15 months

Porter is 15 months old.He LOVES to be in my office. Mostly because we are trying to keep him out of it most of the time. He thinks that something good MUST go on in here. Here he is reading my email. And steeling my pens. Porter is obsessed with pens lately. Porter squats and plays like this a lot. He must have strong thighs and great balance!Helping Grandma Care make biscuits. Playing at the park with Everett.Porter's new favorite place is the playground at Chick-fil-A. He loves to climb and he thinks he is one of the big kids.River is ready to be fed. She sees us feed Porter when he sits in this chair. Where is her food?Porter got an ear ache. So we just cuddled and watched Sesame Street.Porter's first motorcycle from Grandpa Blair.We took a Saturday off of working on the house and went to the air show with our friends the Terrys. And then to Chick-fil-A.

Some home movies:

Progress

We have been making some slow progress on the house. Progress at the beginning always seems to go slow because you have to get everything set up and make a lot of decisions. We made a big decision last Friday by finalizing the design of the kitchen cabinetry and placing the order through Crownpoint Cabinetry. Below are some perspectives of what it will look like. We are going with the paneled refrigerator and dishwasher so they will blend in with the cabinetry. This kitchen will have a bar with bar stools, a desk at the end, and upper cabinet boxes for extra storage. These perspectives don't show the crown molding that will be added on after the cabinets are installed.We have cleared about every tree from the yard. The old trees were just too over-grown. We plan on planting some lemon and orange trees, some flowers, and a lot of grass. We also want to put in a fence around the entire yard. This might have to wait though because its not high on the priority list. We did start on the sprinklers though so that we can add some green in the front yard. This has been the biggest sprinkler job we have ever done, starting from scratch.Tom and Gerome have been working on the new electrical meter upgrade that will go on the garage and take the meter off of the house and the overhead electrical line back to the property line. Here is their trench and conduits they have run so far. We have a permit for the meter upgrade and are just waiting for Edison to schedule our meter installation.One of the first things we did was clear the basement. Matt Richins, Rafael, and I ripped out the ceiling, cabinets, floor, walls, and doors in one day. This is what it looks like now. Once we can open up the windows on both sides of the house we should be able to get some light down there.

We tore out all of the carpet on the second floor. My mom and Tom have been working on scraping the old melted carpet pad off of the wood and pulling out the staples. I think the wood's in great condition for being 98 years old!

Rafael is our door and window guy. He has been working on getting all of the windows back in working condition by replacing the ropes and resetting the glass. Tom is currently hunting down replacement glass for the broken windows, heavier weights for some of the windows, and a place to make vintage double hung windows for the places we want to add or change windows.