Merry Christmas!

Another year is winding to an end and it's a perfect time to remember the past year. Adam started 2011 off with a bang by tearing his ACL while snow skiing in Utah, right after Christmas. He was a good sport and enjoyed the rest of the vacation on crutches. His ACL replacement surgery was in March and he's healing well. In March, We were able to celebrate a couple weddings for Adam's cousin & friends from college. This spring, Stacy ventured to start a garden in the back yard - the tomatoes and squash were the most successful. In April, we attended UF's Orange & Blue game for a reunion with Adam's college buddies. We also visited Jacksonville's zoo and fed giraffes. In July, we visited Stacy's family in Texas - where we shot skeet. In August, we welcomed our newest niece, Emily Jo Westover. We are expecting another niece in April from Stacy's brother, Philip and Amanda - and we've enjoyed meeting several of our friends new babies this year. We've been to a couple Jacksonville Jaguar games, despite their losing season. We completed many projects around our new house - such as caulking, shelving & organizing, painting, sprinklers, and a paver walkway. We hosted Thanksgiving for Adam's family, about 40 people joined us. Most recently, we celebrated Adam's 31st Birthday with a trip to Islands of Adventure. I guess we've been busy.

This is also a wonderful time to count your blessings. We are thankful for our fun & loving family and friends, a Jesus loving church, a beautiful home, ability to work, excellent health, and a hope & purpose in Christ. We look forward to what 2012 brings and are thankful for the lessons learned in 2011. We wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love,
Adam & Stacy

Islands of Adventure

To celebrate Adam’s Birthday, we went to Islands of Adventure with Daryl & Mandy. We had a great time exploring the world of Harry Potter!

First stop - Hogsmeade!

We visited all the shops in the village, just like the movie!

Hogwarts.

Hagrid's cabin.

The Hogwart's choir with toads.

Adam enjoying his butter beer - tastes kinda like cream soda.

Here we are in front of Hogwarts. There was a great ride inside and lots of fun things to see as you wait in line.

Other than visit all the Harry Potter stuff, we rode several roller coasters, enjoyed the Spiderman ride, relived childhood in Dr. Suess' land, saw dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and ate at the Three Broomsticks.

We had a great time with Daryl & Mandy!

House Projects

During and after the paver walkway, we finished several other projects around the house.

The transition strips in the foyer are complete.

The door from the master bedroom to bathroom. Adam fit the transition strip under the door stops, look really great.

The Breakfast Nook to Living Room was the longest stretch – over 9-feet. We had to use two boards butted together. Here’s our set up.

We got furniture for the back porch, very comfy.

Adam suits up for some router work to clean up the curved edge of the front porch beam.

Adam's handy work.

Adam mounted a clothes rod in the Laundry Room for me.

We turned the closet under the stairs into a cleaning closet. We hung all our brooms and mopes and organized cleaning supplies, batteries, light bulbs, etc. I also made a curtain to hide the painting supplies under the stair landing.

Adam hung Christmas lights along the roof eave. This was our first year decorating the house for Christmas and it looks great!

On an unrelated note, we had a fun time a few weeks ago when some family came in from Texas for a visit. Here’s the group shot. Nothing like Thanksgiving in October.

We also hosted Adam's family on Thanksgiving day at our home. We had about 40 people come. We're so thankful to have this house to host everyone!

Paver Walkway

We have been working on the paver walkway recently and it looks great! Here’s the progress through pictures:

Before shot. We left dirt where we wanted the walkway when we landscaped the house. Over the last year, weeds and grass and grown up, making it not so very attaractive.

Adam dug down about 6” of the dirt to allow for enough room for our base and pavers. We set up a string line, marking where we wanted the top of the pavers to go. This helped with digging a consistent depth.

We rented a compactor and compacted the dirt.

The right is the pile of dirt we removed from under our new walkway. The left is the paver base we had delivered.

Then we laid about 4” of the paver base – crushed granite. Adam used some pipes and a straight edge to get a level base.

Here’s the work in progress. This stuff compacts really well.

The finished paver base. Now, this was Saturday, Oct. 15th. Our paver order came in wrong, so we were not able to lay the pavers that day. Disappointing, but we wanted what we ordered, so we had to wait a few extra days.

We used leftover tar paper to protect the paver base from the elements for a few days while we waited for the pavers to get here.

The paver arrived!

Adam laid out the pavers along the way and got layout started.

After one night’s work alone, look at all the progress Adam made!

I helped him on the second night and we finished laying all the whole pieces on the curve to the porch.

We’ve been working on the cut pieces this week, here we have most of them in place.

The curve is getting filled in.

Adam used a grinder to make the cuts and a mason’s chisel to finish the break.

I started laying the edging in place, to keep the paver’s location locked in.

After we finished the cuts, banged them down with a rubber mallet and cleaned off the surface, Adam spread gray polymeric sand over the pavers. This is a special sand that will solidify when wet. This helps to lock the pavers in place, keeps weeds from growing through and will not need to be replaced.

You can see the curve has all the finished cuts.

Adam used the hose to wet the polymeric sand.

Here’s the finished product this with dirt and mulch filled in!

Welcome, Emily Jo!

We welcomed my niece into the family on August 20, 2011. Here I am holding Emily Jo Westover the day she was born. I made this blanket for her to keep warm. Congratulations Sarah & Jeff!

Checking off the Punch List

Let me catch you up on our latest house projects . . .

We installed ceiling speakers in our living room in August. This will eventually be connected to a surround sound system, but for now we have our CD player and/or computer hooked up to it. It has a great sound and looks much better than wires sticking through the ceiling.

In September we hung shelving in the back porch closet – this officially completes all of the closet shelving in our house!

The lawn mower has been relocated to our garage, making the back porch much cleaner.

Adam finished the trim around the front door! He cut the curved top piece and routed the top and side trim to make it completely custom. We were also able to finish the base boards – I think it looks great!

I spent a long time finishing the caulk around the trim – caulking baseboards to walls, baseboards to tile, trim to wall under the granite . . . lots of places. Here’s my work station in the hall.

Here’s the largest gap I had to caulk. It had been driving me crazy, but it’s all pretty now. This is the door from our kitchen to back porch and the gap was almost half an inch. This picture was in process, before I smoothed out the caulk.

The last fruit from my garden was this watermelon. The garden hadn’t produced anything in awhile, so we ripped everything up and discovered this small melon. This was by far my biggest one, but it still wasn’t big enough – inside it was solid white. Oh well . . . I don’t think I’ll do watermelon next year.

We mounted hooks in the nook off the garage, so it makes this space much more functional. Eventually, we will build a bench with storage for shoes underneath and shelves with hooks above. But, this works great for now.

Our latest project has been transition strips. Here are the doors going to the two bedrooms off the hall.

This is my favorite – makes the transition almost invisible. This is the Living Room to Hall.

Here’s the Foyer. The far two sides are done and the closest one isn’t yet. We have to special order that side because it is longer. We still have a couple transitions left, but we're covering up the last bit of concrete one strip at a time.

We bought this table and chairs for the Breakfast Nook off of craigslist last weekend. It’s very nice to have something in that space now.

We installed a rain sensor for our sprinkler system – now it won’t go off in the rain. :)

That’s it for now. We're plugging away at that punch list and it’s a great feeling to check things off.