A Long Hiatus

After over a year of no posts, I am finally going to catch up with everything that has been going on. Because we have been BUSY.

Kids:

Levi started Kindergarten last year and is now in first grade. He participated in Fall and Spring Soccer, was taking piano lessons and sewing lessons. He did 2 weeks of art camp and VBS this summer. He's about to be in Fall Soccer again.

Mattie started Kindergarten this year, has been doing gymnastics for the past year and a half plus, sewing lessons, and is going to try soccer this Fall. She got to do VBS again this summer and enjoyed it.

Hailey is now 2, very talkative and very funny. She is quite animated and dramatic and keeps us all laughing. We are trying to encourage potty training and have Peppa Pig big girl britches to try and entice her. She is adamant that she is the baby and is NOT a big girl.

Justin and me (Rachel):

Justin is still busy with work but took off several weeks for the first time ever this month. He and I went on a week long vacation (sans kids) to Oregon to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. I have also been busy as the treasurer of our church (volunteer), our church representative to the Ministerial Alliance in town, and the treasurer for Episcopal Church Women (ECW). And I still have paying clients that I do bookkeeping for - and continue to get new clients. And in the midst of doing all this, we started building a house.

The House:

We met with the bank in July of last year to even determine if it was possible to begin building our dream home. It was! So I drew up the floorplan (not to scale) and took them to my mother in law, who drew them up professionally to scale. I took her plans to an architect and had them officially done. They only changed a little bit from my initial concept. Then, we started trying to get bids from custom builders - which took forever because that was in August of last year - right when Hurricane Harvey hit. But we finally settled on a builder, closed on the loan in January of this year, and after weeks of rain delays, finally got started. More on this to follow in additional posts.