A long suffered trial has passed....

I know all of you have been anxiously awaiting my return as author of the Callahan family blog. I really have to say I have missed my little posts as well. Ah, but so much for the sentiment! On to the reason of this misfortune! It seems that in our blundering hurry to buy a home (as naive first-time-home-buyers often do) we didn't ask, didn't wonder, and didn't find many problems that came with our new home until we moved in, and learned of them, sadly, by experience. (Don't get me wrong, we love love love our house, and it is way better than renting forever... but my goodness!) Our misfortunes have not been the center of our lives, thank goodness, and certainly haven't slowed the progression of our small family. After all, we are expecting another little addition sometime at the end of this year, or the beginning of next. Wahoo! Anyway, back to the house.

We moved in on February 2, 2007. A year to the day from when we moved in to our sweet, little apartment, we moved out, leaving with it the memories of our first pregnancy, the long hours of labor, and the bringing home of our first baby. As much as I've dreamed of owning a home, I certainly didn't know that I'd miss that apartment so much. It was so weird to clean out all our stuff and look at the empty shell of the place and picture all the little things that happened there: me up with Cooper with croup, or playing on the floor as he was learning to crawl, our first Christmas (we didn't count the technical first one in 2005 because we were living with Grandma Dooley), having Candice and Flint over till all hours of the night, eating cookie dough and playing Nintendo. I suppose I feel nostalgic because moving out of there meant leaving behind a chapter in our lives. We have now morphed from a little fledgling family to a full blown family operation with another kid on the way, a backyard, and a sandbox to boot! Not that this next chapter in our lives is bad, we are certainly looking forward to many things, but it is different, and with change comes a longing for things past (as I am so prone to do!).

So we moved in, blah, blah, blah. Jesse refinished our cabinets in 2 days, spending long hours and lots of masking tape. You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but it was tons of work! He re-covered the island in the kitchen with cherry wood, so that when he painted it, the grain of the oak wouldn't show through. He sprayed the rest of the cabinets and made new doors and crown molding. As you can see, I helped! :) So he painted the island black and used his sander to wear through it to give it that antique look. Then stained the rest of the cabinets a deep, pretty, brown.

So here's the before and after. Pretty impressive eh? I had to wait a few weeks for my cabinet doors, but I didn't mind, it's worth it! I don't have an after picture with the doors on it, and I'm not going to take one to post right now because my kitchen is very messy... so maybe later ya'll can see the finished product.

Anyway, we're here, we love it, and oh yeah... we finally have the internet!