Someday when I look back on November and December 2019 I’m pretty sure most of what I will remember is that our first floor was being torn apart/under construction/being painted/basically a giant mess…mixed in with lots of friends and family in and out of our house and the holidays. It was A LOT of a lot. Here are a few shots of what December was like around these parts:

Went to Leah’s annual Christmas ornament exchange party; always fun with these ladies. Also my ornament was the silo’s from Magnolia so I was pretty pleased.

Our little family stole away for a weekend in the redwoods and it was everything we never knew we needed in the midst of home renovation and the holidays. You can read more about our redwood trip here.

Bebe put in some work for Smart Bones and did a great job. She is the cutest (and photogenic) pup. Still not sure what language she really understands but she gets away with a lot because look at that fluffy face. Sigh. I’ve got to train her better (read, train myself better).

I had a scary experience with my new Acura MDX in December. It appears I hit something I couldn’t see on the road and it severed my front axle wheel connector (am I saying that right?). BOOM. Just that fast my car became unsteady and I thought my tire had blown. I never felt anything in the road but I quickly lost full control of the car and pulled to the side as fast as I could. I was ENTERING a long turn onto the freeway on-ramp and had it happened just a few second later I would have been stuck ON the on-ramp. Police came right away because their station is just on the other side of the freeway and a motorcycle patrol came along minutes after it happened. Our good friend is a mechanic and works on all of our cars; a quick call to him from the side of the road to confirm he was in the shop and we were on our way to him with the tow truck. One of my favorite young women from church is now with the police department in our town and got the call to come check things out. Imagine my happiness when I saw her get out of her truck! So many tender mercies that day. Good news: everything is fixed and most importantly I was safe.

We (mainly Simon and his friend Hunter) jack hammered and dug out all of the tile from our kitchen/dining/ hallway/laundry/bathroom/foyer in preparation for new floors and it was an even bigger mess than you can imagine. WITH the Christmas tree up which was SUCH a rookie move. The amount of dust and construction grit in the air, in the tree, in the remaining carpet was so unbelievably bad I hope to never experience it again. Seriously. It was the worst.

Sam rebuilt our fence that had blown down and it’s way better than its predecessor. This photo is before that last piece connected to the house. So fresh and clean.

This was my mock Christmas card that I ended up just posting on social media. Our fully decorated artificial tree sustained so much construction dust that I couldn’t stand it anymore and removed ALL of the ornaments, washed them and put them away. Oh well. Then I took apart the tree, took it outside and HOSED IT DOWN ON MY PATIO. Who even are we anymore? Then because it needed to dry I threw it onto my trampoline where it literally lived for a month before I took it back down. I think it’s clean now. Lesson: never undertake a renovation at Christmas or if you decide to, DO NOT decorate your home for Christmas IN the area you are also renovating. So many rookie mistakes. We will try again next December :).

We said “see you later” to our dear friend Sandra who moved away from us to New Jersey to be with her love. They are now getting married in April and we are so happy for them. This was us at a new to us Peruvian restaurant and DANG it was a good meal.

We celebrated Sam’s birthday with an extraordinary amount of Ruffles chips and dip (the way to his heart) and the Clawsons…in the middle of our very dusty and renovation-centric house.

Honestly, the whole month of December was just stressful. I was happy to leave our house behind and go to Utah for Christmas if for nothing else to get away from the endless projects that still needed to be completed prior to our crew coming in to do the renovation. January brought happier times AND a completed first floor. More on that to follow 🙂