Look what we have in our house now!

Ever since we bought our house 10 years ago, we've been dreaming about doing this. Some people made negative comments to us about buying a 2 family home, but what a wonderful investment it has turned out to be. For 10 years we had the rental income coming in to cover expenses while I took maternity leave times three and also to save up enough money to FINALLY convert it to a single family home. We're going from 1000 sq feet and 1 bathroom - to 2000 square feet and 2 bathrooms (very necessary with three growing boys).

I'm happy to report that all my mad math skillz are actually coming in handy as well as those woodworking classes I took way back in junior high. Carpentry is really lots of angles and calculating and it's impressive when it works - that's not to say it works right the first time every time, but eventually, we get it there. Michael worked all day Friday, and I joined him all day Saturday along with a couple of hours of help from Dad Marshall. We have 9 out of 13 steps completed and soon we'll join the two floors of the house! Can you tell I'm excited?!?!

Silas of course thinks Daddy is putting all this work into building a giant indoor jungle gym just for him:

He immediately heads for the highest point he can reach and protests loudly when you try to remove him from the top.

And oh yeah, here's Daddy's tool bag that I'm not usually allowed to go near - wonder what mischief I can get into before somebody stops me.

There is no doubt that having stairs in this house is going to be an adventure with this little guy around. This week our plans are to finally cut through the floor, complete the last stringer of 3 steps and put up some kind of temporary railings. Then the boys can move into their new rooms downstairs and we'll have some much needed storage space. Obviously there's still lots of work to do, but to see it actually happening is wonderful!

The fair

Our yearly trek to the Topsfield Fair in MA. Not too many pictures because it was crowded and busy and we were mostly trying to get from place to place without loosing a child or two.

Family shot:

All six Withe cousins:

Silas checking out all the animals.

My guys on the ferry, Monday on the way home.

Banker Orchard

Tried a new orchard this year for our annual pumpkin patch trip. The kids had a lot of fun. Lots to do before hand while we were waiting for our ride to the pumpkin patch.

Pumpkins!

And here's even a rare picture of me thanks to stealing off of Kim's facebook.

We also got a bushel of apples to make apple sauce - a beautiful fall day!

Mommy and the boys have an adventure

Monsoon season hit last night and all that water knocked apart the downspout connection for the gutters. End result was that we had a flood downstairs...both boys' new bedrooms and the downstairs living room. Daddy is of course away, so mommy and the boys had fun picking up 30+ gallons of water with two shop vacs and my steam cleaner/extractor. Of course little boys left to their own imaginations with a shop vac for any length of time will come up with some amusing/scarey/dangerous uses for it.

Here's the end result when Levi decides to style Silas's baby curls with the smaller of the two...good thing he didn't use the bigger one! He also decided that he would try to dry the seat of his pants where he sat on the wet carpet...the results weren't to his satisfaction.

The end result is that the carpet is no longer splashing wet, just wet to the touch and my back is KILLING me...a couple of motrin and a flexeril and I should be good to sleep for several hours.