July 5th!

Hello,

Happy 4th to everyone. I hope you all got to see some good fireworks! We got a lot done around the house yesterday!!!! We now have an almost working 2nd bathroom! It has a toilet and light fixture and all the basics! It needs a good deep cleaning now and some door knobs and we will be good to go. Of course the floor is still just the concrete. For any of you that are just tuning in to the goings on of the house... We came in and the house was filthy beyond filth. These people have never cleaned there house ever! They smoked in the house and never left. The carpets were boyond discusting and the toilets were so bad that we actually had to pressure wash them outside. All the flooring had to come up and everything had to be painted right away. It took us using 27 gallons of primer (the best kind you can find on the market) all over the walls and ceilings and then we were even able to paint it. The day we pulled into the driveway Donny and his friend Ryan had to tear out the carpets. (We were hoping to just give them a good shampooing, but that was not an option once we saw them.) All of the linoleum had to be ripped out also, but we could only afford to do so much right now, so we had all new carpet layed and got it all painted, but just tore out the linoleum and sanded it down in the kitchen and bathrooms and front entry. We are just going to leave it as concrete for now until I am not pregnant and can put down some nice tile! Needless to say Donny had to do a LOT of work in a very short time and now that the house is getting to be almost done I think he thinks that it was well worth it. The house and neighborhood so far are great. I think that all the neighbors are thouroghly enjoying having some better neighbors here. They said that the people that lived here were just very anti-social. There is a 6 year old little boy who lives next door to us which will be great once he and Trais can get a chance to play. So far that hasn't happened but I am sure that soon it will.

Anyways, that got long about the house, but I just wanted to fill everyone in on that. I suppose it is a very good thing that we got the house so far under market value for the neightborhood! We knew that it was not going to be in perfect shape, we were just hoping to spread the work out over time. All in all, it was unlivable when we got here! Luckily we had some friends that let us stay with them for a little while to get things put together.

We took Trais last night for the first time to a Japanese Steak House. The kind of course where they cook right in front of you. The chef was great and Trais thought it was very cool. They did the fires and all that. They even went around the table and had us try to catch a piece of shrimp in our mouths! He gave Trais many chances but somehow he couldn't do it, but it was fun to watch him. I took a couple of pictures, so check those out.

Anyways, I hope everyone has a great 4 day weekend, I am going to go get ready for the fun filled day! It is supposed to be around 98 degrees today so I suppose it will be a lot of being inside the Air Conditioning!!!

Love ya all!