Changes...to our home

God's been so generous with us. While we aren't quite to the point where Meghan can stay home (hopefully once we sell our rentals we should be able to do it though) God's blessed us so much. Recently we found out that not only are we getting a nice tax rebate but I also got a bonus which I TOTALLY didn't expect. Honestly, with layoffs and stuff, I just didn't think they'd be giving out bonuses this year. I was besides myself with joy when I my boss called me with the news though. One nice thing with both of those is that we always tithe off of each of them and we usually do something different and find some new charities (besides church) to donate. This is kind of fun cause I like the idea of helping people out and using that money we've been blessed with. Now its time for us to figure out where we want to give the money too...there are so many good organizations out there that need money!

The other fun thing is that we decided to take a big chunk of that money to finish our basement. We aren't going to put in the bathroom (yet) but we are going to have a finished bedroom and an additional den area down there. Luckily, the old owners did a LOT of the dirty work leaving us with a few smaller things to do to finish. Basically, we need to put down some carpet (the expensive part) and then paint, install a closet, and do some finishing touches. It will be nice to have the extra den so we can move the Wii and the other game systems we have down there so that if someone wants to play, they can at any time! :-) We rarely play though so we'll see if that changes very much.

A big step for us in this process (and probably the most fun step) was getting new furniture. We decided to move our current stuff downstairs and get some new stuff for the main room. This is really the first furniture that we've bought together. Almost everything else in the house was either one of ours from before our wedding or a gift at our wedding. I picked up the furniture on Saturday night and got it all set up, it looks SO nice. We decided to go with leather so our furniture is more "kid-friendly". It was tough to make a decision but we ended up settling on a couch and two recliners. The recliners are amazingly comfy, I think the couch is going to be jealous cause I don't see us using it too often! haha

I also started working on some new shelves in our storage room in the basement so we'll have a place for all our stuff in there! The first one turned out nice...now I just need to move it into the room, and secure it to the wall. Not something you can do alone! Since Meghan is visiting Beth in Missouri this weekend I had a lot of extra time so I spent most of the weekend organizing, cleaning, and building. It was quite productive but I sure do miss my girls. I am off to California in the morning for three days so I won't see them again until Thursday morning. Its going to be a rough 6-day stretch.