Our "Small Amazing Renovation"- Week 1

We have a busy 5-6 weeks ahead of us! We are having a new living room and porch added to the front of our house, putting a full bathroom in the master bedroom, opening the kitchen up completely (yay!!!) and we are also hoping to turn our workshop into a little studio apartment/ cottage. We are really excited about the end result- the main part of it being that the major house remodeling projects will be DONE!!!

The pictures below are of the first week's work. Lord willing, there will be a weekly update (at the least) with photos showing the results of a week of work.

Before the ruckus begins

~Day 1~

The framing of the foundation


Meet (from L to R) Mr. Bill Jordan (contractor), Gwen, Moses, and Hosea




Before the end of day 1, Gwen and Mr. Bill brought a load of clay.


~Day 2~

Day 2 began with an extra large dump truck and a smaller dump truck full of red clay coming up the driveway. By the end of the day, there had been 4 total loads of the smaller dump truck and 1 of the large truck.

Papa's little tractor came in handy :)


Enjoying the show


~Day 3~

The dirt foundation needed one final touch- the tampering! So Mr. Bill brought his nifty "little" gas powered tamping tool over and finished packing the dirt. A couple of us were even permitted to give it a go ourselves.




Due to the concrete finisher not being available until Monday, this ends the work week.

Bella-May-Moo

Well, as you can see, we have a new calf! Momma named her Bella-May. She is the sweetest little calf! We can walk right up to her and she doens't even flinch. She is one of the family and it's amazing how fast she grows!!! She looks just like Maggie...I know, how is one cow different from another? Well, if you have a family cow you will understand. :)
Bella-May is the sweetest calf we have had and is just a joy!
I will try to get some better pix later, but I just wanted to get this up before she got too big!
So, here you can get the idea. I had to take the pix when momma was milking...with her new milk machine woot woot! She has been saving for so long and I was sooo excited for her when she got it!!! It is taking a little figuring, but I think it will be wonderful!
May Christ be with you!!!
Anna for the Family

Chicks

Our order of chicks came in this morning! They lost our frist shipment...so these came in later than we expected.
But! I am kinda glad that these came in when they did...who knows what the tornado may have done to them!
Abby and Naomi have both picked out their own chicks and I have a marked them! :) The girls are so cute with them!
Christ be with you,
Anna for the Fam

Here is the free exotic! I named him/her Storm...you can guess why. ;) (And yes...I name my chickens lol)

They are sooooo soft!

Here is the amazing brooder that Daddy made!!!

More...mess

Well, power is back!!! Yay! But, it is still reallllllly cloudy outside. Things are such a mess around the property...God is so good to keep us all safe! The more I think about it, the more I am amazed that no one was hurt.

We saw this morning that the passenger mirror on Daddy's car is busted and the cars are all dented from the hail.
I still can't believe the force of the tornado yesterday!
Oh! And...our chicks came in today! ;) Sooo, I will have to do a post with some pix of them too.
Here are a few pictures that I took this morning. I am sooo glad the tractor was under the carport when it all happened. You can see what a mess the storm made under there. Mom's wicker furniture was knocked over.
God bless!
Anna for the Family

This is in the pasture that is behind our property...it is amazing how it is pulled up by the roots!

And this branch is right over the workshop. If other branches had not caught it...the workshop would have been history!

Tornado

Well, well, well. Where do I start!? First...praise the Lord we are all safe! Right now, I am sitting in the daaaark school room with the generator running. We have no power due to the tail end of the tornado that went through our property!
I only know what things were like through my eyes so that is how I will tell it!
The weather was getting bad so daddy and momma went to get Tina and Lydia who were at Jake and Tina's place. Em, Micah, the two little girls and I stayed home. I was doing some work on the computer in front of the school room window and all of a sudden the sky went black and I could hear the wind raging. Then, everything went white with hail. Emily and I rushed everyone to the hallway and then I realized that my dog, Luther, was outside. I rushed out...thankfully he was right outside! We waited in the house. I really, really thought that the windows were going to be knocked in from the wind and hail. Emily was in the school room trying to get ahold of mom and dad when they pulled in...praise the Lord they were safe!
The little girls were clinging to me crying...it was quit the climatic time!
Thank the Lord everything stopped and we are all safe! There are several trees up by the roots and countless treetops and limbs all over the place.
It really makes you feel small when you look at everything! How great is God! To think that THOSE winds obey Him!!! Wow!
Daddy just got back from helping our neighbor, Mr. Kevin M. put a tarp over his roof...it was leaking and he needed help, so Daddy and Micah went over.
Em is at Tina's cooking pizza. ;)
All I can say is God is amazing. SO amazing!
I have a ton more pix...but it all looks the same when you see all of it!
It is super black outside...kinda cool...kinda not.
We found out for sure that we did get a tornado. Momma looked it up on her droid (love it!) and they said that a tornado went through here. There will be a ton of clean up to do. I don't think there is a bit of property that is not covered in pine needles and sticks!
Amazingly all the horses are fine! None of the animals were hurt, but Maggie's shed is half way across the property!
Okay...so! Here are a couple pix. Quite and exciting day!!! Never a dull moment...
Christ be with you!
Anna for the family

Look at the size of this hail!!!

