Weekend with Family

Okay, no more procrastinating. I finally took a picture of the cabinets in their current state so I could write this post.

As I mentioned before, Dad and Matt arrived during the big storm. They had hoped to get here at about 1 in the afternoon, but experienced some setbacks at work. So between the evening hour and the rain, it wasn't possible to do anything on Friday. It would have been nice to be able to do something, but we will take whatever help we can get! We were just grateful to have them there. We had dinner, and then when the Downwards arrived we did some playing.

I haven't really played any songs on the piano yet because I had the music all packed away, but I broke out some books so Diane could play some music for us. It was cute to see the kids dance to it. :)

(Sorry about the poor quality of these pictures. They are all taken with my phone because even though I have my camera back, the charger got misplaced in the move.)

 The next day I woke up at about seven, and Dad, Terral, and Matt were already going.  Matt worked on the cabinets (one of them needed to be fixed) and Dad and Terral worked on the roofs. Mike soon joined them up top.

 Demo time!

 You can see how the cabinet door wouldn't stay shut and it was missing a drawer. Also, the cabinet under the sink was badly water damaged and deteriorated, which caused the countertop to break. So nice to get all of that out!

 Here's my daddy up on the roof.

 And me trying to clean some of the yuck that was on the wall behind the sink.

 Diane helping me clean out the new cabinets. Way easier than the uppers I cleaned last week!

 Terral on the shed.

 Lunch break! I thought it was cute to see Matt sitting at the table with all the little kids.

 Matt helping dad fix some electrical issues before the "new" cabinets went in.

 Terral and Mike on the new shed roof.

 Mike again.

 And the cabinets going in! My dad is doing a remodel for one of my old primary teachers, and she and her husband let us have their old cabinets for free!

 In the midst of all this, a swing set arrived. The neighbors across the street just showed up with it. Apparently, it used to be here and was given to them. There kids are old enough now that they don't ever use it, so they decided to give it to us! We've really been wanting to get a swing for Ethan, so we were quite excited about it. He loves it and asked to swing about every fifteen minutes. ;)

 And here is the not-so-awesome picture I snapped today of the kitchen in its current state, dishes and all. Even though the cabinets are old and need to be painted, the dishwasher still needs to be hooked up, and there is still lots of other work to be done, it just feels so much more homey in there. It's really nice to know the cabinets aren't grody and falling apart. I somehow hate the floor less too. :)

We were also going to use the countertop that came with the cabinets, but even though the sinks measured the same, the placement was off and we ended up having to put the old counter back on. We do have one little section of "new" counter to the left of the stove though. The counters and sink are just sitting on top since they are temporary. We'll be getting our butcher block after all!

We feel really blessed to have had so much help. We are so grateful for the service we've been given! And we really enjoyed spending time with family too. It's awesome to know that we can bed 7 extra people, and we'll probably be able to do even more down the road. :)

Thank you, family! You are awesome!