Home Renovations......

Our home built in 1966 is now under construction as I call it. There are so many things that need to be done, so we got a loan to take care of it!! We have first started getting bids for labor only to do some of this work, but the only thing we decided to pay someone to do was the bathroom remodel for the kids bath and the master bath!! They started the work on Wednesday 5/26/10 and completed both bathrooms last night 5/27/2010 around 9pm. They installed a shower line in the kids bathroom and installed the bathtub and then put ceramic tile on the walls!! It looks so much better in there now as we have had a torn up bathroom for over 4 years now!! The kids had their first bath this morning in the new bathtub and they were so excited!!

Here are some before and after pictures of the kids bathroom. We lived with only a working toilet for over 4 years in just this one bathroom!


After the guys were done with the install. I took this picture before I put anything back in the bathroom, but there is a cute kids shower curtain that goes with it too!!

The master bathroom just needed some new ceramic tile on the bathtub walls and we decided to put the ceramic tile on the floor as well. The floor had some nasty vinyl tiles on it and it looks much better now with the ceramic tile. Now I just have to put the bathroom's back together and clean up my bedroom and we will have this one project done!!

Here is the before of our master bathroom. I am embarrassed to even show this picture, it was gross!!

The vinyl sticky tiles that were on the floor before.
Here is one view after the job was done. Notice the shelves in the corner. He did that with the tile!!

And the new floors!! Much better!!

And another view of the shower!! I love the way it looks!!!

The next project will hopefully be completed Sunday if everything goes well. This is the garage siding project. We recently found out from one of the contractor's that we had termite damage so we had that treated on 5/20/10 and now Larry is just trying to fix a few boards that got damage almost to the top of the roof. Luckily for us this is a detached garage made out of solid wood so that is why we had damage, but to our knowledge there was no sign of termites on the actual house itself. All I can say is "What a mess"!!! Termites are not my friend and they better stay away from now on!!!! My wonderful father-in-law will be over Sunday to help Larry take on this project and my father-in-law has volunteered my mother-in-law to help get a patching of our living room ceiling completed... I thought it was funny when my husband said they were volunteering each other to come work at our house with us!!! Of course the kids may not let the grandparents do much work since they want to spend time with them too and have there attention!! We shall see how this goes though!!!

Here is a before shot of what the garage looks like now. It is wood siding now and that is why the termites loved it so much!!

Here is what it looks like with no wood siding!

In the next few weeks we will also be putting a new roof on the house. My husband has decided that we are not going to pay the contractor's there ridiculous amount for labor and that he was just going to feed some of his fireman buddies for there help, but I am not sure if they know this yet!! One of his fireman buddies had a construction business on the side from his fire dept. job, so he said he would help Larry with the roof, but he will need more than just one person to help so that we can get it done within a day or two at max!! We will see how this project goes. We have purchased all of our roofing material from a guy that posted his business on Craigslist and have saved about half the cost of what a contractor would have charged us for the material!! We also have to re-do all the fascia work around the house that meets up to the roof so that is also something that Larry will be working on the next few weeks before he does the roof!!

We also learned this week from AT&T that only our kitchen had grounded outlets and the rest of the house when tested by Larry is not grounded so we have an electrician coming out Saturday to look at what he needs and then should be able to fix it on Tuesday next week. So this is another cost that we were not expecting, but in my eyes we need to do it #1 for our safety, but it needs to be done so if we sale the house there won't be any issue's at closing or for someone else that buys this house!! I don't plan on staying at this home forever so it needs to be fixed up for the future!! Maybe in a few years we will sell, but only God knows our future, so we will see what happens!!

We have a few more small things to get done inside the house still, but those shouldn't take very long to get done. We (I) have to paint Kayla's room and decorate for our little princess!! She can't continue on in a beige color room in my eyes, so we are going to give her a little girls room!! We have been taking different pictures of flowers, butteries, dragonflies and so on to frame for her room and we are so excited to start frame shopping for those pictures we have printed for her room!! It will look so good once it is finally done!!

We do also need new windows for the house, but I have to research for the best price since we will need so many windows. I am not sure what the plans are right now for that, but it will be in the near future!!

So things are finally coming together on our house and once we are done, I hope it will be a long time before we have to do anything else to this house. We have actually outgrown this house and we need more space for everyone, so I am praying and hoping that in the next few years we can sell this house and buy a bigger one. For now we will just be thankful for what we have and enjoy our family!!

I will post the after pictures of the garage when it is completed and then I will also be doing before and after pictures of the roof as well!!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!!

Been a long time.....

Wow, I can't believe how long it has been since my last post. It seems like life has just past me by with everything that is going on.