Tractor

We are so excited to have a tractor!!! Daddy especially has wanted/needed one for all the projects and it is amazing what all that horse power can do!!! AND! It mows the yard in just a few minutes! :) Mom said she is throwing away her pitch fork! ;)
We look forward to many years of this tractor...and less bruises, aches and pains as a result. ;)
Christ be with you!
Anna for the Family

Flying...

Hello Everyone!

Well, I will use the overly-used saying again...better late than never! Well over a month ago on my 17th birthday, a man that Daddy works with took us up in his plane (pictured above). It was soooo neat! None of us have been up since we flew from Germany to the U.S. and Micah and Lydia did not remember flying at all. It was also Tina's first time up! We had a great time (except for when I got...sick in the plane ;). We were able to see Dothan, our house and allot of places that we have been to a million times but were unable to tell where they were because it looks so different from the air!
Thank you to Mr. M for taking us and thank you Daddy for letting us go live the "Greek's Dream". (The story with the Greek's dream...when I was little and Daddy would leave for work, if he was flying that day, I would say "have fun living the Greek's dream, Daddy!" So...it was fun to do it and see things the way Dad does all the time!)
Here are a few of the pictures. I know that we have more somewhere, but they were not on my camera. So...maybe I will have to do a part 2 when/if I get them.
Christ be with you all!
Anna for the Pendletons

Ps. We tried to find Cloud 9, but there was no one to give us directions up there.

Emily and "our pilot", Mr. Kevin, just before we took off! Lydia and I are sitting in the back squeezing eachother's hands! (I am scared of heights...and Lydia was just...squeezing my hand. ;)

Do we look like we know what we are doing? Because we don't!!! lol?

And there is Dothan!

This was one of my favorite shots

Look! There is our house! It was so funny to see the horses from way up there!

And here is the group that went flying...alive and well! :) We all had a wonderful time and are thankful for the chance to live the Greek's dream!

A trip to the Parkers

Momma, Micah, Lydia, Abby, Naomi and I just spent the week with Momma's twin sister's family. We always LOVE spending time with the Parkers! We did several fun things...besides the wonderful time just hanging out!

God is so good to give us the Parkers for not only friends, but family!!!!!

Here are a few pictures of what we did. The pictures were taken on my camera so I did not get pictures of everything...sorry, but if Sarah sends me some of her pix (hint) I will try to do another post. ;-D

Christ be with you!
Anna for the Pendletons

Her majesty, Sadie on the way!

It rained (I just LOVE pointing out the obvious!)

One of the best friends a girl ever had...oh, I am talking about Sarah. ;)

"Ant" (long story with the spelling) Connie and momma went out several times and during one of those occasions, the three musketeers made everyone lunch and served it in the roomage, in restaurant style.

What a trio!!! I adore these kids!

Ah, yes! There is this really neat show called Cupcake Wars on Foodnetwork and one of the ladies who was in the show opened a shop near the Parkers. Tante (Aunt Connie) took us three older girls out and we each got a cupcake...they were soooo good and it was neat meeting the ladies who worked there.

"Sisters (and cousin), Sisters (and cousin) there were never such devoted sisters (and cousin)." :)

My dear Mark!!!!!! He is so much fun to play with. :) Especially when you are outnumbered three to one (by three un-named miniature people) on a trampoline with NO way to escape!

We went to the zoo on our last day!!!!! Here is everyone (or almost) heading in.

These birds almost looked like they could talk!

We loved seeing the momma and her baby. Accutally, the baby does not really belong to the momma. She is an adopted mother. I think that is so cute! The momma monkey is 42 years old!!!!

OH! And there were Baby meerkats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They were soooo cute! I got about 30 pix of the meerkats, but had to choose just one and though it is not the best, it has the baby and momma together. :)

Mitchel, Micah, Lydia and I went to the reptile house. Mitch and Micah were my heroes and warned me when there was a tarantula . *shudder*. :) Thanks guys!

These Iguanas were super neat! They were really active this time and I got this one eating!

Mitch's favorite is the Lorakeet feeding area. It was so neat to have three or four birds land on you. Naomi was realy popular with the birds. ;)

Don't know why this picture is so small, but here is Sarah and Sadie. :) Love you girl (Sarah)! ;)

And as sad as we were to have to leave a day early due to the weather, it was so beautiful to arrive home to my favorite tree in bloom!