Where Do I Begin....

I know it's been awhile. I have a really good excuse though. Our house was broken into and our laptop was stolen. Yes we do have a desktop but it runs soooooo s-l-o-w and it constantly crashes! It's very frustrating to use for any amount of time longer than 15 mins. We really need to ask Grandpa Phil to check on it or take it to Geek Squad. Jason is fed up with it but I say let's try to salvage it because at the very least the kids can use it and you can still use Word on it! Anyway...

So we've recovered from the break-in. I will admit for the first few weeks I was scared to come home to the house alone. We were skittish at night and just feeling uneasy. We did our best not to let it show b/c of the kids. They were troopers and showed no fear. In fact they put up a security system of their own on their bedroom door. Walter took time to get over it too.

After a lot of prayer I told myself I can not live in fear. It's not good for me or for my family. I was so sad that all my jewelery from my grandma, parents and special pieces from Jason were taken. I was very freaked out that they/he/she was in our room. But, life goes on and I can not live worrying that they would be back. Prayer is a wonderful thing!!!

So in the midst of all that we started on making some changes to the house. We needed to make two rooms for Katie and Ben. Although Katie loved having the loft for all of her "stuff" she did not like sleeping up there and usually slept on the top bunk of Ben's bed. Well as you can imagine, that was starting to cause "issues". Basically she needs privacy.

Jason had a wonderful idea to divide the living room in half and make a small bedroom and the other half be a dining room. We then made the rock room/dinning room the living room. Jason did a fantastic job of doing this with keeping cost down and making it functional and able to be taken down if we ever wanted to.

A HUGE thank you to Ryan (Jason's brother) for helping with moving furniture! It was a big job!!!! Thank you Uncle Ryan.
A HUGE thank you and then some to my Dad for helping Jason sheet rock and do the electrical work!!
I of course thought this would be a "QUICK" project....no, but boy does it look awesome!!!
Here are a few pics of the new dining room...





Here's the living room...





Katie's Room- It's really, really pink! Passion Pink.



Ben's New Room. He chose a skate board theme. His room is still in process, but the majority is done. Jason is going to make a loft bed for him, to give him a little more floor space. Now, enjoy these pics you have no idea what I went through trying to get him to clean his room!!!




So that's the update with the house. I'll be back for another update soon, I need to go whip their butts in Crazy 8 card game! Our new favorite game.