First Piano Recital

Once I knew that the girls and I would not be going back to our home in Spain after our Christmas visit, I decided it was time for them to start piano lessons.  It all started because Kaylee kept saying she wanted to learn how to play the piano.  It took us a couple of weeks to find a piano teacher, but with the help of a friend, we found our teacher and she only lives 2 minutes away!  So the girls began their lessons (never having taken any lessons before) in March.  They had their first recital last night.  I don't know what you will think, but after only 3 months of lessons, I am extremely impressed with their ability!

First up is Kaylee:

I think the bench was too far away from the piano for her.  She made a few mistakes, but she kept right on going!  She did such a great job.  For the perfectionist that she is, I was very surprised that she didn't cry in frustration.  She's very much like her daddy!  But she was the perfect performer last night.

Now Alexis:

She also did an excellent job.  Of course she was nervous but it didn't show at all.  Alexis didn't want to take piano lessons at first, but I made her go to the first lesson and told her that I wanted her to finish out the school year of lessons.  If she didn't like it still after that, I wouldn't make her start up again in the fall.  But after the first lesson she was in love! 

I may be biased, but these girls are talented!

Romans Part Tres (I think)

Starting where I left off with Chapter 9.

9:19-20  Are you going to object, "So how can God blame us for anything since he's in charge of everything?  If the big decisions are already made, what say do we have in it?"  Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God?  Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question?  Clay doesn't talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, "Why did you shape me like this?"

9:31-32  And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it.  How could they miss it?  Because instead of trusting God, they took over.  They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing.  They were so absorbed in their "God projects" that they didn't notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road.  And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling.

10:9-14  Say the welcoming word to God--"Jesus is my Master"--embracing, body and soul, God's work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead.  That's it.  You're not "doing" anything; you're simply trusting him to do it for you.  That's salvation.  With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: "God has set everything right between him and me!"  Scripture reassures us, "No one who trusts God like this--heart and soul--will ever regret it."  It's exactly the same no matter what a person's religious background may be:  the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help.  "Everyone who calls, 'Help God!'  gets help."  But how can people call for help if they don't know who to trust?  And how can they know who to trust if they haven't heard of the One who can be trusted?  And how can they hear if nobody tells them"

11:6  And since it is through God's kindness, then it is not by their good works.  For in that case, God's grace would not be what it really is--free and undeserved.

11:18  But you must not brag about being grafted in to replace the branches that were broken off.  You are just a branch, not the root.

I think that's good for today.  I am finished reading Romans, but I am re-reading the bookmarks I saved.  There are several from the last four chapters.

I Asked by Alexis

I asked the rose why it was red
And it danced and wilted to crunchy brown.
I asked the cloud why it was white
And it called its friends and darkened.
I asked the moon why it had craters
And it turned and walked away and the sun replaced it.
I asked the hawk to fly
And it unfolded its large wings and soared.
I asked the leaf to blow away
And it did and its friends joined it.
I asked the flowers why they bloomed
And they shriveled and wilted.
I asked myself why I was so curious
And the clouds got white
The flowers bloomed
The leaves came back
And I kept quiet
And everything was perfect.

More Romans (finally)

I left off with Chapter 5 last time.

6:11-13  From now on, think of it this way:  Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word.  You are dead to sin and alive to God.  That's what Jesus did.  That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives.  Don't give it the time of day.  Don't even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life.  Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time--remember, you've been raised from the dead!--into God's way of doing things.

7:21-25  The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up.  I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight.  Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.  I've tried everything and nothing helps.  I'm at the end of my rope.  Is there no one who can do anything for me?  Isn't that the real question?  The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does.  He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

8:5-6  Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life.  Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God!  Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.

8:29-31  God knew what he was doing from the very beginning.  He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son.  The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored.  We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.  After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name.  After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself.  And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.  So, what do you think?  With God on our side like this, how can we lose?

Perfect place to stop and reflect....

The Plans

Just for kicks (and online storage purposes) I thought I would post my original plans as well.

Basement floor plan:

There have been a lot of changes made to this plan.  But the basic wall structure is the same.

The bar plan:

Here you can see where I planned to cut out some of the stair wall.  We're not going to do that now because we wanted to have the space for a mini refrigerator as well as the kegerator.  So these plans are going to change too.

The Entertainment Center plan:

This one will probably change some as well.  That is the faux column on the right.  But this massive unit will take up that entire section of wall.

Framing and Beginning Electrical

So, the next time Stern Construction came out they worked so hard!  I was quite impressed.  They only stopped for lunch and then one other break after that.  They worked from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM.  After that long work day, they only had to come out two more times to finish up.  I cannot express how happy I am with the work they did!  It is just how I envisioned it...these guys are good.

Also, Mom started coming up to help me with the electrical.  I love working with her.  It's great bonding time and she's teaching me a lot.  We're also going to do the plumbing together and she said that Grandpa Cook is even going to come and join the fun!  That is extremely exciting for me!!!  Anyway, on to the pictures:

This is the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.  On one end (pictured above) is the electrical closet.  The other end is the guest room and full bathroom.



