Busy, busy, busy!!

I know it has been ages since I've posted and I'm sure you guys are wondering if I've given up on this blogging thing! I'm still here, but life has not been so easy the last 6 weeks or so since I've posted.

Let's see...I guess I left off a few weeks before Christmas. I'm sure there is enough said with that right there. A lot of time was lost simply in the hullabaloo of Christmas shopping, parties and festivities. Not to mention work, Dr's appts, and just being Mommy! We didn't actually do any decorating for Christmas because the house construction was WAY too hectic. Luckily my mother-in-law had a pre-decorated 'mini-tree' she wasn't using, so we were able to set that up on a table and at least create a little mood of the holiday season for Rylee. She also bought Rylee her very own purple tree to keep in her room...purple is her FAVORITE color, you know!?! About a week and a half before Christmas Rylee came down with a bit of a cold, so that was a bummer. 4 days before Christmas I got what I thought was her cold... Unfortunately I was wrong and wound up giving her my cold, too...so she was sick for about 3 weeks, the poor thing! It was a wonderful holiday season as usual with a lot of time spent with family and friends. Not being around my family is always tough during the holidays!! I think so many people get wrapped up in the 'gift giving' and totally lose sight of the blessing of family!! Althought it is sad to say goodbye to fun of the holidays, I'm certainly thankful for some of the stress of the season to be over!

We recovered from the holiday craze only to hit the house remodel head on! Monday, January 4th the constructon officially came indoors! They had to knock 4 holes into the house to connect us to the new addition... Right after Christmas we had to quickly pack up every room in the house except our master bedroom and bathroom. Even our master bedroom closet had to go... On top of the stress of the constructin at this point in the game, Florida had a 2 week cold spell that hasn't been seen in like 30 years or something like that. When they knocked the holes in the walls, we didn't even have heat to the new addition, so we were freezing!! We've weathered just about every setback possible it seems, but I certainly don't want to jinx us so that I can see how bad it could have been. Our builder had hopes to be have the kitchen remodel done in 1 week. He was gonna hit us hard, but be done quickly! Well....that didn't happen! In 3 days it will have been a month and our kitchen is still not usable. In the grand scheme of things, time has gone by quickly and it is all worth it but let me just say...I'm ready to have my life back. It is stressful knowing that Brody is 2 weeks away from his due date and we don't really have a place to put him if he were to arrive.

The new house addition is basically complete. We are hoping to get our CO (Certificate of Occupancy)tomorrow...of course we've been waiting on that since last Wednesday, but I'm still hoping!! All that is really left is closet shelving and a garage door and lots of little finish work like touch up paint and stuff like that. We still have a lot that we are painting in the old part of the house, but I think that will go quickly when we aren't crammed into one little room. We had new baseboards and crown molding put in the existing bedrooms as well as new flooring in the old living room and new cabinets/countertops in the old bathrooms, so there is virtually no room that hasn't been affected! (Except for Damon's baseball card closet that has remained locked throughout the construction...hmmmm)

My sister and Mom came last weekend and spent 5 days with us to help get the kids rooms ready. They were basically finished with the remodelling of those rooms, so Jill flew down with Dani and she worked rather hard to put everything in place! She also redid the kids' bathroom and helped me accessorize much of the rest of house. My credit card is smoking... Luckily I've been saving, so all is good!! I was pretty useless for helping with the manual labor, but wrist is sore from swiping my card...HA!!

I don't know if this kind of living is something you could ever get used to, but the sad thing is I think we are almost adjusting. Funny story... Jill's plane left at 7am so we got up at 5:30am and I drove her and Dani to the airport which is literally 5 minutes away from my house. I dropped them off and went back home to climb into bed for an hour and a half of sleep before the hammering started. Damon was snoring like a mad man, so I put in ear plugs and drifted off to sleep. I woke up to our cat sleeping with us which I couldn't understand since we lock them out of the room. Come to find out...our builder told us that 3 workers were here at 7:45am banging on the doors and ringing the doorbell to be let it. They had called him on his cell and he said for them to find an unlocked window and go on in. He knew we were taking Jill to the airport and figured we were gone. So they climbed in and got to work. When he got here at 8:30 he walked by our bedroom and saw us conked out in bed sound asleep. Apparently the cat had pushed the door open and come on in and since I had ear plugs in I couldn't hear a thing. Damon and Rylee can usually sleep through most commotion. I'm the one that hears a pin drop. I guess the ear plugs work! In some ways it is embarassing, but we've let these workers into every corner of our lives, why not let them see us sleeping, right?!? LOL!!

Within the next few days we could literally be closing the door on this chapter of our lives... I'm hoping and praying that the CO comes through tomorrow because that would play a HUGE roll in us being able to slowly put the pieces back together of the chaos we've been living in. In looking back at the pictures I posted at the beginning of December a lot has happened!! I'm really excited to start living a normal life again!