Big Sky Country!

I do not claim to be a photographer by any means but when I was looking out our living room window the other day and saw this I had to try to capture it. I have said on many occasions in the last few months that I feel blessed to call our new house "home". Sometimes, I feel like I am sitting in some mountain lodge somewhere and not just looking out the living room window. Anyway, just thought I would share these beautiful pics!

We moved!!

Just a quick post to let you know we have moved. We started Friday and finished up yesterday. We still have a little bit in storage but the majority is moved in. Of course, we have boxes all over the house and it is a little overwhelming but with a little time we should feel settled. We should hopefully have internet hooked up this week and until then we won't have a home phone, just cell phones...thank goodness for those becuase if you know me I can't be without a phone ;o) I hope to post some new pics when we get all moved in.

The new house pics I promised ;o)

Here are some of the new pics of the house...things are moving along so fast. Most of it will be done by next week....crazy! I will be investing in several pairs of rubber boots for the kids to play outside in as we wont have a yard until spring and it is quite muddy ;o)

The entry way that was supposed to be red but I decided to wait and just paint it "Brown Bag" like the rest of the great room.

Brian's office painted "Mountain Elk" same as our master bed and bath.

Guest bathroom with vanity.

Shower Curtain I found at Target to go in guest bath...what do you think??

Cabinets and pantry.

Kitchen with new lights, paint adn cupboards.

Soon to be kitchen island...dishwasher still to come.

Desk and drop zone...

Dining Room

Master Bath vanity

Laundry Room Cabinets ~ space at end is for the freezer.

More laundry Room Cabinets ~ space at end is for washer and dryer.

Kid's Bath ~ a little dark ~ still no lights.

Kid's bath shower and toilet room ~ linen closet minus doors.

Kid's shower curtain I found at Target...it has really cute yellow buttons which you can't see in this picture...that is what I matched the yellow paint to.

The boys bedroom...3 tan walls and 1 navy wall. I did the same in both of the boy's rooms. Riley wants a Dallas Cowboys room and Jordan and Brock's room will have a fishing theme.

New doors minus black door knobs

Abby's room....painted "Aqua Smoke" to match her new bedding.

House progress!

Siding is going up this week! It still needs caulk and touch up paint and then it will be finished. The sewer guys are also finishing up and then they will bring in yards and yards of fill and cover up the front and create a hill going down the side of the house.

The living room fireplace was framed in plus insulation went in. We should be ready to drywall next week!

Our electrical and fire sprinkler systems are finished which means we can move on to drywall! We live too far away from a fire station apparently so we were required to put in a sprinkler system.

The view from our front porch. Not too interesting...I just thought I would take a picture in this direction to give a perspective of our neighborhood. We are at the end of a cul-de-sac, but our lot is 1/2 acre and our neighbors is 3 acres so we have quite a bit of space between us and them. We are planning a circular drive so we will not have much lawn to mow in the front which Brian will appreciate.

Happy Birthday to my Bubba!

Yes I know it's cheesy...but that's what I call him! Today Brian is celebrating his 37th birthday....we have nothing too exciting planned...he will be helping our electrician friend wire our new house and then spend the rest of the day planning some more for church tomorrow. It has been a crazy week around here between house stuff, church stuff and just plain real life. Brian did take 2 days off at the beginning of the week to go hunting with Riley but came back to 98 e-mails and a wife that had 50,000+ words to say because she had been home with the kids for 2 days ;o) The kids also made him a cake last night and the Beeson's popped in for a visit. We had cake, visited for a minute and then fell into bed we were so tired. I also got Brian 4 magazine subscription for his birthday...I have been catching him reading my "Better Homes and Gardens" and "Family Fun" and thought he needed some magazines he would enjoy. I order from a company Best Deal Magazines and they always have great deals. I got his subscriptions for less than $4 each for 1 year...3 hunting magazines and 1 business magazine. We are soooo looking forward to the house being done...this building stuff is fun but exhausting! I'll post some new pictures soon of all of the updates. We are hoping to start siding the outside next week and start drywall pretty soon too. Dave just told us we will probably be ready to paint the interior the 1st of November....so we will be planning a painting party...consider yourself invited ;o)! Well I need to go for now....I am going to help with the wiring too...gotta build up that sweat equity!

Parade of Homes...Missoula style!

Today Brian and I went to the parade of homes here in Missoula. I told him it probably wasn't a good idea to take me because I would find lots of great ideas for our new house that would cost a fortune! Actually, we found some ideas that are doable and others that are so far out of our price range, but definitely fun to look at! One house we went to was 6000 sq. ft. and had a $125,000 media and sound system. I think there were probably 10 flat screens in the house...crazy huh? Another one of the houses was 4900 sq. ft. all on one level. You wouldn't have to go to the gym...just walk back and forth through your house for exercise. At this house, I found my dream bathroom pictured below.

The tub sits in the middle of the room with columns around it and you have a fireplace with a flat screen above it to watch while you soak in the bath. And so you don't miss your favorite show while you do laundry there is a flat screen in there too. As well as a chaise lounge so you can rest while you watch your shows and watch your laundry being done??