Same hallway.  These are the three can lights we put up.  There are still all the original lights that the builders put in.  We are planning to take those down.

Bar area.  This wall will have the actual bar and is shared with the stairway.  I had originally thought about knocking out some of the stair wall to open it up a bit, but I think we're going to opt for more counter space instead.

Also the bar area.  On the right is the electrical closet.  The left is the entertainment area.

The five can lights in the bar area.  There will also be under cabinet lighting.

This column will be decorative like the ones we have upstairs.  That's still the bar area on the left.

Since I'm a nut for symmetry, I had a faux column framed out opposite the one next to the bar area.

These two pictures are of our monster bulk head.  Our main trunk line for our furnace runs right through the middle of the basement.  Now it will be nice and hidden by drywall.

This is our entertainment area.  The wall straight ahead is where my built-in entertainment center will be.  On the far right is the bar area and you can just make out the faux column.

These are the lights for the entertainment area.  8 of them.  One thing I love about our house is how bright it is and I want that to continue in the basement.  That is the entertainment wall at the bottom of the picture.

This is the area behind the entertainment area.  I'm not sure what we are going to do with this space yet; perhaps a pool table or something similar. 

This is the area under the stairway.  I was planning to leave it open, but have since decided to put a fancy door in and make that space Ryan's wine cellar.

 

At the back of the entertainment area is a nice wide hallway leading to our exercise room.  Here on the left is our utility closet.  A nice wide opening for some double doors.  Great for installing new water heaters and furnaces.



The hallway to the exercise room. 

Three can lights that will eventually light this hallway.



This was the only work left to do in the exercise room.  They enclosed the I beam and framed out the column.



Back to the stairway.  In the center of the picture is the doorway to the bathroom.  On the left is the doorway to the guest room.

A full view of the guest room entry.

Inside the guest room.  That is the closet on the right.

This is the shared wall with the bathroom.  On the top left is an electrical box and a cable box so we can mount a TV in here.

Three of the five lights in the guest room.  There will also be a ceiling fan in the center of the room.

The other two lights in the guest room.

So that's it.  We're still wiring and we have all the plumbing to do.  Then hopefully sometime around July (give or take) we'll be ready for drywall.







Moving Forward: Basement Work Beginning with Plates

April 3, 2009 is the last time Ryan and I did any work in our basement.  Once the girls and I figured out that we wouldn't be going back to Spain after Christmas (boo!) We decided it was time to get moving on this project again.  We need the space to expand!  So, from a recommendation from cousin Kyle, we hired Stern Construction to help us finish out the framing of our basement.  Let's face it...I love construction, but framing was just something I could not do by myself!  So, just over two years later, basement construction has begun again! 

This was the last section we completed ourselves.  We had also done the framing and wiring for the exercise room before this wall was constructed.

So, the new construction.  This post will be all the bottom plates that are made of treated lumber.

These are the plates for the guest room.  The opening at the bottom is the doorway, with the bathroom walls to the right.  The top right corner is a closet.

Also in the corner of the guest room is our main water shut off.  I asked the framers to build a bump out around it so I could put in an access panel if I ever need to get down there to shut off the water to the house.

This is a view standing in the guest room looking toward the bathroom and stairway.

Here is a view of the bathroom.  We had plumbing rough-ins put in when we had the house built.  The black square in the middle of the picture is the shower drain.  There will be a toilet then vanity to the right of that.

This is our electrical closet.  I asked them to build a 4x4 closet and it will just stay unfinished on the inside.  The sewer pipe will be in the closet as well.



This is our utility closet.  It will contain all of our major appliances like our furnace, water heater and water softener.  Our sump pump and sewage ejector pits are also in this closet.  It will probably stay unfinished on the inside.

They started framing once they got all the planning and plates done.  They decided to bump this wall out to accommodate the sewer pipe.  The wall on the left is where I plan to build my entertainment center.

I had drawn up our basement plans myself ages ago.  I also have plans drawn up for our built in entertainment center and our wet bar.  Stern Construction is awesome.  I definitely recommend Brent and his team!

An "I Am" Poem by Alexis

I am a friendly girl who loves kittens.

I wonder what my life will be like as an adult.
I hear the clicking of my brain when I solve a problem.
I see the fire in my sister's eyes when she gets competitive.
I want to be at the top of my class.
I am a friendly girl who loves kittens.

I pretend to be a cat that lives in a forest.
I feel like I'm a three year old sometimes.
I touch the moon and the stars at night.
I worry that a fire will destroy my house.
I cry when I do something wrong.
I am a friendly girl who loves kittens.

I understand that you can't be perfect the first time.
I say that nobody's perfect.
I dream that everyone is treated equally.
I try to feel sympathy for others.
I hope my pets don't die any time soon.
I am a friendly girl who loves kittens.