Christmas party

We had our ward Christmas party last night. As the 2nd counselor of the RS I was involved in the decorating so yesterday, David took the kids and spent a couple of hours setting up the decorations. I am not one to make things super elaborate but still nice, with that, i thought the party turned out great. My pride and joy was the big wreath on the curtains. We had 30 or so wreaths from last year and I wanted to use them but make something big, so I Mcguyvered all of the wreaths into one big wreath. The bow kind of died during the party but it was big and beautiful. My mom is the best bow maker ever but she never passed those genes on to me.

The food was great and there was a great turn out. Thanks to all that helped put up, take down, food and just came. It was great!

Our Thanksgiving

We had a great thanskgiving. This was the first one that I had to make the turkey and such. David's tradition is to have way too much food so i tried to ablige but I am still learning.

We were fortunate enough to have my cousin, Matt Blake come down from Richmond Va, with his 3 children and very pregnant wife. it was great to spend the holiday with family. We ate way too much fudge, pie, turkey, and played games. It truly felt like Thanksgiving.

our helpers

Eliza has really learned how to help. she is proficient with a power saw, hammer, paint brush, nail gun and many other things. Fenton is her apprentice.

more pics of the house

We had a final inspection for the bank to say we are done and get our final draw. Well they showed up and said that the trim needed to be painted and the garbage moved. I was not aware that they were going to be that picky, so for the last couple of days I have been painting the trim.

Here are some before and afters of the house and some extra pics.

BEFORE

AFTER,,, NOTICE THE TRIM, MULCH AND NO ORANGE FENCEBEFORE... THE BACK YARD, ON THE LEFT IS THE LITTLE EXTENSION WE TORE DOWNAFTER, NOTICE THE NEW DECK THAT DAVID HAS YET TO B-B-Q ON, BUT SOON!!BEFORE, THE VIEW FROM THE FRONT DOORAFTER, WE TORE DOWN THE WALL AND YOU CAN SEE THE EXTENDED DINING ROOM

the ribbon cutting ceremony

if you haven't noticed the huge orange eye sore at the front of our house than you are blind. There has been an orange fence around the famous tree for the last 3 months and we were finally able to take it down. We wanted it to be a big ribbon cutting ceremony and take pictures and toast with martinelli's, but things happened rather quickly that we didn't get a choice.


We have been wanted to put mulch down around the tree and the company that I had contacted said they could only deliver 100 yards,,,, which is a lot. But the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, at 7:00 AM they called and said they had 10 yards they wanted to dump and they would be here in 30 minutes... 7:00 AM what?? So I started moving quickly for cutting down the orange fence and then putting all of the weeds and limbs in garbage bags. I did it just in time and now we have mulch around the tree. Also that same day, we finally got our certificate of Occupancy. With many failed inspections and living in the house illegally for 2 weeks, we finally passed and I really wanted to burn the permits, for they are no longer in need. Later that night David and I did toast with martinellis and were so grateful that the house was finally approved and that the fence was down.




Here are some pics of the final fence down.