Well I've been thinking about doing this post for a long time... so here goes. Two summer ago, we started talking about redoing our kitchen, it was a small eat in kitchen with room for five if we squeezed the high chair at the end of the bar, and were in process to get another baby (Isaac) so we knew something had to change. So we began making plans to redo the kitchen, it needed it, the cabinets were starting to fall apart and we just didn't fit any more. We were planning to remove some walls open it up and make the whole house more use able. Well we are blessed with an amazing carpenter in our family, my father-in-law, so we got him to help on this project. He built the cabinets and so much more.

This is Paul or Pap, as he is called at our house.

So we began our journey to remodel the kitchen and Paul asked his cousin Margie to come take a look and give us her expert opinion, she is a wonderful space planner. Well Margie took one look at the house and began adding on the moment she drove up. Here is what she saw.

She said, oh what they need is a laundry room/mud room and a two car garage with bedrooms above the garage, they need a new roof anyway might as well do it all at the same time and have it all match up. Well we were planning on a new roof as well, but that was it. Ben and I were a bit overwhelmed. After they left we had a good start on a plan for the kitchen, but we were both rolling our eyes at the thought of such a major addition. But the more we thought about it the more it started to make sense. We knew we weren't done adopting so maybe few more bedrooms a couple more bathrooms and a laundry room on the main level started to make sense. But we still weren't convinced until I saw this vs. 3 times in one morning and it really sealed it in my mind when I read it in the Living Bible.

Isaiah 54: 2-3 "Enlarge your house; build on an addition. Spread out your home, and spare no expense! For you will soon be bursting at the seams. Your descendants will occupy other nations."

It never ceases to amaze me when a vs. from the Bible speaks so clearly to me, for surly the word of the Lord is alive and active. Anyway here we are almost two years later Isaac came home right as we finished the kitchen and a month later we started the addition. Here it is..

this is the front

This is the front of the old house minus the dormer.

This is the back.

A few weeks ago we finished the last major piece of the remodel, or I should say Paul finished it, we refinished the hard wood floors in the old part of the house. Paul put the last layer of polyurethane on the floors Sat. morning and on Sunday morning preparing for my Sunday school class I felt God give us the go ahead for the next adoption. I hadn't said anything yet to Ben, I'd been bugging him all summer about starting another adoption and he really wouldn't say much. Which is really unusual!!! I have always been the one in the past to say let's wait, or not yet. So as I'm getting ready for church, Ben says out of the blue, are you ready to start another one. I just smiled and said yes, it's time. So here we go again!! We have applied to America World again our previous agency we used for Sam and Isaac. We have applied to the Ethiopian program again and initially we asked for two children. This may change as we are working with our agency they would like us to be prepared to take just one child as it is highly unlikely that two would be available at the same time. We're still praying about it. But we're looking forward to filling up this new addition until we're bursting at the seams.

Blessings,

Leigha