Works in Progress

We're slowly getting the houses back together. We were able to get the school room set up, but it needs to be cleaned up, so please ignore the clutter you see in the pics. :)

Because this post contains so many pictures, I will likely not update again this Friday, but will wait until at least Monday, after things have settled and will have more pictures to share.

The girl's room is now ready to be decorated and our decorator will be here Wednesday. The boy's room is nearly complete as well.

The front room (former office) will be turned into a sitting/quiet room. The living room will get a new rug and in general, the house will be spruced up.

We're still bulk cooking and had to take time even during the move to prepare some future meals. Here's Morgan helping me roll up some cookie dough for the freezer. We make up enough dough to make several dozen cookies and keep them in the freezer to take out and bake whenever we want fresh homemade cookies.




The girl's room--getting there. They're going to have new window treatments, as well as other cool things added.




My litlte fella helps to carry over one of the wall maps for the school room. He was so proud of himself for making it all the way over. :)

Starting out! All smiles. :)

Halfway there and still smiling!

And he makes it!!! :) What a strong boy!

Various views of the school room. It's ready-to-go, but not organized completely. The closet was the first to be organized and now we just need to get all the toys back into their places. The plan is to let the little ones play while I work at the table with the older children.








All that work wears out a little fella:

Moving into the rental house

Because we need a two to three year track record for Andrew's business before we can get a larger mortgage, we decided to rent the house across the street, to give ourselves more space.

Andrew's office has been moved over, as well as the play room and we now have a school room! I even *finally* have the closet to store all of the school supplies and this is SO GREAT!

Andrew set himself up a little room over there as well, so we don't have to worry about disturbing while he sleeps during his odd hours.

The children worked very hard moving over books and toys. They definitely pulled their weight this week. We're blessed to have such hard workers.

The weird thing though is that we've moved out so much stuff that the house seems really empty now, so I'm calling in a friend of mine who is a very talented decorator to help make it homey again.

The children getting ready to take another load over to the house.



Camden enjoying the train table in the new play room.


Jared getting ready to unload some items.

About 16 bags of trash/clutter went into this dumpster in our driveway.

The "old" playroom. As soon as we get the bunks in, this will be the girl's room.

Camden enjoying his slushie. The children worked incredibly hard this week. Even Camden carried over many items. They earned a special treat.




The children making their way over to the house to play with some toys, while I organized the school supply closet. I'm looking forward to getting the desks in there.







My nice, big, roomy supply closet. What a joy! I'm so happy to have a place for all of our school items.


Camden standing in the bathroom, between the play/school room and school supply closet.


Here's a picture of the new "play room." We're using the house's master suite. This picture was taken before we organized everything. One half of the room will be for toys/play and the other half will hold school desks, as well as a bean bag for reading.



Andrew set up his office in the living room. He has a couple of fellas visiting this afternoon, so they can learn new software. They used to meet at the library, but now they don't have to worry about closing times.



Andrew's "home away from home." He set up a little place for himself in the front bedroom, so that he can still watch out for us from the window.