The Verhoeven's: June 2008

Quick update, Mike wants to watch a movie & is rushing me!

We just took another look at our house today and there was so much progress! Most of the appliances are in, the tile in both the bathrooms has been laid, the linoleum in the laundry room was put down, the deck was built, the light fixtures were in, the pillars in the front of the house were put in, and the counter tops were in too.

Only one major problem: the counters were totally the wrong color! I had a funny feeling that they mixed up the counter color with the neighbors counter (almost the same house is being built one lot away-- at the same time). Sure enough when we walked over there to look in their house I saw OUR counter top selection. So, it looks like they are going to have to re-do the counters. I really don't like the color they chose. It's dark with a blueish tint to it. It's alright I guess, but not what we wanted.

We took some pictures this time! Here is our new home so far:

View of our backyard from our back patio. We own about an acre out.

View from the front of the house if you look out to the left.

Our pretty bay window in the living room.

Master Bedroom.

Master Closet.

Kitchen-- with the wrong counters. If you scroll down to our last post there is a picture of the actual counters we chose.

Another view of the kitchen.

The wrong counter color!!

We have a stray chicken! Well, kind of. The neighbor I guess has a loose chicken. This is the second time we've been to the house and the chicken has been on our property. I don't mind though. We plan on getting chickens sometime in the near future anyway.

Also, I got my first TICK! YUCK!! I saw it in the car on the back of my leg while we were driving home from checking on the house. I pretty much freaked out and almost started crying! It was so pathetic. Just the thought of it was making me sick. Once we got off on our exit I made Mike pull it off of me and he threw it out the window. To my surprise, it didn't hurt coming off. Pray I don't get lime disease, haha!

Hope you all like the house. I'll post more later. I have some new videos and pictures :)

Valerie, Mike, & little Jacob

I already had the blog post ready to go, but I have to add this to the very beginning. As of June 23, 2008 (1 day short of being 9 months old) Jacob took his first step! The next day on Mike's birthday, he took two steps. And today he took another two steps! He'll be walking before we know it...

We have a dancer on our hands! Yes, Jacob has been dancing lately and it's too funny! He dances when you come in his room after he wakes up. He dances when music is playing. He dances when he gets excited. And he dances when you dance! It's the cutest thing ever!! Of course he wouldn't dance as cute as he normally does it, but I did catch him dancing a little on video. I'll try to get some more videos of him doing it soon.

Father's Day just passed and Mike, Jacob, and I spent a part of our day at the park near our house. We got some really cute pictures of Jacob crawling around in the grass! He loves the outdoors, we need to get him out more often! He also got to stick his feet in the lake. It was a lot of fun, everything is so new and exciting for him. He just takes it all in. It's so much fun to watch him concentrate on everything around him!

Look at him standing!

Jacob has been sort-of sleeping through the night lately. He usually wakes up and just wants you to put his pacifier back into his mouth. The last few nights though have been a bit rough. He has been waking up pretty upset. I'm pretty sure it's teething, because he has been drooling like CRAZY! It's so bad that I've had to start putting bibs on him again. He has two more top teeth coming in next to his top two front ones. So now he's got a total of 6 teeth! This kid just won't stop growing!!

He has been a lot of fun too! He is just laughing at anything and everything! You name it: books, the cats, mommy, daddy, the TV, toys... he's laughing at it. For the most part he is such a happy baby.

He is becoming his own little person and it is so much fun to watch it happen right before our eyes. Everyday is something new. He just loves playing games with Daddy. He loves being chased, or chasing after you! Sometimes he even screams when you 'roar at him' and start to chase after him. I got a few videos of Mike & Jacob playing together:

In other news, we just checked on the construction of the home again this weekend. So much has been done and it's starting to resemble a home! The cabinets are in and they are BEAUTIFUL!! There will be so much counter space! So much better than the "dungeon", as I like to call our current kitchen. The doors are all in along with the framing and base boards. The house is also painted in the color we chose, and to our delight it came out perfect.

So, in all the house is finally coming together! We wish we would've remembered to bring the camera, but we forgot! Therefore we no pictures to share. Next time we'll remember though. :)

Just for fun, here are the counter tops & paint color we chose. (The counter tops haven't been put in yet, so we'll see how they look with the cabinets next time we check on the house.)

This is a virtual room painted with the color we chose-- not our home :)
"Stony Creek"

Here is our counter selection. Come to think of it, our cabinets are a very similar color to these.

A close up of the counter top.

I have been on a diaper soaker crochet kick lately. I got 3 of them finished in about 3 days! I wish I would've thought about this sooner. I could have saved a lot of money on diapers by crocheting my own covers! I can make two of them with one ball of yarn. The ball of yarn costs about $6 (it's more expensive because it's 100% wool) so that's about $3 a soaker. Which is a great deal considering the diapers Mike and I bought him were $13 a piece and they were the cheaper ones, plus they were on sale! A lot of people sell wool diaper covers and they run anywhere from $15-$50! Mine are not all that fancy or fantastic looking, but they work and that's all that matters! I plan on making him a few longies (wool soaker pants) and shorties (wool soaker shorts) in the near future. I want to buy the patterns for them though, so they turn out nicer :)

Here is Jacob modeling one of his new wool soakers:

I also bought some new penguin fabric from Jo Ann's the other night. I had to, it was just too cute! I love Emperor penguin chicks and this fabric was full of them! I'm either going to make a pillow, pillow case, or embellish a few prefolds with it. I haven't decided...

I made my very first loaf of bread the other day! It's Amish bread and it takes 10 days to make it. You keep adding ingredients to the mixture throughout the days and on day 10 you bake it. It's kind of hard to explain... But I made it! I did mess it up a little though. You are supposed to keep some of the batter to pass on to friends and keep for yourself so you can keep making the bread every ten days, but I forgot and just used all the batter. Mike originally got the "starter kit" from a friend at work. Hopefully they'll give us another one and next time I can get it right.

It turned out pretty good though. Mike and Jacob both liked it. It's more like a dessert bread. Supposedly you can change up the ingredients a bit and make all kinds of different breads.

Here it is, my first loaf of bread!:

Yummy! Even Jacob enjoyed it. Daddy was nice and shared some of his. He even has a little crumb on his chin!

That's all I have for now. Here are some more pictures from these past few weeks: