Friday, December 26, 2008

Okay Val, here's some pictures of our progress...

here's mark loading our dumpster in the driveway full of destructo materials - cabinets, old flooring, plaster, and carpet. i'm not really sure if they'll charge us for all the snow in there too?

old floor, new floor
laying down the lauan on the old wood floor to prepare for the new vinyl kitchen floor. nikao has loved helping papa on our kitchen project. each morning he lets us know that he is dressing for work.
leannora getting a turn at a new kind of kitchen work


even able got to "help" a bit. it's fun to watch him imitate the work that's going on. we've had to corral him in the pack -n- play some to keep him out of too much trouble.

part of kim's under construction cooking methods - stirring food on a step stool for the microwave on the fridge in the dining room

our "sink" is a couple of totes in the bathtub. this is Christmas day. grandma sara offered to do the dishes, but kim wanted proof of her 7 month pregnant belly and the daily adventures of remodeling.

we'll have to give a view of our other kitchen/dining areas spread over 4 rooms in the future.

unfortunately we missed some really great photo opportunities of trying to lay out, cut, and glue our new vinyl flooring. mark amazingly wrestled a 30x12 roll of vinyl out across the 18x10 kitchen, through the doorway, and into the 10x5 mudroom without creating any holes!
bill and sara helped us glue the stuff down and roll it out with our rolling pin on Christmas eve. but the pictures below show our progress and the new floors all installed!

grandpa strub came to help us and got to take part in the major transformation. today we accomplished installing can lights, paneling, and a few of the new cabinets as well as patching the mud room walls and kitchen ceiling.

wow!

(check this post out again as we might add a few photos here instead of creating a new post.)

Christmas time

Here's the children decorating this year's Christmas tree. In case you're trying to figure it out, we tore off the plaster to start a project, then hung plastic and lights and ornaments. Yup, it's an odd year.


Christmas celebrating with Grandpa Bill, Grandma Sara, and Daisy - December 24 -26

Grandpa Bill reads the children one of their presents.


Able enjoys his new ball.


Lots of giving.


Nikao's a tired boy after only half a day of celebrating.


A Christmas visit at Great Grandpa and Grandma Hartzell's house
December 27
Grandpa and Grandma had prepared some grab bag gifts to share along with yummie snacks and goodies for our quick little Christmastime visit.

Hogan is holding Great Grandpa Hartzell's childhood teddy bear.
It was repaired as a gift for Grandpa this year. Pretty neat!


Strub, Bentz, and Milligan family Christmas at Grandpa and Grandma Strub's
December 29 - 31

December 29, 2008
Happy 4th Birthday Daniel Lee Bentz!

8 Strub grandchildren!

2 cute grand daughters!

thank you for the Christmas presents!

Hogan's helping with the gift wrap galore cleanup.



Coming Soon:

Christmas Celebration 2009

We will be traveling to Hudson, WI January 8 & 9 to visit Uncle Matt, Aunt Monica, cousin Ava and to meet our new nephew Luke Elijah Milligan!

So here's handsome Luke at one month.

Bedtime stories with Uncle Matt.
Even Ava tries to call her daddy Uncle Matt in all the excitement of cousin fun.



We made time to play with Matt too. Matt and Monica introduced us to a new game - Settlers of Catan. Mark was having fun playing with our new camera. He took the picture of the game, so maybe it's worth adding to the blog?


Mark played with different camera settings for quite a while. This was my favorite shot.

Ava is sure a cutie!
This is her surprize look.


Well, we ended up getting to stay an extra day. That made time for more playing, yummy snacking, and Settlers fun late into the night. We had a rematch round. Mark won. I suppose we're all a little tired of Matt wining all the time. We also got to see the house that Matt and Monica currently have an offer in on in Hudson. That was fun too.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Our Kitchen

This WAS our kitchen.

The big boys took out some cabinets all by themselves.





















Here's Kim trying to fit in one last load of dishes before I remove the machine.