Deer!

  Our house backs up to about 50 acres of woods.  On Saturday morning, the weekend we moved in, my Dad woke up early and looked outside.  He saw a few deer on the other side of a fence and nearly broke his neck tripping on a dolly that was laying in the sunroom.  I figured it would just be a matter of time before I saw some.

This past Saturday morning, I woke up early.  I was going to the church for the Men’s Bodacious Breakfast where Gene Stallings was the keynote speaker.  He was really a great speaker. 

Anyway, I was getting dressed and I noticed a deer in our backyard.  I ran upstairs and got my camera, thinking it would be gone when I got back.  To my surprise, more were there.  I managed to snag a few pictures.  In one, you can see our hammock.  These deer were 10-20 yards from me.  At one point, I counted six of them.  They hung around for about 30 minutes and moseyed on off.  I’m sure I’ll be sick of seeing deer in my backyard sometime down the road.  But for now…its really cool!

Beautiful Ballerina

Quick post.  One of the great things about having an extra room is I can leave my photo gear set up all the time.  So hopefully, we’ll get more pictures of the munchkin.  More are on the photos page, but here’s a quick peek at a future Ballerina.

Worn Out!

Well, we’re in the new house.  It was no small feat!  It started out rough to begin with.  We were planning to close on a Thursday.  Dad was brining crews up to replace ALL the floors before we move in.  We had movers lined up for Friday afternoon because they didn’t have any Saturday or Sunday slots open.

The plan was for the guys to get started right when they arrived.  They’d been getting “pumped up” all week and were chomping at the bit to re-floor an entire house in 3 days.  Unfortunately, when they arrived on Friday morning, we hadn’t closed.  In fact, we didn’t get to close until around 4:00 Friday afternoon.  That meant the movers came straight in.  We ended up having to double move a lot of the furniture.

To make matters worse, not only did they lose nearly a day on the flooring, but it poured rain literally the entire weekend.  It only stopped raining about 6 hours total.  Also, the movers couldn’t fit all of our stuff in their truck, so we ended up having to make a few runs ourselves in the rain.  We’ve STILL got stuff drying out!

The floors were finished up around 11 on Sunday night.  We have half a room left that still needs wood.  Apparently, the flooring manufacturer shorted us about 3 feet per box.  Doesn’t seem like much until you go through about 50 boxes.  Still, an incredible effort on the part of all involved.  We did wood throughout the downstairs except for the bathrooms, kitchen and sunroom which got ceramic.  We did carpet upstairs.  It is absolutely gorgeous.

So we’re two weeks in and we’re getting close to settled.  We’ve definitely determined our favorite room is a sitting room that is in the master bedroom.  I’m able to set up the desk/computer in there and we’ve got a recliner and a bookshelf.  Perfect little spot.  That room is what made us settle in on this floorplan.

The neighborhood is awesome!  We’re about 100 yards from a boat ramp.  The neigbors are great.  Close to the interstate.  Close to work.  We couldn’t ask for more.  I think we may be Lakeland’s biggest advertisers!

More pictures of the completed house will come, but for now, here are some pictures of the work being done.  We’ve painted some (bedroom, sitting room, master bath, haley’s room) and been putting down shoe molding.  I think we’re going to take a break for about a week.  I need some time to get the garage in order anyway.