Archives for January 2011

Bathroom Floor Plans

January 7, 2011 by Amy 8 Comments

All pistons are firing here on the addition. We have a friend coming next week to help out and then possibly two different designers coming to take a look. Even Scott has been sketching out floor plans in his spare time. Our headache right now are the bathrooms. We have an 11×19 rectangular that we can do whatever we want with as long as it holds our closets and the bathrooms. The options are endless and quite overwhelming.

My idea now is to put the bathroom in dead center and a his and hers closet on either side, with the openings from within the bathroom so we have no closet doors in our bedroom. I am SO tired of staring at two sets of bifolding doors from our bed.

Here are a few plans we’re working from right now:

Option 1

This first one we’d add a door and come into the bathroom from the bottom and then go into each closet on either side of the sink. This is my favorite I think. I like the long countertop. I like the idea of natural light at the sink. The bad news is this is a tad larger than we have space for.

Found here

Option 2

Scott couldn’t get around the idea of a bidet but I don’t know, I think we could work from this. I like the double sink and the possible makeup area and especially the linen closet. We NEED one in a bad way.

Found here

Option 3

I think on this one I just really think it would look nice coming in and our sink areas are definitely separate. I also like the sliding door that could close off from the shower and toilet, especially with the kids getting older. Just not sure I like the lack of countertop. Also, the window would need to be a door to the bedroom and we’d have to add a window between the tub and toilet.

Found here

I know it’d be hard but if you have any recommendations, throw them at us. I love this kind of thing! So fun to make something beautiful from nothing!

Sacrifice

January 6, 2011 by Amy 15 Comments

I love when God speaks. When prayers are answered so clearly, there is no mistaking it. Follow me, it’s a long one…

Last night we had, once again, another conversation with the girls about the possible addition to the house and adoption. My kids are comforted by a schedule and set expectations. Mommy and Daddy down a back hall versus the next room over is a big deal. Giving that up for a little brother is a big deal. And I’ll be honest, the kids aren’t sold on it. Especially Emma. I haven’t broken through yet to see what’s going on but so far it’s just that she’s an “us four, no more” girl right now. So I just prayed that God would change her heart and ready her for this change. To be frank, we don’t let our kids dictate our decisions. If God tells us to do this, Emma’s just going to have to get an extra dose of grace from God to get through it. I did the same with a house move when I was 8. I remember my mom saying, “Listen, Amy, we’re moving and you can go with us or not, but we’re going.” I suppose this is “what goes around, comes around” part of my life. Anyway, I say all to say last night I prayed about the addition and adoption during prayer time with the girls. I specifically prayed that He would ready us and also prayed for the little child, if he was out there. As soon as we were done, Emma started asking questions. I could tell her little heart had already opened a bit to the idea and she was trying to get the answers she needed to be ok with it. She’s not there yet, but she’s moving.

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Last night I was reading for my Bible in 90 Days schedule and I bookmarked a verse in 1 Chronicles. I haven’t bookmarked a verse during this reading since Numbers, almost 3 weeks ago. This is it:

1 Chronicles 21:24 But King David replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the Lord what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing.”

When I read that, I thought, ouch. That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about, especially surrounding money. What good is it that we give when it’s not a sacrifice? I love what CS Lewis says

“I do not believe that one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid that the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as out own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot because our charitable expenditure excludes them.”

Now CS Lewis’ work isn’t the Bible but I think that’s what David was getting at. What good is a sacrifice if it isn’t really a sacrifice at all?

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This morning I was praying again, please, let it be clear. I don’t want to do this without clear direction. Again and again, I keep hearing. Do it! Fast!

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I started my blog hopping this morning and was reading, actually watching, this post from a new blogger I’ve been following, Laura Parker. Her and her family are in Thailand serving. The post led me over to another on her site about adopting an orphan. Those words hit me hard:

Yet, we wait.

We wait for God to speak to us in an audible voice, telling us to “GO!”—sometimes He does that audible voice thing, you know.

