My Baby Girl!

Oh my sweet Olivia! Where have the past three years gone so quickly?? I remember the day you were born waking up about 2-3 a.m. having contractions every 5 minutes. I told Daddy that I was going to take a bath and see if anything changed. Since it didn't I called the hospital, Grandma Cheryll came up to our house to be with your sisters, and we went to the hospital arriving about 5:30 a.m. You were born right before 10:30 a.m. and have been a blessing ever since. You are spunky and down-right funny sometimes. You try to do everything your sisters do and I just want to make time freeze so you don't grow up so fast! I was talking at supper tonight with Daddy how about that time 3 years ago he and your sisters left me at the hospital all alone with you. I was sad that they had to leave us, but Daddy had to get your sisters home to bed because they had to get up for school the next day. How I would give anything to be able to have that quiet time with you all alone more often now!! We are so busy all the time, but you are so good about going with the flow! My hope for your future is that you enjoy life to the fullest and love your family beyond measure. Your dad and I love you so much and we just want you to be happy and healthy. We had Olivia's birthday party on Sunday and here she is after just opening a present. She was so much fun to watch this year - she knows her birthday is in September. She also knows she is three and she loved opening her presents and all the attention on her!!

Aunt Brenda got Olivia a Dora cup, plate, etc. Here Olivia is trying to open the Dora sandwich keeper. Not much luck!

This summer we went to the theater to see "Rio" when it was a 10 a.m. showing so cost was $2 per person. Olivia liked it and now we own it on DVD. So she picked out "Rio" for her cake this year. I also think she has watched it a bit too much. She recently took it to daycare and a little boy at daycare kept telling her shhh during the movie because she repeats most of the lines.

Waiting for everyone to sing "Happy Birthday" to her so she can blow out the candles. Her crown is from an "Olivia" dress-up set. She loves "Olivia" the pig and I love when she sings along with the theme song to the show. She also got a toy car from the show with all of the "Olivia" family in it.

The cake had lots of blue frosting so Olivia had blue lips and fingers. You can see her tutu a little in this picture from the dress-up set. She got blue frosting on that also, but it cleaned right off.

House Progress

Since last I posted, the basement is structurally done and now framing has begun.

Seal on one wall of basement, so backfill can be put in.

Looking at the basement. Backfill is done.

Garage floor ready for cement pouring.

Basement floor ready for cement pouring.

Garage floor poured!

Basement floor poured!

Framing began today!!!

Madison's Room in the basement. She can see where her window will be!!

Looking out the basement from another angle!

House Plans

Not sure how well this will work, but I am posting our house plan drawings. (I hope if you are interested, you can click on the pictures and see them bigger.)
This first picture is of the front and back of the house. The only thing that you won't see on these are the front porch railings and the deck on the back of the house.
This next picture is the two side views of the house.
This is the main floor living space floor plan. Main floor laundry, master bedroom suite with his and hers closets, walk-in pantry. Terry also made our garage big for all of the stuff we have. We can't have a shed in the backyard because of the lot covenants. Bedroom #3 in the plan will be Olivia's room.
This is the basement floor plan. Our lot slopes a lot, so we could have a walk-out basement, but we are not. We are just having a daylight basement, but we can take out a window in the recreation room and replace it with a door at some point if we decide to. Bedroom #4 in the plan will be Laci's room and Bedroom #5 will be Madison's room. Both girls will have walk-in closets and they will also have a bathroom to share. We decided to finish the basement right away also so that the house is completely move-in ready! So excited about the final results. Basement walls were poured Thursday, so they need to take the forms off on Monday. It is started and that is progress!

Footings are Poured!! Basement Walls NEXT!!!

This is the footings of our basement for our new house. It rained quite a bit on Friday after the footings got poured, so a lot of mud!! This is looking at the house from the back corner.

Today forms got set up so that the basement walls can be poured this week. More forms need to be set up tomorrow and then hopefully the cement gets poured for the walls on Thursday. This is the back side of the house.

This is looking at the front of the house. More forms set up for basement wall pouring on Thursday. Love going up each day to see PROGRESS!!!