Last door upstairs to prime white - yea!

Dogwoods are beautiful in the spring -- and fall...

Dino thankfully has not knocked down anymore fence...so far...

Burgess is a good boy and seems to love living out here.  He is so comfortable around horses that we think horses were in his "puppyhood".  My sister found him years ago near my parents' river house, so we don't know how old Burgie is.

Humbled that we had to BUY pumpkins this year...
Hoping to grow lots of them next year!

Progress...bookshelves are all painted...now waiting for the
paint to cure before we unpack all of these books!

CC field trip -- Virgina War Museum -- Newport News...
I'm having a very hard time "controlling" Daniel here.
He's completely bored and trying to disassemble this weapon...

Hannah, Daniel (way in the back!), Connor, and Ashley

Ooops...

Aunt Shannie and Daniel...my sister received very serious news after heart testing at Johns Hopkins on Thursday for HCM (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), a genetic and dangerous thickening of the heart wall.  She will need surgery in the next few months for a pacemaker/defibrillator device similar to my mom's.  She and my parents were supposed to come down to our house for Daniel's birthday, but Shannon didn't feel up to it, so we travelled up to Annapolis.  So glad we did!  Praying for her!!!  God is in the healing and miracle business!  He is so good all the time and no one can thwart His plans and purposes.

Ashley and Tilly

Ashley has now surpassed Aunt Shannie in height!

Gammy (Dawn's mom) and Tilly

Daniel, Tilly, and Hannah

Celebrating Daniel's birthday...and Gammy's...and Shannon's...and Scott's!!!

Off to visit Great-Grandmom (Dawn's maternal grandmother) --
She's 95 years old, doing well, and still insists on living by herself!

We asked her to look out the window and give us a
"thumb's up" sign before we left to indicate that she locked all the doors.

God has great plans for you, Daniel!  Trust Him...

Happy 4th Birthday, Daniel!  A friend just recently told me about adding candles on the birthday cake to remember Daniel's birth mom and foster mom -- we think that's a great idea....Praying for them....Grateful for Daniel...

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."  --- Isaiah 41:10

Recent short trips...

currituck lighthouse

northern outer banks

daniel

connor

hannah

ashley

gammy, poppy, and the kiddos at college run farms in surry

riding the ferry from surry back to jamestown

nice chicken coop

i like this trailer too

cc field trip -- jamestown

cc field trip -- yorktown

ashley learning how to fire a cannon at yorktown

Still unpacking...



We finally found another trim guy to finish up the interior (our first trim guy did a great job but he quit before he was done).  This guy is Korean and loves Daniel.  He and his crew were here for three days finishing three closets and building the school room/library/office shelves.  The dining room is a mess.



School room/library/office...the guys found the studs and are building most of the shelves off-site.

Three days later...yea!  Now...can I fit all of these books on this amount of shelves?  I hope so!  I really want to keep all - or at least most - of the books in this one room.  No one else thinks I can do it...  ;-)  We will paint all of the shelves white.  Ugh.

School room closet.  These closets are deeper and wider than in most newer houses and if we used the standard shelving at Lowes, we would have a lot of wasted space.  Building the shelves was step one --- now Scott and I are painting them.  That's a lot of paint and time!

Panty and kitchen storage for trays, platters, etc that are awkwardly sized (punch bowl, etc) and for our grain buckets that have been opened.

Poor Hannah -- stuff is everywhere while we are finishing the walk-in closet that we built in her room.

Hannah's walk-in closet...part of it at least...

We had no idea that this was all going to take so long.  We had no idea that 1/3 of our boxes would still be unpacked and that we'd still be painting.  We had no idea that the first trim guy was going to quit.  We think he is used to working on new construction, so he was overwhelmed with our children running around and with us living here.  He quit as soon as we moved in.  It took quite a while for us to find the second guy, but he has been great.  He and his crew were polite and really paid attention to detail.  They even cleaned up after themselves - vacuuming and all!  We'd like to get him to come back to finish the front porch...Our new goal is to be unpacked and done painting by the end of this year...