We wait for the perfect job to come along—orphan care demands a whole lot of money.

We wait for the bills to be paid—can’t be taking on more than we can handle.

We wait for the larger house—because adding children requires a large house.

We wait for a few kids to leave the nest before we add more—can’t be having too many children in the home.

We wait for confirmation with the perfect scripture to drop into our spirits as a sign that we need to act now.

We wait, we wait, we wait.

And while we wait—they perish. The statistics are staggering. I can’t even look anymore.

Ouch. But that’s not the end. I saw a link for a post “Being a Foster Parent”. Which it’s probably not ringing a bell for you guys but the thing we are considering right now is foster-to-adopt which our church is launching this year. She talks about the very thing I’ve gotten many comments on already…how hard would it be to give the child back? I can say, it’s hard. No denying it. My family was a foster family to many newborns when I was 6-7 and I was in the room when my parents handed the child over to the adoptive family. There were tears. There is no denying it would be hard. But guess what the post said?

Of course it’s hard. When God calls us to do something, to serve, to serve Him, he doesn’t say – oh and I have something for you and it should be pretty easy so go for it. No, He says, "…to look after orphans and widows in their distress" James 1:27. It doesn’t say, when it’s convenient and easy…look after orphans. In 2 Samuel 24:24 King David says, "No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." Sacrifices in the Old Testament were a form of worship and an action of obedience. "I will not sacrifice that which costs me nothing." My dear friend Laura Parker who chose to listen and obey and sacrifice for orphans said, "true worship and obedience comes with a cost." I think that is true. There has not been a doubt in my mind in the last 9 years that THIS is what God has called our family to do. To sacrifice for orphans.

Gosh, this post is getting so long but do you see that?? She pulled in the exact same verse (same instance but from it’s original context in Samuel) from David! The same one I highlighted just last night. And the post was related not to money, but to sacrificing yourself for orphans and specifically this post talked about fostering children. I mean out of all the verses, how is it that I ran into the same one just hours later and really only minutes after praying about adoption?

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I love how God uses so many instances to create a beautiful tapestry. More and more when I see God work, it’s many things pulled together to make a bigger picture. When I read that last post, it was like a ton of bricks hit my soul. That’s our sacrifice. I hope, though, it’s also our joy.

I don’t do this much but would you please pray that God moves in our family? I feel like this is the direction we are going but it would be awesome if the kids were excited. The thing is I KNOW it’s going to be a sacrifice, that’s what’s clear about what God is saying. It will be hard, there will be tears. But I also know He will equip us if he calls us.

Additional Additions

January 5, 2011 by Amy 6 Comments

Thanks for the input yesterday. I’m encouraged by the positive response we’ve had, especially from our mothers :). I know secretly they just want a grandson out of the whole deal but that’s ok. Just kidding, guys! Sorta!

Anyway, we had a couple of other great ideas and thought we’d share. Here’s the original plan again:

And I do want to be clear that the boxes in between the Master and Girls Bedroom are each of our closets.

This first additional option was from Allison and that is to take out those closets instead of cutting through the girls room to make the hallway. We do have a tad of an issue because the closets are only 34” and code says it has to be 36” wide. Also there is a question on what to do with our old entrance to our room but I think it could definitely work. It would only take out a small corner of the room instead of a large chunk and we’d build their new closet as part of the new addition.

Another option takes out a need for a hallway through a bedroom at all and that is to close in the girls bedroom completely and make that the closet for the new suite. In this case, we’d only have 3 bedrooms but the flow is much better. We’d also get a cool deck leading out to the pool in the backyard. Scott isn’t much of a fan of this one and seems to think he’d rather do a 4th room in case the girls eventually want to split rooms (which I expect but is not required). This way also knocks out the closets, giving the current master bedroom another 3 feet of space, giving the girls more room since it would be a combined bedroom/playroom. Another option with the deck is to close that in and make a second closet for the current master bedroom for our impending two teenage girls sharing that room :). Or, you know, make a HUGE master bathroom.

