Sewing the Night Away

Ok, so yesterday Court and I went to Hobby Lobby to pick up some Christmas decorations. I found some awesome fabric for a Christmas Tree skirt...I was gonna just bunch it up under the tree but Court suggested we make a real skirt.

So began our adventure!!!!!!!!!!! We started at 5pm and ended at 12:30am this morning!!!!!!

This is the antique sewing machine that would be our biggest challenge.


This is us trying to figure out how to get the bobbin holder back into the machine...

Pinning the pattern on.

After we finally decided to make a late night run to Walmart for new thread and a new machine, we finally finished....the skirt itself wasn't hard it was all the evil machine!!!! Mr. Singer was not on our list of favorite people last night!!!

Finally! A finished skirt!

This is what the fabric looks like up close, it goes along with us wanting to bring the focus back to Jesus this Christmas.

Thank you Grandma and Mom for the late night phone call consultations!!!! What do you think?

Thanksgiving

Since I couldn't make the drive to Tulsa this year (I'm just to worn out from working on the house), Bob and Court and the kids came down for Thanksgiving. Excuse the mess, we are still unpacking boxes and painting.

Court working on Bobs dreads.

Zeke stealing dressing from Uncle Jonathan

Aunt Court in invisible mode....amazing huh?

This was the quietest the kids had been all day!!!

Aunt Carrie having girl time with the nieces.

Poor girls, only boy toys to play with...they make do.

Ok, so officially Thanksgiving has occured so that means.....BRING ON CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Normally as soon as Thanksgiving lunch is over I start decorating for Christmas and putting up the tree...this year I'm just exhausted and had a headache so those pictures will come soon.

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, we have tons to be thankful for, God's grace is truly amazing!!!

And The Work Goes On..and on...and on!

Last Thursday we got carpet. That's what we've been waiting on so that we could get things moved back into the house. So yesterday Jonathan, Jalyn, and I emptied out our storage unit and as you'll see we basically turned our house into a larger storage unit.

Jonathan and I were moving the armoire upstairs to our bedroom and he said he was proud he had such a strong wife....I said, actually, he has a strong father in law that taught his daughter how to be strong during their moves, so thanks Dad!!!!

I'm completely overwhelmed right now, I don't even know where to start, there's so much to do and I still haven't finished painting, which won't get done now until I can get everything unpacked or at least put into the appropriate rooms.

Those of you who got my insane e-mail last week to pray for me can see why now...its literally like the hurricane has hit our home again...very stressful, but we'll get thru it and I know that we have so much when others have nothing left...we are blessed.

Jalyn had to try and get into every picture, this is his room.

Our bathroom filled with closet, bathroom, and bedroom stuff.

Last night was the first night we've slept in our room in a real bed since the hurricane hit. The room isn't finished still missing baseboards, no window sill, etc....

The boys bathroom, they haven't been able to use in weeks.

This is the front room, aka the storage unit, at the moment...crazy, huh? Makes me cringe even looking at it in a picture...never mind actually trying to walk to the front door!

Ok, so we'll keep posting our progress, thanks for all the words of encouragement.

Holiday Dinner

Last night I was invited to attend The Met's Holiday Dinner for women. The boys taekwondo instructors wife (confusing enough?) had a table and she invited taekwondo moms to join her. I had been to this type of dinner before in College Station, through Central Baptist, it was so fun to see how another church did it.

Every table was decorated differently by the table hostess, some pictures of them are below. There were 750 women there, we were served salad, bacon wrapped pork tenderloin, steamed veggies, new potatoes, rolls, and dessert. Their womens ministry leader spoke on Inviting Jesus to Christmas, she said that when she was asking God what she should talk about God seemed to be saying that he wanted to actually be invited to Christmas this year. She asked how many times we've actually thrown a birthday party for someone and forgot to invite the guest of honor. She challenged us to ask Him how He wants us to celebrate this year.

Everyone was dressed VERY nicely and there was even a red carpet for us to walk in on.... I dug out a shear red top over a black camisole, black dress capri's and black high heels...it was fun to dress up in something other than shorts and t-shirt that are covered in sheetrock dust and paint! I even blowdried my hair straight and flat ironed it and parted it on the opposite side and wore it down....VERY different for me but I loved it...in fact I liked it so much I stopped to see Christy, the girl who does my hair and showed her how I had done it so she could cut it so I'll be able to fix it like that more. She was even shocked that I could were something besides flip flops or tennis shoes!

Jonathan was off yesterday and we moved things out of storage and looked at mattresses and got errands ran so I was exhausted....in fact I said earlier in the day that I wasn't gonna go, I was just to tired and we still have so much work to get done. BUT my husband insisted that I needed the night with women and he was right, it was so nice to forget about the house and all the work we still have to get done.

Here's a few pictures of some of the tables...

So pretty done in black cherry red, black and copper...it was the MOPS table.

This was a door prize won by one of the ladies at our table. The lady looking at the camera is Mrs. Humphries, her husband is a black belt and she was my Titus woman at MOPS last year.

Noah's Ark Theme...there are real goldfish in the vases with blue stones.

This really appealed to the florist in me...super cute.

Such a fun Thanksgiving theme.

