welcome to our beautiful home!

welcome to the virtual tour of our home! i know many of you have been to our house, but for those of you who never have, this is a glimpse at our "heaven on earth" (from the hymn, "home can be a heaven on earth". some days it is heaven and others...well let's just say we try!)! we love our home and will be sad to leave it. when we moved in, our plan was to live here for 5 years and we are coming up on 7 in this house! it is time to move on.

move on to what? you might say?! well, that is the big mystery. we are taking a HUGE leap of faith in putting our house on the market without any plans beyond selling it. but we both feel that everything will work out. we know that selling right now is what we need to be doing at this point, and we know that the rest will just fall into place.

so, come with me for a walk through or lovely home...

we will start at the logical place, the front yard and the front door:


come through our front door into our great room (let me tell you, it is "great", look at that view! and we love the vaulted ceilings with the skylight. when we moved here to oregon i was VERY concerned about the grey, overcast, drizzly weather. so, when we were picking out all of the carpeting and counter tops, etc. [it was new construction when we bought it] i wanted EVERYTHING to be light and bright. so, as we "walk" through the house, you'll notice the carpet is white, there are a bunch of windows and skylights! light and bright was the goal and i think we accomplished the effect quite well!):

the view from upstairs:

from the great room, i'll take you into the breakfast nook:

*side note: i just need to brag about my husband. when we moved in, the nook had carpet in it, ummm hello!!?? why do they think carpet is a good idea in an eating area??? i'll never know. anyway, sure enough after two kids and several years we had chocolate milk stains and popsicle stains and spaghetti sauce stains, and...and...well, you get the picture! so, last year, my mr. handy husband tore out the nasty carpet and put in this beautiful hardwood floor! much more practical and easier to clean up after the inevitable spills! i love you mitch!

and into the kitchen:

now, down the hall into our favorite room of the house, the bonus room. we estimate that we spend a good 70% of our time at home in this room.

the reasons:

• it has the toys
  
• it has the computer (we don't own a tv, so this also doubles as the dvd player)
  
• it has a view
  
• it has a wood burning stove for those 9 months a cold, rainy weather. it is by far the toastiest room on the winter days!
  
• it's huge

*okay, i must admire my husband, yet again! when we moved into the house this bonus room wasn't here. through this door was the garage, the garage with a 20 foot ceiling. yea! total waste of space! so, my wonderful husband got this great idea of putting a floor halfway up the garage and actually using the space as a bonus room. so, my dad, who is an architect drew up the plans. the week nani was born, mitch took time off from work to "help" with the baby, but he actually started working on building the bonus room above the garage. thanks to help from tutu man (architect) and grandpa (electrical engineer) we finished the room in a little over a year, adding 400 sq. ft. to our home!

and the view from the bonus room window!! love it!

now, let me take you back through the kitchen and nook, out the sliding door to the back yard:
notice the lovely, blue hydrangeas! (my new favorite flower, see my 100)

we take great pride in our backyard because we put about 2+ years of very hard work into getting it how it is right now. when we moved in, as with most new construction, the backyard was not landscaped. in our case, that meant that our backyard was a steep slope covered in ivy and blackberry bushes. fun! it remained that way until after the bonus room was complete and i believe we started chipping away at the yard before lala was born, back in 2002.

first, we ripped out the ivy and cut down three trees. then, we brought a back hoe into the back and moved the dirt from one side of the slope to the other, that way, we could terrace it so it would be flat. next, we had to build three retaining walls. i got very strong that year carrying the 100 pound blocks from the front of the house to the back of the house! last we did the landscaping.

as a special treat for the girls, last summer mitch, along with help from grandpa and tutu man, built this cute playhouse for the girls. it was built complete with a back deck and a yellow slide (funny thing about the slide: we were too cheap to pay the extra $100 at home depot for the longer slide a whole extra 2 feet. let me tell you, that is one fast and STEEP slide. we've had several kids, unknowingly, fly down that thing and never want to go on it again! hmmm, wonder why!? our girls have figured a way to slow themselves down and they love it!).

and the steps down to the lower yard:



phew! we made it. i didn't take you upstairs because that is just where the bedrooms are. actually, here is a picture of nani and lala's room, it was super fun painting it, though, it took some persuading to convince mitch to let me do a purple room! on the border i wrote "happy" words and drew little dragonflies and flowers. then i made a quilt for each of them with dragonflies and flowers that matched the colors on the walls:

so, there you have it, our little piece of heaven.

we signed the papers with our realtor on saturday and the for sale sign is supposed to arrive tomorrow. then on tuesday, as we are, hopefully, pulling away in our rv, she will put it on the market. we're praying for a quick sale!

i will keep you posted as things progress!