So there ya go. I’m pretty excited about this and feel from several sides that God is prodding us to move forward quickly with it.

Do you like any of these plans better/worse?

UPDATE:

Scott found a way to use the closets as the hallway. Our other closet was posing an issue but I think he has it worked out. Latest favorite is this:

The Bachelor – Week One

January 4, 2011 by Amy 7 Comments

OK, we all know I love The Bachelor but gave it up last season and I didn’t watch it last night. Well, I did. For about 3 minutes. And I couldn’t stand the catty women fighting over Brad so I turned it off. But I kept an eye on some tweets and several mentioned Emily as a frontrunner. I decided to look her up and turns out she’s from Charlotte! And not only that, she’s the wife of the late Ricky Hendrick. Which people, no disrespect, but that’s huge. Charlotte is called the Queen city and the Hendricks are part of that royalty. NASCAR royalty to be exact. Car dealership royalty. Their name is all over the place. So I had to look up her scenes and ya’ll, I might have to watch The Bachelor this year. I’m just not sure Brad is good enough for our Southern royalty though!

I loved her! She’s sweet and sincere, calm, poised and beautiful. And Brad was falling all over himself with her!

Did you watch? If so, do you think Emily is a frontrunner?

PS I think that was Central Church of God where I went to church during middle/high school!

Addition

January 4, 2011 by Amy 9 Comments

And not in the subtraction kind of way. Scott and I spent some time this weekend considering an addition on the house. As I mentioned, we’re still considering adoption. But really, we don’t have the proper room for it. Yes, we could make it work with the 3 rooms we have. We could condense the girls’ toys, put their bed on stilts and cram it all in their room. The second option I’m not a fan of but we could switch rooms with the girls so that the girls have a bigger room to fit them and their toys. We lose a personal bathroom and well, that’s a bummer.

Why not just buy a new house? Well, we can’t even let go of a recliner. Think about how we feel about moving. Really, we are in a fabulous location, have a nice piece of property, like the school, etc. I’m not saying NO to it, but all of us want to consider an addition. So I thought we might all want to consider it together. Yes?

OK, so here’s the front of our house. It looks oh so…wintry. Wahhh…when is Spring coming??

Here’s the same side but from the back.

Photo Jan 04, 10 05 44 AM

And here’s the current floor plan on that side of the house

So basically that room you see jutting out of the back of the house is my office (where I’m currently sitting). It used to be our back porch and Scott closed it in. I just looked and wow, it has been 6 years since he did that. The room on the back corner is our room and the two windows on the left side of the house are the girls’ play room and bedroom. Here’s a shot down the hallway. Playroom to the left, their room straight down the hall and our bedroom is the last door on the right and as I said, is in the back of the house.

Actually, here’s a really old house tour if you’d like a better feel for the inside. I’m almost embarrassed by it though…not ONE of those rooms look the same but the floor plan is still legit.

OK, whew, I hope you get the idea of the current state of our floor plan. So there are really only two options for an addition. In both cases, the idea is to add on a master suite, let the girls share our room, and let whomever (whether it be adoptee or just guests) have their bedroom.

OPTION 1

The first is to close in that back corner of the house where the trampoline is. You might want to scroll back up to the pic from the back yard.

The door to the new bedroom would come off the office. You can see I added in where the furniture would go.

The back of the house would look something like this:

The good part about this is you don’t change the front of the house. You wouldn’t even know it was different if you were driving down the road.
You also don’t really lose any square footage from the house. Yes, we’d have to do some rearranging in the office to get a door from there but overall, no square footage is lost.
The one really big downside is you’d lose the window in the office, the window to the master bathroom AND one in the bedroom. Our house already is pretty dark and that’s the side of the house where we get a lot of sun.
We’d also lose the back yard for the trampoline, where it is currently hidden from passersby. However, we do have room for it still.
The bedroom would be roughly 16×17 and include a closet and bathroom.

