Family Closet Project

Ok, so a good friend from my past have been having lunch together before our daughter's dance class and she suggested that I look at blogs and check out all the info they have on them. One in particular she thought I would be interested in was one about a family closet. Immediately I was interested and started thinking about the area in our living room next to the washer and dryer in the new house. Adam and I have been discussing how the laundry is the largest and constant job in the house that eats up most of our project time. This seemed to be coming at me like a flood on how I would accomplish this without a massive expense and when would I move forward with it. I have a lot of ideas and projects that I would like to get done with the house, in the house, and with the kids so this one seemed to go back into the pile of "when I get to it." I realized that this project would make a huge mess in the house that Adam could not handle on a daily basis after working hard all day so it made sense to wait until he left. So that is exactly what I did! The day Adam left for his few days of vacation in Germany before working a week in France, I tore into the project! I pulled out all of the craft/game closet and threw it all into the office. I pulled out the shelves and started cleaning it out. I was armed with measurements, sketches and ideas and not much else. The rest of that week consisted of drawing on the walls the placements of coat rods, shelves and the such. I had in mind to use all of the materials in the boys closet so that I could move my nice large wire shelves into their, now empty, closet. I tried not to go into town on Saturday but did anyway and spent enough time in Lowes hardware store that the shopping cart collector commented on the fact that I had been there for a looonnnnngggg time. I got the rest of the parts I needed and felt armed to get this done! I was so energized to finish this that I even pasted up a night with friends, game and drinks to work on the closet. I should have gone because by the end of the night all I had was one shelf up and two very large holes in the wall. :( Sunday started off another disaster by making a fool of myself in mass but fixed my problems with the closet after the meeting at the school. The more I worked on the project, thinking that I would have to go back into Lubbock or over to OD Kenny's for more parts, I started to realize that I had all the parts I needed! I was able to find screws, nails, anchors, and wood to finish the project just today! I even finished in enough time to move all the current hanging clothes in their new home before getting the kids from school. After school we drove by and got some laundry baskets (and Sprite for Sarah, who was sick) for the kids to collect all of their clothes out of their present dressers. After all is said and done the closet is now finished and I am so excited. I know, sad for me to be excited about laundry, but mothers of small children will understand. There are some fine tuning details that will have to happen, but what is nice is that now I can do those after the kids are asleep! :D Today is a happy day for me, now I just need prayers that I did quality work and won't have to fix anything when/if something falls off the wall! ;)

Fresh Start

So I (April now not Adam) that the last post was our anniversary 2009. I started thinking about it and decided that there have been a TON of things that have happened in our family since then and we have not put any of them on here. We were busy after our anniversary preparing to host around 12 people for mission work, leave South Africa, vacation in Germany for a couple of weeks and then head back to normal life in Slaton, Texas. We survived all of that and even found out in the Lubbock airport that Pat and Leroy Behnke had moved out of their own house to allow us to live somewhere while we were looking for our own place! (great for us, and for them ;). Upon our return in the airport we also made it public knowledge that we were expecting baby number 5! About a week in the in-laws house we found a house to buy in Slaton that had 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a 1 car garage with carport out front, and fenced in back yard and all that within our price range! We closed on the house on October 4th, 2009. (This was the best picture of the front of the house that I had on hand, this is a few of our friends before a nice dinner for The Nurturing Center in Lubbock. The far right couple are the Hybners with whom we lived with for many a months!)
We then had the huge task of finding all of our stuff to put in the house. We had the luggage we had taken with us and had been living out of for a month, stuff in storage at Pat and Leroy's house, stuff in storage at our friends the Hybners, and the room we had been staying in at the Hybner's also had a large amount of our stuff! We finally got everything in the house and started the task of finding a home for everything (either in our home or someone else's home). Adam has been back to South Africa many times and brought back jewelry every time to sell for the benefit of the ladies that made the piece. Theresa Irene was born in March of 2010 to the delight and disappointment of her older siblings. The disappointment was purely because of the fact that we no longer have a pattern! Man, kids are crazy! :) She has seriously been one of the happiest children I have ever met in my life! The kids started school late last year but finished up strong. They have started another year and Vincent joined them this year. Sarah and Theresa have enjoyed their days together with mommy and have been great while mommy is volunteering at the school. Adam's company is trying to get new contracts, which is good for us because that would mean he still has a job, and so he is traveling this week in Paris, France to show them what GBSD has to offer! The house is slowly, and I mean slowly, coming together and getting organized. We are loving life in our happy little community and excited about the future we have with our growing family and friends! Now you have a quick catch up about our lives, from now on I will try to post more details more often. :)