Renovations And Pregnancy

Hi Friends!

Boy has it been awhile since I've been here! I found myself setteling into my pregnancy and just enjoying the time reading about becoming a mom, how to take care of an infant and preparing for the arrival of our sweet girl. Who has a name by the way. :) Aubrey Faith. We decided upon her name on the car ride home from our sonogram where we learned we were having a girl. But we wanted to make sure that was the right name for our little girl and subsequently went through every.single.female.name we could possibly think of just to make sure we picked the right name. And we did. She's an Aubrey through and through. It took us longer to come up with her middle name as there were many names that we liked. But Faith kept jumping out at us. We've come to rely on the Lord in such a new way during this pregnancy and we've depended on our faith in him to carry us through. We've been going through numerous layoffs, a huge home renovation (that I'll explain in a bit) and just the financial aspect of bringing a baby into the world with limited financial funds. Faith is carrying us through. And I hope and pray that faith will be something that Aubrey relies on as she grows older.

As I mentioned above, we are going through some huge home renovations. I mean huge. I've had to move out of the house even. Well, let me rephrase that. My husband, three dogs and I have all moved out. We are staying with my inlaws until our home is complete. There are 7 people and three dogs crammed into one small house. But we are making do and honestly, it's been pretty good! Let me share with you a brief story of our home woes.

It all started at the beginning of September. Shane and I were in Pennsylvania for my USA baby shower. My inlaws came over to prime the nursery for us. How nice is that?! Those of you who've hung around my blog long enough know that our house is a major fixer-upper. The previous owners had done little to improve upon the home and when they did home repairs, more or less seemed to slap happy things together. So, in each bedroom, along the window wall, was this decorative floral paneling. Ugly. When we first moved in, we just painted over the paneling in our bedroom because we didn't have the money to repair whatever was lurking behind the paneling. So, we sort of thought we'd do that in Aubrey's room as well. No big deal. But my mother-in-law decided to pull back some of the paneling to see what was beneath and lo and behold, there was just regular ol' wall. Until she kept pulling.....

..........and out flew WASPS. Tons and tons of wasps. There was a giant nest of wasps living inbetween the wall. We're talking honeycombs and everything. It was terrible! Being the great inlaws that they are, they killed all of the wasps. My father-in-law did it all by hand too! He didn't want to spray a bunch of chemicals into our home so he endured a few stings just to keep our home safe. What a guy! They ended up needing to tear down all of the paneling, drywall and insulation to make sure that they got every last hive and wasp. So, when we got home, we came home to this.

Nursery wall.

The black is where the wasps were. They had literally eaten through some of the studs. It looks like fire damage! Unfortunatly, some of that black damage is also water leakage from the windows. The windows are builder grade windows from the '50's. Terrible things.

Wasp damage.

So that got my mom-n-law thinking. She decided to check out about getting a grant to upgrade our home. Canada had been advertising these home eco-efficiency grants where you can do all of this work on your home to make it more eco-effecient and then the government will refund portions of your costs back to you. But first, you had to have an inspector come to your house and evaluate every.little.thing to see what sort of funding your home was eligable for. One of the perks of that is that they have a heat sensor thing that would be able to tell us if anything was living in our walls. We wanted to make sure there were no more wasps living in any other parts of the wall, so that alone made the inspector worthwhile.

Laundry Room - Long Outside Wall.

Turns out, we were eligible for all kinds of money because our home was just that bad. So, we decided to get the ball moving and redo our home. Quickly. Because a baby is coming in 2 months and three weeks. Every outside wall of our home will be torn down to the studs and new studs and insulation will be put up. We have already ordered new windows and soon each of those nasty builer windows will be replaced. Our bathroom was smashed to smitherenes just the other day - and since we only have one bathroom - that's the main reason we had to move out. That and the drywall dust. In tearing down drywall around the windows, we discovered that there is major rot due to the windows leaking. It's actually pretty bad. As it stands now, the nursery outside wall has been ripped down to the studs. New ones are up in it's place. The window is gone and instead there is plywood. An electrician friend also changed out the electrical outlets and switches. He'll be doing that for the rest of the house as well. We have some bad wiring! In all of this, there are plans to side the house as well. Did I mention that most of this needs done before Aubrey comes? Not the outside work of course, but all things inside need to be taken care of before she comes. We have plans to everything completed by November 20th. That includes repainting and putting the house back in order. It's quiet a construction zone.

Laundry Room - Window Wall. Wood Rot.

So, those are the major reasons I haven't been blogging lately. Things are BUSY around here. Though lately I've been finding myself sitting around twiddeling my thumbs. It's hard not being in my own home with my own things. But everyone has been amazing. I mean honestly, amazing. My sister-n-law has even given up her bed so Shane and I can sleep on it.

More Laundry Room Window Rot

Things with my pregnancy have been going really good. Aubrey is measuring exactly where she should be. I tested negative for my gestational diabetes test (or so I think. It's been well over two weeks since I've taken the test and hadn't heard I failed so I'm assuming no news is good news.). I'm in my third trimester already! I'm actualy 28 weeks and 6 days. The countdown for this little peanut to come is realy on! This pregnancy has been flying by and I wish it would slow down just a bit. I'm hoping and praying that our home will be ready intime for her to come. Please keep that in your prayers. :)

27 Week Pregnant - A tad bigger now. :)

Sorry for the long and wordy post! Just wanted to fill you all in! I'm coming back in a few days to share with you photos of my USA baby shower. Oh wow, did we have a great time! Talk to everyone soon! Hope you have a great weekend!!