Updates

Today is Lauren's 8th birthday and this evening we will be going out to dinner with Grandma and Poppi to celebrate this milestone.   I will post pictures tomorrow to document her special day.
In the meantime work continues.  We've had the girls together first in Lauren's room as I painted Hannahs, and then Cameron would take a sleeping bag and campout there for the night.  Now that the painting in Hannah's room is completed we've moved both of their mattresses in that room and Cameron is in Lauren's room as I work to repaint it.  Poor Cameron keeps getting moved around to the partially painted and messy areas.

Everything is looking SO MUCH cleaner and brighter as we complete each area!!!  Here are some photos of Hannah's room before with the dirty pale blue walls and now with her signature lilac walls and the fresh coat of white on the others two walls as all 4 in the lilac would have been way too dark and cave like of an effect. 

Hannah's before picture taken when we first arrived and nothing was in the room

Purple is THE very favorite color for Hannah, but we did get her to opt for a slightly more subtle lilac

Kevin also installed a new closet organizer that was much needed as nothing was in there to put her clothes on.  I had painted the interior here too just to give it a clean, fresh start.  We have mirrored sliding doors to install, but Kevin needs to locate the necessary drill bits from among his tools in the garage to be able to attach it to the cement slab.  Clearly we still have a lot of organizing and decorating to do, but it is such an improvement.

Kevin installing the new organizer

All in and ready for filling

Kevin and Cameron opening the mirrored doors

Sadly work had to stop here until the proper drill bit is found or a new one purchased

I've been working on Lauren's room and will post those pictures as I complete this.  Kevin has begun  the process of installing new hardware in the kids bathroom to replace the old and poorly functioning ones that were there already.

We've added an adjustable shower unit with the handheld piece to accomodate Cameron and much shorter girls.
Kevin is putting on the new faucet and will be installing shower doors to replace the old shower curtain.

We have the fence contractor coming today as the permit is in and he will install the fencing for the dog's area.  We'll definately be glad to have that and so will the dogs!

Our new hot water heater is arriving by UPS today and a company is coming to clean out and service the water softener to help it function better.  It sat for so long without salt that it isn't working the way it should.  We also need to figure out a whole house water filter system as this area has a lot of iron in the water and it stains the fixtures.  Before we get too much running through the new appliances we want to clear this up.  The water filter in the refrigerator has made the water drinkable so we've been able to do without all the bottled water we were having to buy at first,

So on to another busy and productive day.  The girls will be happy now that the table is assembled as well as some of our chairs they can actually sit at it to do school work again instead of their makeshift work area on the floor with a storage container as a table.  I've been trying to get them back into a routine again and their lives back to some semblance of normalcy amid the chaotic mess that is still our current home situation.  They've been troopers and have made the best of all this.

Hannah at her "desk"

Lauren also making do with her school area

Have a great day will have pictures of our progress and Lauren's celebration to show tomorrow.