MOVED

our living room now...not going to keep all the decorations where they are but I wanted to get stuff out of boxes and onto shelves for now...plus its exciting to make it look like a put together room
new living room...aren't those floors awesome?!
playroom...obviously in need of some more furniture but the boys love it.
our dining room now this room and our guest room are the only rooms with boxes left in them. I consider that a huge success seeing as how we have only been here for a week and Jacob was out of town all week.

Thanks to our amazing friends and family we are officially moved into our new home. We have been super busy with all the renovations and we just got our wireless internet set up today. I wanted to put a quick update on here but I will have to wait until later this week to get more new pictures up. We can not believe that we have gotten so much done in such a short time but we are so thrilled to have made so much progress..Ill up up more "after" pictures soon Check out some recent pictures...
My amazing new dishwasher...slightly better than the one that came with the house that even after twenty different Pintrest dishwasher cleaning ideas still made my dishes dirtier than when they went in :(
Here are our dusty new floors just after we had them installed and before we got to clean them all up
another view of our dusty floors
look at all the dust flying around...
Jacob left for ABQ on Monday after we had just moved in on Saturday so I suprized him by painting the half bath, adding curtains, a rug, painting the mirror, replacing the toilet paper holder, replacing the towel holder, painting the cabinets, and switching out the hardware through out the room from gold to silver. I had lots of fun working on this room and only shed a few tears through all the installation :)

Home Update

Our first decorations are up! Our Papal blessing seamed to be the perfect start!!
The boys rolling around on our clean new carpet! Thank God the PeePee carpet is gone!

formal living room painted and new blinds installed...this will be the boys playroom
new carpet up the stairs and freshly painted balisters
formal living room painted (took forever to get all that beautiful trim painted! so worth it though!) the main color in the house is on the bottom and the new "blue/green/teal" is on top

Here are some more pictures that capture our progress on the house so far. We have completely finished the painting upstairs and the new carpet is absolutely beautiful. The formal living room and formal dining room have been painted and will get new floors on Wednesday. The tile has all been removed from the main living area and Jacob is working on removing the rest of the residual grout and leveling the floors before the installers come Wed. We are hoping to get the entry way walls painted before Wed too (a HUGE task as these walls are at least 20 ft high!!!) and possibly the main living area too. We took a leap as far as paint colors go and choose a blue/green/teal color for the kitchen and top half of the formal dining. We weren't sure if this was going to turn out okay or not but we both really really love it so far! I'm excited to have tried something other than red and khaki. We officially move all of our stuff on Saturday the 24th. We will have a busy week wrapping up the floors and painting in our new house and packing/preparing the Pearland house for the move day. We are all really ready to be in our new house full time...as much as we love our pearland house...our new house really is starting to feel like home!

Project Demo

Project Demo is in full swing over in Lake Colony. I can not believe how much we have been able to get done in just one week. Our family has been absolutely amazing and has been generous enough to volunteer to work ridiculously hard to help us out. We are about to head out there to get some more work done but I wanted to make a quick list of what we have already done...its quite astounding!!!

-master bedroom painted, trimmed, cleaned
-nursery painted, trimmed, cleaned, ceiling repaired and painted
-hallway painted, trimmed, cleaned, ceiling repaired and painted
-boys room painted, trimmed, cleaned
-school room painted, trimmed, cleaned
-guest room painted, trimmed, cleaned
-stairs painted (almost done)
-wood floors at entry way removed
-carpet removed from every room and hallway upstairs
-carpet removed from formal dining and formal living
-some tile removed from living room
-pool 90% drained
-all closets upstairs cleaned/painted
-sub floors in all the rooms with carpet have been bleached (good bye pee pee smell!)
-air vent covers upstairs removed and painted
-lots of windows cleaned
-about 30 pounds of dust/dirt/cobwebs removed...seriously....wow!!

The upstairs is almost completely done and carpet is going to be installed on Friday. The only project we are not tackling upstairs is the bathrooms. They are clean and fully functional so their beautification can wait. Now we move downstairs to paint/clean/remove floors...that's this weekends line up. Enjoy all the pictures on our shutterfly site and once again THANK YOU to all who have helped!!!!

Its ours!!!

We closed on our new house yesterday!! It went very smoothly and we had a super long and exhausting and fun day cleaning and planning our renovations. We had a pizza and beer party for both of our families and were really excited to finally show our siblings the new house. We got quite a lot accomplished yesterday and are headed back every day the rest of the week to get more done. This weekend the Schwartz crew is coming to paint so we are working today and tomorrow on caulking and prepping so we can hopefully knock out all the paint in the upstairs on Saturday. Here are a few panoramic pictures that Jacob took yesterday it really gives a better feel on the lay out of the house. These are going to be our "before" shots...we have LOTS of plans for the "after" shots!!!!

You know you have boys when...

You end up in the ER because someone thought they were superman. Nicky jumped off the couch in a super fun game of "tiger in a cage" at Nana and PopPop's house, flew through the air, and collided with the coffee table. The coffee table won. Poor guy! It was pretty tragic, lots and lots of blood, a quick ride over to Methodist Sugar Land, and four hours later...five stitches and a Popsicle and we were on our way home. Little man will always be proud of the fact that he was the first Counts boy to get stitches. I am SURE he will not be the last, but he was the first! Ill post some pictures as soon as Jacob comes home from Albequerque (he has the camera attachment cord to my phone and yes that is the technical term :) )

Its Official...

Its official. The ten day option period for the buyers of our house has come and gone. The inspection is done, appraisal is done, papers signed, and now we wait and pack. They close on our house April 2nd. YAHOO!!!! When we put our house on the market we of course hoped it would go quickly but honestly I think we were surprised at how easily it all fell into place. We only showed the house a grand total of 7 times. The first three people to see the house had nice things to say, the fourth said he wanted to buy the house but had to wait a month to make sure his job in Houston was secure, the fifth gave us a low ball offer and then walked away when we countered, the sixth put an offer on another house, and the seventh bought it. We are absolutely positive that all our prayers were answered at every step along the way! We are so very thankful (especially in the current market) to be walking away with a fair price on our current house and great price on our new one. So now we pack up all those decorations we were using to "show" our house and get ready to make the big move. The pregnancy nesting hormones are certainly helping our entire family out in this whole process. Apparently when faced with stress right now the only "cure" is to cook, clean, or organize. This house is going to be ready to go in no time and our freezer is jam packed with ready to go meals during our transition from one house to another. Just another week and a half until we close on our new house and then the fun begins!!!

Andrew Gabriel

Here is our little man growing like a weed at 20 weeks. He weighs approximately 11 ounces and has all his fingers and toes. His toes were flying all about during this ultrasound. The whole family made it to this ultrasound. The boys couldn't have been prouder of their little brother. They were also very excited to confirm that he is indeed a he. Oh BOY is he a he :) I really should have taken a picture of myself at 20 weeks to go with all these shots of him...maybe I'll snap one this week instead. Here he is... Andrew Gabriel...


Love this one of him kicking himself in the nose. He was all scrunched up through the entire scan. Curtis says hes going to be JUST like him and be a snuggler. We couldn't make him sprawl out for anything. It does make me wonder about his little personality already. Curtis did the same thing in his ultrasound and still hates to be alone. His favorite place is as close to someone he loves a possible...sometimes too close. Nicholas was all sprawled out in his ultrasound. Arms and legs waiving all over the place. He has recently been a bit of a snuggler but definitely prefers his own space...curious is Curtis will be right about Andrews personality!LOVE those little toes!

We love you Andrew and are looking forward to seeing those toes in person in another 19 or so weeks!