Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Back to Work We Go...

...and we are tired! We have had a fantastic summer, and have gotten LOTS done on our house, more then we planned to do this summer, but I would gladly take a couple more weeks before heading back to work. I haven't been doing good at keeping up with the blog for August because we've been busy working and had some great visitors for a week. Busy for me, means not carrying a camera around, so I've finally got myself organized and taken pictures of all of our projects!

We finished painting our basement and I got to decorating!

 I wasn't so sure about the green/yellow called "celestial ray" however Scott was certain it would look good, and he's right!



Family sent from heaven above to cherish and to love.

We finally got our bedroom sanded and painted after Scott and my dad knocked the wall out in July. We absolutely love it! We are waiting for some beautiful decals and our framed wedding pictures to be done in order to finish up the decorating.

Master bathroom painted light blue.

Our initials are going above the bed in white.

We are beyond thankful for family! We just finished up our bedroom, when Scott's family came for a week in August, and Scott and his dad moved the laundry downstairs and built a room for it! We are so lucky to have the family that we have!

Our new mudroom!

Our entry from the bottom of the stairs to the laundry room.



Knocked a wall down and moved all the plumbing, and dryer vent downstairs.

We are currently working on getting the main hallway upstairs, mudroom, and main hallway downstairs ready for painting. Scott's been putting putty on and sanding all day today and yesterday. In the meantime though, he decided to build in the bottom of our deck as these 2 beautiful boys...

...enjoy digging holes and Gilmour rolls in them. After 2 days of rain, we had enough of mud coming through the house, so Scott did this:

I'm thankful for the "handy" husband that I have and for the great people that taught him how to do this stuff!

We have so much excitement happening in our lives. Scott's family's visit deserves a post all on its own, Kale and Gilmour are growing and truly are the "babies" in our house, we are busy getting ready for back to school, and my sister is getting married! I'm too tired to add more, but I will get caught up in the next month with all of our exciting adventures and more pictures. 

In One Year...

.... our life has changed immensely. We look back to our wedding day and can't believe everything we've done after that day together. We are so happy, and God is so good! We love the city we live in and our jobs. We have a new church that we plan to become more involved in and we have a God that keeps putting new ideas into our head of possiblities in the future. We were the couple that had a list of 20 things we wanted to do after we were married, today when we look at the list, we've done a few of those things, and the rest of the items are no longer a priority. God is working in both of us. As we pulled into the mountains last night, Scott had the worship station playing away and said "Wow God is amazing."







Today we are starting another new journey, with "The Love Dare" we have heard nothing but great things about this study and we thought it would be great to start today. It's a 40 day marriage challenge and we thought it would be something different for us to try aside from our regular reading and praying this summer.

We are excited for a great celebration day ahead as we venture up the mountains and enjoy the love that we know God has given us for each other and Him.

Dad & Mom Kelly's Stay

We are lucky enough to have the best family members! Dad and Mom came to visit for the week and from Monday to Friday, Dad and Scott did not stop working. Our home is beautiful - we love it - but there are two things that we need to change in order to make it work for us.  This week was one of them - the master bedroom and spare room became one room this week! On top of just knocking out the wall, they had to drywall a door in, lay the missing hardwood floor, and rewire multiple outlets. Below are some pictures of them working hard.

In the midst of all this, they managed to fix our doorbell and our garage door too. The minute Mom and Dad headed for the plane, Scott was in the garage organizing it all. He is so happy to finally have 2 working garage doors!

Mom and I had a great time visiting, baking, shopping and spending time with Kale and Gilmour!

Our boys were definitely sad when Nana and Papa left....

 

Saturday afternoon after mom and dad had left, Kale and Gilmour worked together to chew the garden around the fence and have a wonderful lunch of onions, carrots and cucumbers.

I spent yesterday a little teary eyed all day as I was sad to see Mom and Dad go, but Scott did a good job of making sure I was occupied. By the end of last night we had chosen a paint colour for the rest of the basement living room, taped the room, sanded our bedroom again and made stairs for Gilmour to get up to our bed on!