OPTION 2

The second option is to go wide. We’d tack the room on to the end of the house.

The tricky thing about this is how to get to the room. We’d have to extend our hallway into the current girls bedroom , make a new wall for their room (see the dashed line) and have our doorway at the end of the hall.

The front would look roughly like this. This is rough, but the last two windows would be the addition. The ones in the middle are the current girls’ room:

And the back, you can see it to the right there:

The bad part about this is obviously the second bedroom loses a lot of square footage. The room is not big already and I think this change would make it as small as the first one, which is like 8×10.
Another downside is we’d for sure have to redo all the siding and possibly carpet.
The good news is the room could be much larger, up to 22×20 if needed.
We have lots of space in our side yard that is not used.
We keep all the windows in the back as well as the trampoline space.
All the bedrooms are still accessed from the hall.

Given all that, we are definitely leaning towards putting it on the end. I know we’d lose some of the bedroom but I think it’s better than losing back yard and all my windows and office space. And really, I think it’s a better looking solution.

So did I lose you? Follow that at all? What do you think? Side or back? Or bad idea altogether?

It’s the Small Things

January 4, 2011 by Amy 2 Comments

Small screens, in this case. Scott bought me this printer for Christmas years ago. It has to be at least 5 years old. Within six months the screen went out and Epson shipped us a new one. Within another 6 months the screen went out again and Epson wouldn’t ship us a new one. A few years went by and I did some research and it turns out there was some sort of defect with a fuse on a board. Just a little solder and it would be fixed. I mentioned it to Scott and he didn’t seem too enthused. I didn’t push it because really, I’d rather have a working printer with a broken screen rather than a broken printer.

Yesterday Jaynee’s husband posted on Facebook about soldering a part in a cable box and fixing it. It prompted me to nudge Scott about the printer again and he agreed to take a look. Well, as you can see it all worked and omigosh, I have my printer back again. I hear this fix lasts for years and man, it’s like I have a brand new printer again and we didn’t even pay a dime! LOVE.

One Word 2011

January 3, 2011 by Amy 13 Comments

I hadn’t planned to do this. Not because it’s not a valid thing to do or I didn’t want to. I think I just didn’t want to not do it justice. I’m not a resolutions type girl. And really, I’m quite indecisive so picking just one word to infuse into my entire year was daunting to say the least. But over the weekend I just can not get my word out of my head. I feel like it’s already seeping its way into 2011 without me ever committing to it.

I originally thought I wanted to do “giving”. One thing I do want to continue to do from 2010 is to loosen my grip on my possessions and money and give with an open hand. My first verse of Beth Moore’s Scripture Memory team is Deuteronomy 15:10.

“You shall give to him generously and without begrudging it; because of this the Lord will bless your work and all you undertake.”

You may think I want to give for the second half of that verse…for the blessings. But my true goal is to learn to give without begrudging it. I never begrudge it when I think the person “deserves” it but I want to learn GRACEFUL GIVING. Giving when they person DOESN’T deserve it. I admit, it’s a difficult pill to swallow but I think it’s a Biblical one. God gives us so much grace and I think we would all do well to extend it more.

We’re still thinking a lot about adoption. I know I haven’t blogged much about it. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve said a word about it since a year ago. But we talk a lot about it, are discussing it with people, making plans. We’re still not 100% sure what direction He’s leading us in this area but I wanted a word that would encompass that journey.

There were some other things I wanted to include that honestly, I can barely remember but it all came down to one word. One word that would suffice for every situation I was thinking of and that is

It feels like a Sunday School answer to the question. But I’m learning sometimes Sunday School answers are just the right ones. If I can learn to love my fellow brothers and sisters like Christ loves them, the rest will fall into place. I will have more compassion, more mercy, more grace, open hands, open arms, an open heart. And one wonderful year. May it be so.