Happy Anniversary and our New Home=)

So we thought the most romantic way we could spend our 6th anniversary would be to drive all our belongings including 2 cars and 2 kids up to Utah! It was funny because I still haven’t filled out Sean’s card and it took me 2 weeks before I opened the e-card Sean got me. The drive was kind of crazy. We got up early and left White Rock around 7 AM. We drove through lots of rain and a huge snow storm with slick roads. We stopped for lunch at Dennys (which ended up taking about 2 hours!) and for dinner at a Subway. After the meal stops and bathroom stops it took us 15 hours to drive up to Utah. We arrived about 10:30 and our new Ward (church group) showed up to help us unload the truck that night! Amazing people! Before we left Papa and Mimi gave Alana this little stuffed guinea pic that dances and sings So Happy Together. She loves it so much and spent much of the day clutching the cute little things and singing along with it!
 
Brettster wore his feats pajamas all day and was really excited about it.
 
Lots of chocolate was consumed and lots of shows watched, lots of tears shed, and lots of music jammed out to.
 

 My parents are finishing an apartment in their basement for us to live in. It will have 2 large bedrooms and a bathroom. We are using their front room living space as a play room and one of their spare bedrooms will be an office/exercise room. Right now we are living out of boxes and suitcases in their spare rooms with most of our belongings sprawled throughout their 3 car garage. They started work on the basement about 7 weeks ago. They would send us pictures every day of the progress so I thought I would share them here. Lots of wonderful people from church, old family friends, and Sean’s brother Neil have all come to help with the construction. The basement started out as a huge storage room that was full of lots of old stuff and 15 years worth of storage (including all mine and my sisters old toys and my Grandma’s storage from when she lived here). My parents went through all that stuff and took so many trips to Charity. Some of the stuff got moved to the upstairs or garage as well. It would have been cool to have a before picture, this is after lots of clearing out had already happened.
 
Here is the empty corner that will become the bathroom.

The lumber arrives and the nail gun gets borrowed:

Framing starts going up:


I love seeing my Dad in a tool belt =)
 
The plumber came and used a jack-hammer on the foundation of the house (this picture makes me really nervous!)
 
My Dad told us he was a slum Lord, but I don’t think slum Lords give their tenants heating and air.

The bath tub came! Don’t worry, it’s not really blue =)
 
My Dad did all the electrical with a little help from a neighbor:

The linen closet:
 
Insulation goes up (this is what it looked like when we arrived and it was about this blurry too since it was midnight when we took our first look)

So we got here and we were so excited to finally get to help with our new home, but alas that didn’t really happen. My Dad decided to hire out the drywall. The first Monday we were here they came and dropped off all the supplies. On Tuesday, a crew came and hung all the drywall. On Wednesday, a clean up crew came to take away the drywall scraps. On Thursday the mud and tape guy was supposed to come but never showed. On Friday he came and worked for 2 hours. On Saturday he said he was coming and never showed up. On Monday we called the owner and said we really needed them to come especially since the walls needed 3 coats of mud and all the rain was making it hard for it to dry. The owner came on Tuesday and worked all day. Another guy came Wednesday and worked all day. The guy that came Wednesday went fishing on Thursday to let the mud dry more and then came back on Friday again. He came the following Monday and then did his final sand and texture on Tuesday. We had gone out of town and were so thrilled when we got here on Wednesday that we could finally paint! We primed and painted a lot this last week and have just a little left to do. The tile guys are coming to finish the bathroom this week and carpet gets installed Friday! We have lots of odds and ends to finish up, but the end is in sight and we are pretty giddy at the prospect of having closets again!