Happy 12th Anniversary Smoky Mountain Opry Style

Hunter and I were so happy for an afternoon getaway anniversary date at the Smoky Mountain Opry Christmas show in Pigeon Forge, TN. A big thanks to Memaw and Papa for managing Archie's diabetes and watching all three kids.

What a beautiful live nativity that helped keep the focus of Christmas on Christ!

Our favorite Frozen friends!

Brilliance in Flight

Hats off to my brilliant hubby who finally got his quadcopter flying. Little did Hunt know when he signed up for a personal enrichment master's level course in August that every waking non-work moment (weekends, evenings, even Thanksgiving break) would be devoted to getting his little baby in the air. Tomorrow night is the final class and the school is sending a camera crew to film the flights. I told him this project was kind of like having a baby. Months of suffering (for both of us) but it was worth it all when the little darling took off. I would even be up for him building another one with Archie (BUT NO MORE FORMAL COURSES WITH DEADLINES EVER)!

 

P.S. I designed the Styrofoam shoes the copter is wearing. We knew it would crash before it flew, and it would break without a cushion. It saved us several times tonight. Not often I come up with an engineering innovation, but I'll give my self credit where credit is due ;)

A Belated Welcome to Our Home!

Sometimes I think we've just moved in, but we've really been here almost eight months! I'm a little delayed in posting pictures. Perhaps that's because I never get the house clean all at the same time to make pictures. I call this post "A Belated Welcome." Hunter calls it, "I cleaned the house once and took pictures to prove it." Whichever you want to believe is actually right.

Our foyer:

The parlor/formal living room/don't bring toys into this room or you'll be in trouble room :) In reality, we don't use it for much, but I like having one perpetually clean room.

The kitchen:

The real living room/family room/great room. (Looking forward to replacing the old couch with something black leather one day to match the walls we prematurely painted red.)

The school room (the exact opposite of our formal living room in terms of everyday neatness):

 
Downstairs powder room:

The master bedroom, which my dad so kindly painted for us about two weeks ago. We are loving it! Maybe I can post the last few rooms later.

Bonus Reason to be Thankful: Our New Bathroom!

Happy Thanksgiving! There are so many reasons to be truly thankful, I feel silly for blogging about this one, but I am so excited about our master bathroom remodel. We had no clue what we were doing when I started trying to do the demo myself several months ago. (It looked so easy on Youtube!) I never thought it would be finished but it was - and just in time for my parents' visit! (Well, in time for Dad to help put the finishing touches on anyway.) I'm actually looking forward to starting the kids' bathroom soon.

Why did I feel we needed this remodel so badly anyway? I'll let the before pictures speak for themselves!

Welcome to Our NEW Home

We are SO thankful to God for our new home! It's fun to be first-time homeowners. In Blacksburg, a lady at our church introduced me to one of her friends in Maryland. That lady became one of my friends, and I just bought her house when her husband got an out-of-state job offer! How cool is that? The house is in basically good condition except the whole inside needed paint. Thankfully, my in-laws kept our kids the first week, and my parents came to help all of last week. This resulted in us getting the whole downstairs painted as well as the stairwell, upstairs hall, and office. The upstairs bedrooms still need to be done. The other major fix is upgrading the two upstairs bathrooms, which I'm pretty sure are original to the house. I've bought my wallpaper steamer to remove the curling paper, and we're trying to figure out how much we can do ourselves. Pretty sure we're going to need professional help with the new bathtub.

Most of the rooms are still too cluttered for pictures, but here is Archie in his new room. When we do repaint it, I think we'll keep the same colors because they're pretty cool

Will try to post more pics soon :)

Come On In!

The Front Door
Disclaimer: There will NEVER be a car parked in this garage, and it may never be clean enough to show you a picture

The Kitchen (below is the other part of the kitchen and the dining room)

The living room (We had some issues with stuff getting broken by movers hence no glass top on the table.)

Living room bookcases

Snuggle chair nook

The back yard (This walks out from our living room.)

The master bedroom
Below is the kids' bathroom and the stairway

After the kids' new bunkbeds come in, I'll take pictures of their room, too! Check the last post for our basement/schoolroom or, better yet, come for a visit!

Welcome to our School House (and Maryland Life)!

After a busy week moving in last week, we're ready to begin this new chapter of our lives in Maryland. Hunt starts work tomorrow, and the kids will continue their home school. Thanks to grandparents keeping the kids the first few days of our move, we're almost settled. I'll post other pictures of the house as soon as everything is presentable. I got the basement done first.

Grandma bought the kids this cool school/playhouse. We have two chairs, a turned over crate table, and a lantern for a light. They LOVE it!

 Corner 1 of the basement school room:

Office Corner of the school room:

Corner 2 of the school room where most work will be done.

We can't wait to get re-started tomorrow!

Congrats, Hunter, on a SUCCESSFUL DEFENSE!

We never thought the day would come, but it did! Hunt finally defended and it was successful. He is only a few formalities away from a Master's in Electrical Engineering and, hopefully, only a few weeks away from starting his new job in Maryland!!! This calls for a big, family celebration!

Home Improvement

Ok. Ok. Maybe I should call this post "furniture improvement" but I finally painted/repaired our 30+ year old dresser. 

The picture on the left doesn't do "before" justice. I was actually impressed by how nice our house looked when all we had in it two years ago were the seven bags we brought back from China and some furniture. However, if it were a close-up, you would see the horrible stains all over strangely yellowed paint. Worst of all, the knobs fell off every time you opened a drawer.

Fast forward to today. I just brought my freshly pained dresser up from the basement with tightly secured knobs. (Hardware man told me to super glue 'em before tightening the screws all the way.) The things I never think of!!!

Children's Heart Project

Family. That's what I love blogging about. I love my kids and blogging gives me a chance to show them off. They've always been my blogging focus, and I'm not anticipating any changes in that. However, I do want to use a post to introduce a project I'm working on fundraising for called Samaritan's Purse Children's Heart Project. There is a link on the right (under the family picture) if you would like to explore it. Our first event will be a charity yard sale on April 28, and I plan to update it with other events as they are planned. You can also donate directly to Samaritan's Purse through the link.

Children's Heart project provides life saving surgery in the name of Jesus Christ to children around the world. Since 1997, they have served over 800 children. What a blessing to these precious children!