While Scott and Dad were taking the trim off in our bedroom, they found this:

"Each new day is a beautiful gift from God."

As I was going to bed last night I saw it sitting on the table, it reminded me that He will always look after us. Yesterday was definitely a "homesick" day for me, but it's not home I miss, but rather the love of my family. We are so happy here with our life, and our jobs, and that wouldn't be true if we didn't have Him. We are looking forward to getting this project finished and enjoying the next few weeks of summer until our next group of loving family members fly in.

House Projects

We are getting pretty excited with all of the things that are happening in our new house, and being teachers, everything happens in the summer. Our days currently consist of waking up whenever Gilmour and Kale do, which is usually between 7 and 8am, drinking coffee, reading, and making lists. We are the king and queen of making lists. Currently Scott has a list for what we'll be doing next week and another list for what he needs to buy, and finally a list for what he's doing today. It is safe to say that this household can't stand being bored! Here's some updates on what we're doing this summer:

Project #1
Today we will finish the decorating for the basement. I have spent days going through pictures, and looking for frames to fit the wall and have finally found a verse to put on it as well. So this......

....will hopefully look a million times better by 10pm tonight!

Project #2
My parents fly in Monday and we're currently waiting for the dry wall to be delivered this morning so we have everything for Dad and Scott's big project. They are taking out a wall between the master bedroom and a spare room in order to make the master bigger, as our furniture doesn't all fit.

I cannot wait to get rid of the green in 2 weeks!!

This also means filling in a door and running the tv wires to another wall. I am so thankful to have a husband that is "handy," because I'm definitely not, but he has everything ready to go for Monday and is pretty excited about it. I'm excited to see how my 2 favourite men in the world work together!

Project #3
One room that has come together really well is our main living room:

The piano completely helps with the decorating situation, but I still have one more major project to do on the wall over the piano. Mom and Dad are bringing all of our wedding pictures with them, which is pretty exciting! Being 2 provinces over from the photographer has made picking up our package difficult, so Mom and Dad have done it for us. I can't wait to have them in order to finish the project for this room, and so people can see them.

We picked up a coffee table for this room on Thursday when we were in Saskatoon, and I think it just completes the room. Partially because trying to read and drink coffee in the morning and show attention to our 2 dogs that always want to sit on top of us makes it difficult when there's nowhere to set your coffee. I was emphatic that it had a shelf underneath for our bibles and magazines to sit on, and after searching, we found the perfect one in Wal-Mart!

And to top it off, I woke up Friday morning to this:

Scott's sister and brother-in-law sent us this frame as a housewarming gift - he certainly knows how to make his wife feel special in the most simple ways!

Curious, Brave, Adorable, Independent, Growing!

Yesterday our beautiful niece Ellee Scarlett turned one! We were sad we couldn't make it to her party in Chicago this past weekend, but have loved seeing all the pictures - she is so beautiful! She has such personality and we can't wait to see what Dudgeon Baby #2 is like in December.

Our Sweet Boys

Kale & Gilmour are the highlight of our life right now! Everytime we have to leave the house without them, Scott fills their toy kongs with peanut butter, puts them in their kennels and says "I love you." They are truly spoiled, but we don't mind and we're sure that they don't either!

Kale loves his walks!

Such beautiful eyes - He has a heart of gold.

"I'll go wherever you go, Dad!"

"I'm growing and I don't know if that's a good thing!" As of July 2, Gilmour is 3 months old and weighs 22 pounds!

List Item # 1

Today is the end of our first year of teaching, and I have a list of 100 things I'd like to do this summer - first one on the list: start a blog.  I realized that we are so busy in Meadow Lake and we have all these pictures on our computer that need to go somewhere - I'm not the scrapbooking kind of girl so this is the perfect place! Hopefully this will work out and you will have a sneak peak into our busy, but thankfully wonderful lives!