Under Construction - Progress as Promised

I have not blogged in so long. Life has been crazy. Since the end of April, our home has been under construction. After much thought, Jason and I decided to finally make some changes to our home. Wow, what an undertaking. The story is that we had a rock wall in between the kitchen and the living room. It was huge and bulky and took away from having a open home good for entertaining. The problem is, when you take out a huge wall like that it effects the flooring, the ceiling and our appliances which were built in the rock wall on the kitchen side. There was no way to do this job without really diving in. Our home was gutted down to the studs in the main living area. It took a full week to do the demo. We have been rebuilding ever since.
When the walls came down that backed up to our guest bathroom, we found a lot of mold and a huge water leak. This lead to a brand new bathroom for the boys. To top it all off, we fixed every crack in our foundation-stricken home which lead to having to repaint every single room in the house....either just a bit of touch up or the whole room. It has been busy and I feel like life has been almost overwhelming.
Not only has all this happened, but Jason has changed jobs and we are in the middle of negotiating a price on the sale of Jason's mom's house. Back in February we were chosen by a birthmom to adopt her baby, but she changed her mind....thankfully. I don't think we could handle much more right now. I know God would have provided what we needed, but I am grateful that we don't have that on top of all the chaos.
I know everyone has things going on and life never really is easy. I know that I so often get bogged down with the here and now and don't focus on the things that really matter. Things came into clear perspective yesterday when I got an email from a high school friend telling me that my friend, Kristin passed away. She was 35 and had been fighting cancer and lost the battle. It is so clear to me today that life is fragile. Friends are more important than the chaos of life. Loving, teaching and being patient with my kids is way more important than getting things done. It doesn't have to be a home remodel....it can be anything that I let pull me off balance. I don't want life to get in the way of being the person God made me to be.
I will write again later. Here are some pictures of our constructions zone :) The first 2 are during the demo phase. The third is a picture of our new cabinets unstained (the 1st picture and the 3rd picture are taken from the same place), the fourth is a picture of Foster in our new pantry and the final 2 are pictures of the Granite Install Day!!! Today the plumbers are here so for the first time since the start I will have a kitchen sink. We have been having to do dishes in our bathroom for almost 3 months. I am very very excited!
Until Next Time, Becca