Saturday, April 24, 2004, was our official moving day.  With help from family and friends we moved everything into our new home.  Moving two homes into one home was a huge undertaking.  Together we planned which rooms needed to be organized first and began unpacking or taking boxes to the basement to be gone through later.  Excitement and exhaustion was a constant fixture in our new home but not without purpose.  On July 20, 2004, we welcomed our second son, Chase, to our family and started another new chapter in our lives.  Our home was constantly buzzing with trying to get everything in order and settling into a new routine.  Brian, Angela & Connie talked about home improvement plans and how we wanted to proceed with each.

Ideas we decided to do now

• Establishing a yard (grass and landscaping)
• Building a shed
• Decorating (hanging pictures)
• Window treatments / curtains
• Installing ceiling fans and other lighting fixtures
• Furniture purchases

Ideas we were advised to wait until after one year walk through to do

• Installing a swing set / play area for the kids
• Finishing the basement
• Adding an extension to the back patio or building a deck
• Wallpaper / painting

During our final walk through of our home with Jeff, we discussed some of our ideas and plans for personalizing our home. Jeff advised us not to do the above items until after we had our one year walk through for a variety of reasons. The main reason being that our home would need to settle and any moisture in the basement concrete needed to work its way out for us to get the best results with finishing our basement. We were told to run a dehumidifier and this would help remove the moisture. Any cracks that might develop during the settling of the house would be covered up and unknown if we finished the basement or wallpapered/painted the walls.

Ideas for future projects

• Building out over the garage

Our lives and our new home were moving forward and we were making some of our dreams become realities. Our family had grown by one more and our home was coming together. We were so happy we didn’t think anything could bring us down. Boy, were we wrong.