am going somewhere with all of this. Yesterday they told us that they'd be done w/ walls, mud, tape, and PAINT by next Saturday! A week from today our walls will be DONE! Of course this is a happy moment! We're all beside ourselves with excitement...well, except for the fact that we haven't chosen colors for walls...not even a little bit. I think our goal today is to find a color that we could stand throughout the house and then paint over if/when the time comes. Naturally, Jacob wants to paint their room fire-engine red. Maddie begged to paint her own room - she wouldn't tell me a color, so that scared me more than the red did! LOL

Here are a few pictures. I'm going to have to go through a video again b/c it's harder to take pictures now that there are walls blocking my view! (That's a problem I don't so much mind having!)

Front door from bridge "before & after"



Standing in the kitchen, looking out toward the front door and living room.


Looking up toward the Master bedroom from the front door.


The whole (backside) of the house - the drainfield was finally filled so we can walk down there now!