Maggie Elizabeth Hineman

Meet my new niece - Margaret. :) Had to take a few days off to go see her. As you can see, she is awesome.

Kalo was awesome, too (of course). Boy it was hard to leave them yesterday afternoon. But I will get to see them again in about a week!

While out in Scott City, I also got to go for a ride in Andy and Libby's new plane .... that's me in the passenger seat! Below is a bird's eye view of Scott City and their house. Dylan (co-owner and pilot) had to buzz a few friends who were cutting milo. It was an awesome flight! Can't wait to do it again! Back on the homefront, we had a crew of volunteers (paid in beer and BBQ) out last weekend to help put in the upstairs floor and carpet in the bedrooms. Gage and Roger finish the railing last week, which looks AMAZING!

Carpet in the guest bedroom ... almost ready for company!

Kitchen Cabinets arrived last Friday - I sanded them on Saturday and will stain and seal them this weekend ... exciting.

Emily (our weekend picture-taker) took time off to fish with her new friend Dakota. :)

Staining the Floor

Finally! Staining the floor! It has been a long process, but it is looking awesome!

Gage worked on putting down the polyurethane after staining, which made it MUCH darker (thank goodness ... the stain was kinda orange, which wasn't good). It even made our "mistakes" look better. :)

As you can see, it's kind of a deep reddish brown - amazingly, just the color I was hoping for. The stain was a total crap shoot, so we weren't really sure what we were going to get. We just wanted to be DONE!

Look how shiny! Awesome! Be careful in sock feet. :)

Laminate and carpet going in next weekend - yea!

Birthday Week Painting

I took a "vacation" from work for my birthday week and PAINTED!!! Mom and Dad came down on Thursday and helped paint all day Friday and Saturday - so much help! We got everything painted but one small room. Dad and me painting the guest room ... Time out for a birthday dinner - our first meal in our house! Okay, okay, so I know it's still rough, but it was exciting! Our yellow kitchen ... :) Emily's very bright "terra cotta" room. Dad said it would be like living inside a pumpkin. Emily loves it:) Our master bedroom and door to the bath ... the deck will come in time. :) The massive pile of paint cans! There were a few more inside ... My craft room ... I can't wait to start scrapbooking!!! and finally ... STAIRS!!! After months of waiting to build the stairs, with the drywall in and the wall painted, Gage could finally get started. It only took him a few days to build, but we did have to use math we didn't know we remembered (Pythagorean Theorum, anyone?) Thank goodness for good computing because it turned out perfectly! Part of the wood is from an oak tree that came down on our land, and the other part is oak planks from Roger's old barn that we plained down to the "new" wood. That tree was also from our land ... just 60 years earlier ago!!! This weekend our electrician comes to install our light fixtures. Next week, we will stain the downstairs floor. After that is the upstairs flooring, carpet in the bedrooms, cabinets, plumbing and trim work! We still have a lot to do, but it is starting to feel like we are getting close. Ironically, I'm having a LOT of trouble being patient now that we are so close to the end.