So obviously these were some of the over the top things, but below I have a few pictures of ideas we liked. We have trying to figure out how we want to do our fireplace so we found a few ideas for that (minus the interesting artwork.) Any suggestions??

Here is some tile I found that I liked. We are still not sure if we want tile or hardwood.

And we also found a house with concrete countertops which we have been thinking about. I had a hard time picturing what that would look like because I just kept thinking it would look like a sidewalk on my countertop. I actually really liked them when I saw them in this kitchen...I am not crazy about the color but the overall look is pretty cool.

We have to start making these decisions over the next few weeks so any advice you have would be great!!

Another house update!

Can you believe it...I have managed to post almost every day this week! I can't promise that my laundry is done or the house is clean though! I took more pictures of the house today so I thought I would post them. The front porch was finished today and we absolutely love it! We have always wanted a "Montana" style house and this porch gave our house that look. We will stain it to look like cedar and then there will be cedar shake in the gable above the window area. We ordered siding this week to and it comes pre-painted which is nice...the color for the exterior is "Greek Olive" with cream trim. We will also be doing some rock work along the front bottom of the house as well...something we wanted to do to our last house but didn't. Next week the roof will be shingled and then its windows and siding. I'll keep posting pictures as the house progresses!

Time to simplify!

We spent most of our day filling up our storage unit with the remainder of our stuff from Lewiston. I was amazed at how much you could squeeze into a storage unit when you get creative with your packing! I am also amazed at all of the crap that one family can accumulate through the years! Gone are the days when I moved all of my belongings to Washington State University in a Suburban! I have decided that I need to simplify a bit but first I have to find the time. It seems that every time we move it is such a quick thing and we never have time to organize and purge. When we move into the new house I need to implement the Flylady techniques again!

All of the stuff was the result of our spontaneous trip back to Lewiston this weekend. We had a couple of renters we needed to meet and we decided we would just take the opportunity to pack up the rest of our stuff while we were there. The only problem was that we had underestimated how much we had left in the house and we ended up filling up our 26' uhaul truck and still leaving some stuff behind. The good news from the weekend is that we found some good tenants that want to lease our house for 18 months. We are thinking that the market will pick back up in the next 1 1/2 years and we will be able to sell the house for more. This is definitely new territory for both Brian and I, being landlords. But the people moving into our house are landlords as well so hopefully they will be good renters. We could have never imagined that we would be renting the house instead of selling right away but God had different plans.

As far as our new house goes we haven't made much progress since my last post as Dave, our builder, was back in Lewiston last week as well. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have some more pics to post.

I did buy a fridge for our new house at Sears! They were closing out all of last years models so I took advantage of the sale and got a new stainless, side-by-side counter depth beauty of a fridge! The best part was that it 70% off! By next misson is to get a stove and dishwasher to match at 70% off as well! Hopefully I will be able to find something in the next 3 months.

We have a floor!

I know these pictures are pretty mundane but to me they are progress! Today we poured the concrete for the basement floor which means the next step is framing. We needed some extra help for the concrete so Brian asked a few of our neighbors (offering to pay them of course.) They came out at 5:30am to help and then wouldn't take the money. People amaze me with there generosity sometimes! Tomorrow we are having are Thursday night dinner group with some new friends we have made including some of our neighbors. We look forward to the opportunity to get together and get to know them better. We also have a couple coming that heard about our church through some marketing we did. That should be fun to meet them as well. On Friday, we are heading back to Lewiston to pack up the stuff we left at our house and meet some prospective renters. We have not sold the house yet and think this is the direction God is leading us...we appreciate any prayers to help is make the right decision! We look forward to seeing all of our friends in Lewiston!

Basement Walls are up!

Our future basement ~ Abby's bedroom and the boy's bedroom.

The front of the basement. This will all eventually be buried by fill dirt...lots and lots of fill dirt.

Our concrete walls have been poured. Next we will have basement plumbing and the basement floor. Things are moving along and we are excited for the framing to begin! I'll continue to post pictures as the house progresses!

The footings are poured!

Brian and Dave (our builder) hard at work!

Our firm foundation!

I know this isn't very exciting stuff for some people but for us it is progress! And yes Jesus is our foundation but next to that our house will be on the firmest foundation in Missoula! Truly! For some reason the county required us to jump through all sorts of hoops and make the footings extra wide and deeper than usual. When the inspector showed up, she was blown away that they had required that. She said the only place she had seen this kind of foundation requirement was in Seattle on very steep hills. We are trying to see this as a positive instead of thinking that we just spent thousands unnecessarily :o) At least we know our house is staying put and not sliding anywhere!

The new house begins!

Before the digging started! We had waited so long to get our building permits for this house, I felt like I had to document every step of the building process so here is the lot when we were mapping out where the house would sit. I also took a picture of the view from the lot. Missoula sits in a valley so we pretty much have a 360° view of the mountains around our house.


The kids on the big tractor! I think they played they would have played on it for the whole day if we would have let them.


Brock was so excited to sit in the tractor. I couldn't quite get a smile out of him, he just sat there with a blank look on his face...I think he was in shock!


Once the house was a mapped out, the digging started. Most of the digging is done now and they are starting to build forms to pour concrete. It is so exciting to watch the process! Hopefully I will be better about updating this blog and I will keep you posted on the process!