My Biggest Christmas Present Ever!

I haven't yet told you about my Biggest and most wonderful Christmas present. I am so excited about it that I can hardly stand it. We are adding on to our house. Now that may seem like "well, ok" to you but it is a great gift to me. We already have an awesome house. It is somewhat of an older ranch house but the previous owners had taken care of it and had tastefully added on. When we first bought it several years ago, we walked in and knew immediately it was ours. At one time we did put it back up on the market but only 2 people looked at it and our realtor called and told us to take the sign out of the yard that that house was ours and we didn't need to sell it. We figured we had jumped the gun thinking God wanted us to sell.
Time passed and like we knew it might happen, God brought 3 more kids into our lives. (Glad we didn't sell) But where to put them? Duane and I get clostrophobic and like wide open spaces and we determined that we would not turn our home into an orphanage looking place. Our kids came out of that and we want them to live in and feel a cozy atmosphere. We don't like putting more than 2 kids to a room either. (Now these are just my taste and I do not condemn anyone else if theirs are different.) We took it off the market and moved kids around again, in preparation for the new ones coming. We talked about sectioning off an area in the basement to make a bedroom but it ended up that it was going to look funky and the city codes would not allow it with out a window. So there went that plan.
So we waited and in the meantime, Graham has been and is without a bedroom. That poor kid has camped out in every space possible in this house. His toys are stored in the closet in the basement bathroom and under various beds. His clothes were in a makeshift wardrobe that has been moved all over the house and in various cabinets in the house. He has slept on an air mattress, couch, love seat, Sleeping bag and in my bed. Currently he is in Isaiah and Allenni's room among the little lambs, foo foo dresses, baby toys and pale yellow walls. I gotta admit this 12 year old has been very patient about where to lay his head. It is funny because this kid likes his own space. In fact we all are much happier if he has his own space to chill out in.
The girls (ages 15 and 16) are in a room in the basement that is so small that you can't even get 2 beds in it. Maggie pulls her mattress out from Seora's bed every night to sleep. Seora totally dislikes the dark and needs a window so she can get better sleep.
So, fast forward to 4 weeks ago. God unraveled a plan to add on to our house that sort of took us by surprise. He arranged for a builder and the start up money as well as moving our project up first in line for the builder to start. After several confirmations from God that we were supposed to do this, the project started. So here we are sort of standing here in awe at the demolition of our house. I gotta admit, this is a major faith project for us and is in reality a crazy project but Duane and I both have such a peace about it that we have trouble verbalizing it.
So what are we doing you ask? We are adding on another whole floor to our house. There will be 4 large bedrooms, 3 baths, 1 half bath, den and an extra large garage bay. In addition to that, we will enlarge the kitchen by moving it to where the garage is, knocking out a couple of walls and turning our current kitchen into our dining room, our current dining room into our pantry and regaining our sunroom which houses our dining room table which is too big for our current dining room. Got that? (we had a custom table built by the Amish to seat 16 and when we got it home found out it would not fit into our dining room) Currently in the kitchen, I have to cook in shifts on the 4 eye stove because I have to cook quite a bit of food and when you have 3 people in there cooking together it doesn't work very great.
So I am excited about it all and the banging on the roof is music to my ears. The lyrics tell me that God loves me and gives me the desires of my heart.


This is what our house currently looks like. 5 bedrooms, 4 baths.

Yancy, our builder tearing out our shrubbery to build our garage extention
Eli being a great helper transplanting the Monkey Grass being pulled up

The roof is coming off and the attic has to be emptied!

I didn't realize how many empty boxes that I had thrown up there, "Just in Case"
We filled Eli and Andrew's room up with them. Graham and Eli were pretending they were the enemy and were "conquering" them down with their wire swords.