There were others I didn't get pictures of b/f my camera batteries died...a gingerbread theme, with aprons hung on every chair as chair covers, princess theme with boa's and tiara's, our table was done in black and white and had jeweled cones and christmas ornaments in bowls, there was a candy land theme....it went on and on.

Ok, so that was just something a little different that I wanted to share, I'm so excited about the holidays! I'm trying very hard not to stress b/c you know how I like to decorate the house and carry on decoration traditions that Debbie used to do but with everything torn up I don't even know where decorations are. It will get done though and we'll definitely be inviting Jesus to his own birthday party this year and asking him how he wants us to celebrate.

Workin' 9 to 5....and 5 to 10...and 8 to 12.....

We are working so hard right now!!!! Carpet comes tomorrow so we needed to have all of our part of the work done for that. Well, we got most of it done...we still need to reattach the air conditioning vents, move the bunk bed and guest room furniture, and I thought I could just touch up the office paint but its gonna have to be totally redone. We have things that still need to be done like window sills and baseboards installed but those are going to wait until after carpet. The only reason I haven't run back to Home Depot for more paint is b/c tonight is communion at our church and I won't quit painting once I start. After communion tonight I'll try to get the first step done on the office walls and then try to hit it hard b/f the carpet guys get here in the morning.

The cleanup from the construction has been unbelievable. By the way I think that painting ceilings is a job that should be reserved for convicts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's awful!!!!!!!!! And painful. I'll probably be coughing up sheet rock and texture dust into the new year.

I'm glad Jon Michael like to take pictures so much, he's chronicling our work very well. I'm to exhausted to sit here and arrange the photo's in order so I'll just tell you about them in the captions.

We'll take pictures as things start coming back into the house from storage, we plan on trying to get that done in the evenings and when Jonathan is off on Monday.

FYI...you can't touch up suede faux technique!!!

Me touching up the ceiling and walls...yep, I'm 2 stories up on top of a scaffold!

This was last night, we worked for 5 hours installing the fan and lights in the house....IN THE DARK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I bought some awesome flashlights that worked pretty well for us.

Hanging the entry light...my arms were shaking and cramping!

Jalyn "helping" Daddy install the wall switch for the fan/light.

The camera flash is brighter than our flashlights!

When its pitch black in the house for 5 hours there's not much more to do than go to sleep.

Every time Jon Michael would take our picture we'd joke and say it was the last one of us together b/c once we were done one of us was leaving the other!!! We really work very well together and it always brings us closer BUT there's lots of "suggestions" to each other how things should be done...its stressful but fun working together and we're always proud of each other, how hard we each work and what we accomplish.

As Good As Christmas!!!!!

Well of course nothing is as good as Christmas but this was right up there!!!

When we were pulling in the driveway this afternoon I saw a county dump truck coming around the corner!!! I told Jonathan, "Hurry, Hurry, move the vehicles so they'll have room to get our debris!!!!" We put our vehicles in empty driveways, thanks to those at work, and then sat outside and watched like little kids. I literally was jumping up and down at one point AND thought I was gonna cry! You have no idea how happy we were to get all that wet, stinky, roach infested, and fire ant infested trash outta here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know that no one else will be as excited or impressed as we were but still it was a great day I had to share. It only took repeated calls to the city, county, FEMA, and two seperate work orders to get our streets trash picked up......ridiculous.....but seriously we're so thankful!!! Our little corner of the block filled up 3 entire dump trucks...that's only 6 houses...they had to call in more dump trucks.

It was like the calvary was here!

So cool watching "the claw" at work.

Can you tell our joy was contagious?!?!

Now the streets are debris free! Can't say that they are actually "clean" but its close enough!

More Trunk or Treat Pictures

Jalyn getting in a power nap before the action starts.

Diego, a friend around the corner.

Lots of joy jump fun....

Fishing for goodies.

I thought this was a cute trunk.

Caught something!

I was supposed to post some pictures of the house BUT this is the first day we've had since the hurricane that when Jonathan gets home from work we didn't have something we absolutely had to get done for the house.....SO, we decided to celebrate a boring night with a NAP!!!! Its not like we don't have lots to get done but we found out carpet will be installed on the 13th so that gives a little bit of time to get the painting done and my neck needed a break from priming the ceilings. We sent the boys upstairs to the guest room to watch cartoons, with a load of candy, and told them it was quiet time!!!! Which of course if you're a parent you know that doesn't really mean quiet time for the kids its really quiet time for us parents!!! Jonathan said that I woke him up snoring...no I'm not embarressed to admit that! That's how totally exhausted we are!!

The plan for tomorrow is to get the garage floor finished so that we can get the storage unit out of the driveway. After church, before Jonathan gets home, I'll get back to priming the new ceilings and walls and if I can start painting the office and hallway...we'll see how far I get. Hopefully things will start moving a little bit faster now that its all up to us to get the work done b/f carpet gets here, so we should have updated pictures rolling in!!!!

I talked to Grandma this week and she said if she lived closer she'd be down here helping us..I said I was just up on the ladder painting and thinking that our families are probably glad they don't live closer or I'd have them here helping me paint!!!! Love and miss everyone, thank you for your continued prayers!