Tuff Crawls!

Our 10 month old crawls! I think he's the fastest kid so far to have this figured out. He's also the most mischievous of the bunch so far, going straight for fans, electrical outlets, stoves and stairs. Good thing he has six protective siblings to watch out for him and save his life.

Oct. 1st

Remodeling Begins!

September 30 - October 9th: The Basement Project

Poppie and Nonnie and Mimi drove up to spend some time in our new house, help us organize, paint and remodel some rooms and be able to be there for Pella and Tuff's birthday parties. The first goal was to get that dungeon of a basement painted and ready for new carpet. We were going to drywall the whole thing, but then decided the wood might look good painted. So we took down the wallpaper on the walls and it took Nonnie four coats of paint to cover up that very dark wood. The kids all helped after their homeschooling each day but Pella got to help Nonnie all day long every day and loved it! She was a painting champion and talked to Nonnie and Poppie the whole time. They also worked on the downstairs guest room, which ended up being a bigger pain than we realized as we were going to remove the paneling, but Poppie found out only half of the room was drywalled underneath.

Nonnie also decided to get rid of that hideous wallpaper in the hallway going down to the basement. The kids were excited to help. Especially Kivi who would finish her school work early so she could peel wallpaper!

Nonnie's finished work and Eben rejoicing with her.

And finally... The newly painted and carpeted basement! The kids love it! So much room to play and run and build and watch shows on the projector and even play ping pong!

October 2nd: Started on Mud Room
 Poppie and Dada started the project of making Mama super happy by removing this pointless wall that separated the mudroom in two.

Now it is so much nicer to just have to go through one door instead of two to get to the laundry and not be squished putting it in. Also the freezer fits next to the dryer now! I know it was a pain because they had to rewire things and grind down metal while wearing proper scuba safety gear. But I feel very loved and they even put recessed lighting in this room and the living room too!

On Oct. 10th Peter installed peel and stick tile that were on discount at Lowe's and I told the sales guy we'd buy them if we could get them for a mere $.18 a sq ft and he said, "Ok". Whew hoo!

Baby Thumper is Coming!

Praise God! We made it to our third month of pregnancy! 

I got extremely sick at our friends' house, the week before and thought for sure we were having a miscarriage. After a visit to the midwife confirmed that Baby Thumper was alive and well, we came home to tell the kids. We stopped at the Dollar Tree first and picked up some frames to write numbers. We told the kids we wanted to take their picture by the lake and had them sit on the grass and hold their number. Then as I was clicking away I held the number 8 by my belly. Kivi and Eben got it right away and Jasper and Opal soon caught on, but Berg and Pella had no idea what the hoopla was all about and Tuff just loved holding his number. Then they all ran up and hugged and kissed me. It was super great. I love how excited they all get about having a new sibling!

Taking their picture:

Holding up the #8 sign:

Running up to Mama after they figure out our clue:

Then we took a picture together so we could announce our new little Thumper to everyone.

The New House - First Days

Our first meal in our new house was brought to us by our amazing hosts, the Millers! So sweet!

For the next couple weeks, we did no homeschool. I tried to begin demo on the projects that I knew I wanted done, and Peter tried to stop me from ruining our house and do "one project at a time!" So I settled on painting the boys' room and girls' room and getting those ready to put their beds into. The kids had a great time hiding in our crazily placed stuff. This is the living room. (All of our stuff was put into the garage and living room on moving day since we couldn't put it all throughout the house yet.)

They also fully explored UNDER the house! They loved the crawl space and spent hours down there. Probably because we told them that the previous owners told us about a secret passage that the house has and they were determined to find it.

The kids were super helpful bringing in boxes from the garage and trying to find a spot for the stuff. Shari came, thankfully and helped us get our kitchen in order.

Until their rooms were ready, all the kids slept in our bedroom, which is ginormous and fit us all quite well, although, after a couple of weeks Dada was pretty ready for them all to have their own place.

Our house was a mess for a very long while, but we are so blessed. God allowed everything to go just as we needed it. It wasn't the way we thought it would go, but it was the way God knew it should go. It grew us and helped us rely on Him. The whole process, although long, was a blessing and we are so happy to have this house and wake up every morning to this:

Moving Month!

September was Moving Month at the Johnson household. The slowest move ever! Between trying to homeschool, fixing up the house, Peter working every day and packing it just kind of felt like we were trying to do everything and accomplishing nothing. But slowly, we got through it. Actually, homeschool became all about moving, not so much school. After moving tons of stuff into the Schock's garage and into the Erickson's trailer, we got as much as we could into boxes and waited until moving day came.

Finally after church on Sept. 13th we were able to move our stuff out of our house and onto the property of our new location. Our wonderful friends came out to help us and it was a way bigger job than I envisioned. We thought we had everything ready to go and then there was just so much more "stuff" still to pack up.

We stayed in our empty house for 7 days until we had to get out completely because the new family was moving in.  I took the kids to church during the days so we could have a table and chairs to sit at and eat and do school work. On the 19th we said goodbye to our home of 10 years on beautiful Lake Louise. 

We took the kids over to our new house on Lake Steilacoom to see completely for the first time. But we still couldn't move in until all the paperwork was complete.

The tour of our new home before we moved in:

Our friends and new neighbors to be, the Millers, were so gracious and let us all sleep at there house for a couple of nights until we could move into our new place.