Baby Kate

We are so proud to announce that our daughter was born August 16, 2013 at 1013 am. She weighed 6 lb 11 oz. She was 20 3/4 inches long. She is absolutely perfect. She is so perfect that all we can do is hold her and stare at her and love her. We will give you a full update hopefully soon, but for now go to this link http://footprint.zenfolio.com/p677716078 to see some pictures that were taken in the hospital (The password to view them is Kate). She is seriously the best baby in the world. We are so grateful that she has arrived safely.

Family celebration

Last weekend we were able to get together with family and celebrate our little girl coming into this world. It was so fun to see family and spend time with them. We were able to get pictures with most in attendance, but some people were sneaky and managed to slip out. 

Thanks so much to all of our family who were able to come!

A big thanks to Aunt Annalee who hosted the shower. It was beautiful, and yummy.

Preston side of Family

Both Grandmas had made a quilt for our baby girl. I think she will be spoiled by these two.

My cousin Heather was due 1 week before this picture, and here I am with 2 weeks before my "due date". Her due date has come and gone, and she is still pregnant..I have a feeling I will be pregnant longer than I planned as well. 

Dimond side of Family

Dimond side of family

Richards side of family

Wilde side of family

We are looking forward to the next celebration for our little girl which will be her BIRTHDAY! 

Cousins

I am so excited to meet our baby girl! Up above is a "cousins" picture...our baby girl squashed between her two older cousins James, and Phineas. My due date is still a week away, but I am so anxious to meet our baby girl. My doctor keeps telling me she doesn't seem to be in any hurry to come. I have been picking up extra shifts in the ER trying to get her uncomfortable. Truthfully I think she likes me running around the ER, I think it rocks her to sleep. If I could tell our little girl one thing it would be the car seat, bassinet and Mom and Dad are ready for you to come.

Now for the Fun Part

Plenty of people have said, "I think that it would be fun to build your own house."  While it has been a lot of fun, it has also been a tremendous amount of work.  There are a few things that make it hard.  The first is that there are so many different choices on every decision that needs to be made.  The easiest decisions have been the ones with only three or four different options, like the garage. 

Another hard part is that you have to make your decision based upon little samples.  To compound this problem is the difficulty involved with trying to envision how all of your small samples will work together.  Miraculously, I think that our individual choices have come together quite wonderfully. 

I credit Sarah for this.  She is really good about making the decisions.  I of course am a super helper.  When we were deciding on paint choices, I cut out a ton of different samples and placed them on the wall in the home. 

 

I then had Sarah come into the room and start removing samples off of the wall that she did not like. 

I just had her continue to remove samples until she was able to narrow the selection down to two or three that she liked the best.  We then went to the store and bought a small quantity of paint that we used to create a larger samples.  I painted two large samples that we then went back and compared at different times during the day.  The reason for this was to see how the  different lighting throughout the day affected the color.   

 We ended up with Sherwin Williams Kilim Beige in the living room, kitchen, and hallway

 

 

 

And SW Amazing Grey in the bedrooms

 

 

 

They have also completely finished the siding on our home.  Here is a picture of the siding on the South side of our home.  Those are our Master Bedroom and Bathroom windows.

 

Here is the siding on the East side of our home.  I love that we will have a shaded backyard in the hot summer evenings.  

 Here is the North side of our home with the door and window into the garage.

 And here is a picture of the eaves of our home after the shakes had been installed. 

 They then began doing prep work for the exterior stone and brick. 

 We could not be more happy with how the exterior has turned out so far. 

 We ended up following the recommendation that we got from everyone on the blog and went with the following brick and stone combination. 

 Sarah told me that when she was waiting in front of our home this morning, she noticed that every car that drove by completely slowed down and crawled by so that the people in the cars could really admire how wonderful the house looked. 



 









Hopefully they will finish the front entryway tomorrow. 

The other huge surprise was to find out that our hardwood flooring had begun to be installed.

I am sure that this is going to be one of the best decisions that we made. 

Supposedly they will have the hardwood floors finished by tomorrow and begin installing the kitchen cabinetry on Wednesday. 

It has been fun to see all of the choices that we have been making over the last few months put together into a finished project.

We really are in love with this house and cannot wait to move in.