Life Lately

-David and I have been working like crazy lately trying to get our house ready to go on the market. We had several unfinished projects that had to be finished before we could list it. You might have picked up on the fact that we're big "DIY-ers" around here. We love a good project. Well, I should probably say that I love a good project and my husband is sweet and helps me make most of my "ideas" happen :) Anyway, we're kind of bad about getting about 90% finished with a project and then just putting it on the back burner for a while. For example, we started painting the bathroom that's attached to the nursery, oh, a couple of years ago. Like, back when the nursery belonged to Baby Jude. We got most of it done, but we never finished the cutting in. We don't use that bathroom... like, ever. So, we kind of put it out of our minds, and it's just been sitting 3/4 of the way finished ever since. But, obviously, those kinds of things don't really fly when you're trying to sell your house. So, we are finishing up projects, doing a little upkeep, and starting (and finishing!) a few new projects. Like the Bunny Bathroom. Can you believe that I hadn't touched that hideous room in 3 1/2 years of living in this house?? I can't. I honestly thought that would be the first room we changed when we moved here. It's undergone a big transformation in the past few days, and I'll be sure to post "after" pictures when we get it finished. I'll be posting pictures of most of the rooms in our house, actually, since I think we've changed most of them since the last time I posted house pictures. I am SO ready to get this house on the market and be done with all of the projects. Then my big project will be keeping my house pristine for potential showings for who-knows-how long until it sells. Oh, joy.

-Next weekend, David and I are going to our domestic adoption education day! I'm excited that it's finally here! The adoption training is in a town about 2 1/2 hours from here, so we're going to go stay in a Bed and Breakfast on Friday night and make it into a mini getaway :) The training is ALL day on Saturday, so I'm super curious about what we're going to be learning about for so long ;) David and I are both about to finish the 2nd out of 3 books that we have to read for the adoption, and as soon as we finish those and go to this training, our home study will be officially DONE. Finally!!! Y'all, we started this process back in JANUARY. I feel like this has to have been the longest home study in history. It's totally our fault, though. We switched to domestic after we were already a good ways in, and I think that really slowed things down. Anyway, we're really excited to finish with the home study so that we'll officially be ready for any sweet baby who comes along and needs a family :) As excited as we are to meet our Baby #4, it would be nice if we could get moved and settled before then ;)

-I'm trying to decide if I want to keep doing Week in Review posts. I haven't done them in so long due to no internet, vacation, and then catch-up posts. I have to be honest and say that it's been kind of nice not feeling like there's a post that I "have" to write every week. Plus, I'm not sure anyone really reads those long posts anyway. Haha! I really do them for memory's sake. It's fun to look back and see what life looked like with 1 child, 2 children, 3 children, etc. But I don't necessarily have to document EVERY week to serve that purpose ;) Sooo.... we'll just see. I might do highlights every week and post pictures and then do a full Week in Review once a month or so.

-I'm looking forward to really getting into our summer schedule. We don't have a ton going on, but there are a few things that we're going to be doing this summer. We have Bible School at church coming up in a few weeks. That's always a fun, super busy week. I'm going to be tutoring for my dad's ministry once a week starting in a couple of weeks. I didn't get to tutor this school year because it was just too hard with Alaina being so young and tutoring falling right in the middle of nap time. Summer tutoring is in the morning, though, so that's MUCH better for my schedule ;) I'm looking forward to getting back in the swing of tutoring. I love to be involved with that ministry. We're also starting our Tuesday morning summer Bible Study soon, and we're doing a book on prayer. I've heard nothing but rave reviews about the book, so I'm really excited about it. Our church doesn't meet on Wednesday nights in June and July; we do small groups instead. I think we're going to do a small group, and I'm excited about that, too. That's about all of the weekly things that we'll have going on, but that should keep us plenty busy :) Other than that, I'm hoping to spend a lot of time in the backyard playing in our inflatable pool and hopefully venturing out to the splash park some. I would love to take the kids to the real pool, too, but there's just NO WAY I can take all of them by myself. Maybe I'll get someone to keep Alaina and make one of my brothers go with me a few times. Ha!

That about sums up life in the Howie house right now :) We're staying busy, but it's definitely a good busy!