Makayla's 3rd birthday party

We had Makayla's 3rd birthday party at the campground where we set up our trailer for the summer. Our campsite backs right onto the playground so it's a wonderful place to be with several 2- to 4-year olds.

Here are the kids at the party playing with the sand toys.
Makayla is patiently waiting her turn to climb the rope on the playground.
Did I mention that it was extremely difficult to get the kids to get off the playground to come over for cake and ice cream? It was another Dora party this year.
This is the one bite of cake that Makayla enjoyed before she begged to go back to the playground.
Here are the 3 girls at the party. We were down by the river looking to feed the ducks, but there weren't any ducks around.
Overall, the party went really well. It was really low-key with some hamburgers/hot dogs for lunch, cake and ice cream for dessert and some presents. I was very relaxed, when I am generally not when I am hosting a party. Everyone pitched in to help when Clay and I needed it. Most of the people who were there are telling us that their kids want to come back and play again this weekend.

Another renovation update

New roof - Complete
New insulation/siding - Complete
Removal of the wood/electric forced air furnace - Completed early
Installation of heat pump - Heat pump is on order. Should arrive by July 10. Installation after that.
Taking our wood furnace and installing it in the garage - The furnace guy is going to install it now that it is removed from the house. He found a buyer for our electric forced air furnace.
New air exchanger in our new utility room in the basement - Furnace guy is also installing this along with the heat pump
Putting a second bathroom in the basement - Probably to be done this fall
Finishing our backdoor entryway (build closet/shelves, hide washer/dryer in a closet) - Probably to be done this fall

Here is the area in the basement where the wood/electric forced air furnaces used to be. Most of the stuff in this picture has now been cleared out of the basement.

The furnace guy ran these water lines in preparation for our new heat pump.
This is the area of the basement that will become another bathroom, laundry room and entryway.

Renovation update

The new roof was installed last week and the house is almost completely done in the new siding. As of this morning, they just had a little bit around the front door, then they were going to work on the garage. Makayla doesn't think our house is crazy anymore. Now she just calls it the dark blue house.

The garage should be all finished when I get home from work today.
So to take a look at my reno checklist:

New roof - Complete

New insulation/siding - Should be complete by end of today

Removal of the wood/electric forced air furnace - To be done by furnace contractor in July

Installation of heat pump - Heat pump is on order. Should arrive by July 10. Installation after that.

Taking our wood furnace and installing it in the garage - Another job for the furnace guy

New air exchanger in our new utility room in the basement - Furnace guy is also installing this along with the heat pump

Putting a second bathroom in the basement - Probably to be done this fall

Finishing our backdoor entryway (build closet/shelves, hide washer/dryer in a closet) - Probably to be done this fall

Uncle Eric's wedding

The wedding was beautiful. The day was not too hot, nor too cold. We were all comfortable in our short sleeves without sweaters, but the black flies were awful!! Makayla did an excellent job as the flower girl. She walked up the aisle with the bride's nephew who was the ring bearer. Clay stood at the back with the kids and told them to walk towards me since I was videotaping the wedding from the front of the church.

Here is Makayla posing for the photographer. I can't believe she sat so still for her.

Here are me and Clay with Clay's brother Eric (the groom in the tux).
Here are the 2 brothers and their wives - Cara and Eric, Clay and me.
The entire family is in this picture. I was surprised that Clay's parents stood next to each other for this picture since they usually can't stand to be in the same room together. Eric is holding his daughter Gracie.
During the reception, I gave the toast to the groom. Clay was supposed to do it but he hates speaking in front of a crowd whereas it doesn't bother me. We voted that I would probably do a better job. I think the toast went over well as people seemed to enjoy it.

My mom was invited to the wedding, so after the reception she took Makayla home to her house for a sleepover so Clay and I could enjoy ourselves at the dance, which we took advantage of. We caught up with a lot of old friends from the area where Clay grew up. We had a blast and stayed until the dance ended. It was a great day!

House renovations

We really do love our house and the house we were going to build was almost exactly like it, just slightly bigger. I actually like our current lot better than I think I would have liked the one we were planning to build on. Not to mention that landscaping is already done where we are. Our renovation plans include:
New roof
New insulation/siding
Removal of the wood/electric forced air furnace
Installation of heat pump
Taking our wood furnace and installing it in the garage
New air exchanger in our new utility room in the basement
Putting a second bathroom in the basement
Finishing our backdoor entryway (build closet/shelves, hide washer/dryer in a closet)


Here is how it looked before we started doing any renovations.

Clay has always hated the light blue siding colour from the time we moved into this house 7 years ago. It's never bothered me, but it will look brand new when we get finished with it. Here is the colour we are going with. Here is the part under the deck where we fixed the boards and studs. As you can see, we didn't have to tear the deck off, we just had to remove one board to check the damage. They are going to leave the deck about an inch away from the house when they replace the board so that the seepage won't happen again. The siding was all removed. The siding was removed from the garage too. Look at our big mess in the yard.The roof is being replaced today and the siding should be installed by the end of the week.

Our house is OFF THE MARKET

Since our house hadn't sold, nor were we getting any showings, Clay and I were making arrangements to do some renovations to our house instead. On Wednesday, May 28, out of the blue, our realtor called to say that we had an offer. Nobody had even looked at our house in 2+ months so we couldn't understand who would make an offer. She said that there was a military couple from Alberta being posted here and they loved our house online and wanted to guarantee that it would still be here for them to look at on Friday. Their first offer was a good one. It was actually our bottom line and that is the price where they were starting from. Clay and I debated that evening whether we would even counter the offer since we had made the renovation plans, but we decided to counter since we figured if we could get lots of money for the house, then we might as well try. So we countered on Thursday morning. The couple arrived Friday morning to look at our house and loved it. The countered our offer and by 12:30, we had agreed on a price. And it was $5,000 more than our bottom line. We were pretty excited....until the next day, when the home inspector came.

So Saturday afternoon, Clay and I are out looking at new houses being built to get ideas for siding colours and window styles, etc. and we get a phone call from our realtor. She says that the home inspection went very badly (and our house is in very good condition) so we couldn't figure out what could possibly have happened. There really wasn't much, but the little things he did find, he made mountains out of them. He stepped over the boundaries of his job description from home inspector to contractor and he gave the couple estimated costs to fix some of the problems. And he blew them way out of proportion. One of the issues was that there had been water seepage under out deck so the boards and studs were rotting. He told them that the deck would have to be torn down and rebuilt, the wall would have to be repaired, the patio door replaced, etc., to the tune of $23,000! So that is what they dropped their price by. I laughed on the phone to our realtor and said "No way!" Then they wouldn't give us any time to find our own contractors to get accurate quotations to fix it. I gave them our bottom line price and told them to take it or leave because I wasn't wasting contractors' time on the weekends to come out to our place if the buyers were just going to walk. They came back and said that they were backing out. Clay and I took this as our sign that we should take our house off the market and continue on with our renovation plans. (And by the way, the following Monday/Tuesday we fixed all the boards and studs under our deck, replaced our patio doors all without tearing our deck down, and for less than $2,000. Oh well, their loss.)