Christmas was ok this last year, although the kids were both sick again! :( I hate that they get sick over the holiday's. Kayla was much worst Christmas day and it almost seemed like she had pneumonia again, like the year before when we spent Christmas week in the hospital. We did have a great new year and we ended up in January taking Kayla to a Pulmonary doctor and she was put on some new medication that she will take pretty much all year long to prevent her fragile lungs from getting so sick again. We have been back and forth between doctors with ear infections and her Asthma breathing issues since December and this last ear infection(ear drum rupture) I requested ear tubes so that surgery is scheduled for June 4th. She is doing great now that she is on all this medication and has only had a few mild colds, but no major asthma related breathing issues. She is loving her pre-school and can now spell her name when you ask her. She is still practicing her name writing when tracing, so hopefully she will be able to write her name on paper without tracing before too long!! She has grown up so fast this last year and I might add that she would make a great teacher as she loves to help the other kids with puzzles and other stuff at school, but she is also very bossy!! She is very independent like her mommy and likes to do things for herself which mommy has a very hard time with because we are so much alike and if it isn't done to my liking then I have to fix things and she doesn't like that and will let you know it too!! She is growing into a beautiful little girl, but loves to get dirty and play rough!! Not a very girly girl at all. Although she is starting to like to wear dresses more, but they come off to easy and that is creating a problem at school when she wants to take her dress off. She likes to do that at home and not wear any clothes(well only her panties). She takes after her father on that one, I must add!! Other than that she is doing great and just growing too fast.

Cooper is enjoying school as well and he is all boy as well!! He loves to rough house with daddy and Kayla. He is doing good in pre-school as well and can't quite spell his name out loud just yet. He has the COO part down, but that PER is not easy for him. We are practicing though. He does pretty good at tracing his name and has even wrote his name out without having to trace the letters so it won't be too long that he can do it all by himself. He loves to draw and color pictures and he gets into it as well. He doesn't want to be bothered when he is deep into his art!! He loves to play outside, but lately this weather has been getting to his allergies, so he was put on singulair as a preventative for him to not get so bad! Other than that he is doing really good health wise and doesn't seem to get as many ear infections as his sister. Being twins they usually get sick together, so even though it is tough to deal with 2 kids sick at the same time, it usually doesn't drag out over weeks with them getting sick one after another! Cooper talks about getting to go fishing with his daddy sometimes and he wants to catch a shark!! I think it is too cute that he gets as excited about fishing as his daddy does!! Now he wants to catch a redfish with daddy. One day they will have to go fishing and stay out until he catches that redfish!! He would be so excited!! He is more sensitive then Kayla and he gets his feelings hurt more when he gets disciplined more than her. It hurts me when I have to get on to him because he has always been such a sweet natured child and now with the terrible 3's (Yes, worse than 2's) he tries to push the limit on what he does and then the talking back stuff when he doesn't like us telling him not to do something. He is growing up so fast as well and it seems like he has gone through another growing spurt lately and shot up in height.

They both are still around 30 pounds each, but they are so active all day long that they just work off what they eat. They never sit still and it is hard to get them to sit still long enough to even watch any TV. They love Dora the Explorer and Mickey Mouse clubhouse, but still wont watch a full episode. I do love that my kids are so active and not couch potatoes!!

This past weekend we were out at Strawberry festival and the kids got to do Mutton Bustin. They were so excited to get to ride a sheep for the first time and they even got little trophies afterwards. Cooper was the first one to go and then Kayla went and she cried I think only because she got a mouth full of sand and it made her made. Daddy was down there with them and he said she held on tight and got dragged a little bit so that is why all the sand got in her mouth.

Larry and I are doing good. Larry has been doing cookoff's with some of his fireman buddies so that is keeping him busy on the weekends when they do that. He is still staying busy with his main job with Houston Fire Dept. and then he works at 2 college's as a side job with the Fire Academy class'. I am still working with my Allstate Agent trying to sale insurance. It is getting difficult now days to find insurance and it is more difficult for us agents to tell the customers that we can't provide them with insurance that they need to have or to provide them with high dollar premiums for these policies that we can offer. I still love my job though and wouldn't trade it for the world. My boss has been so wonderful to me and my family and I won't ever have to worry about a thing while he is my boss!!! I have also joined the YMCA and have been taking a Spin class 2 nights a week and boy is that a tough thing to do!! I feel for those biker's that do marathon's and stuff!! I don't know how they do it, but the class is getting better the more I go!! The other reason I joined the Y is because they offer swim lesson's to the kids during the summer, so my kids will both be in a class by July!! I will feel much better around water after they take the swim lessons!!

Right now we are dealing with our house repairs that need tending too and the #1 fix is our roof. We have purchased all the roofing material and we are just waiting on one more estimate from a roofer that is coming out tomorrow. We did learn that we have termites on the garage which luckily is detached from the house so we are not worried about damage to the main house, but we still have to have the problem taken care of so I got terminix out yesterday, wrote the check and they are treating the termites this afternoon which should take care of our problem for a while!! Now the fun of trying to fix the damage that they have caused to some of our wood on the garage!! We will also finally be able to complete the bathroom remodel that we started like 4 years ago on the guest/kids bathroom so I am excited to finally get that done. I will also be re doing the ceramic tile in our master bathroom and will put ceramic tile down on those floors, so once the 1st bathroom is complete, then we will do the master bath. That way we always have one working bathroom in the house while the other is being done!! I am so excited to get all these repairs done and behind us and not have to hopefully worry about anything for a while. Oh the joys of being a homeowner though!!

Anyway, I think that I should probably end this post now and I will try my best to keep up with things from now on!! I will also try to post some pictures later after I get home since all my recent pictures are on that computer and I am at work right now. As you can tell not working too hard though!! Sorry for such a long one, but it has been a while as you can tell!!!