My Green Card FINALLY!!!!!

Well Happy Days are finally here.

No more piles of paperwork and lawyers and interviews and fingerprinting and physicals! I guess they do like Canadians after all! ha ha

Man what a process but after it all and after our immigration interview last week, it is official, I am now a green card holding legal alien of the USA! (I love how I am called an Alien though!)

Taking it off....

The way the house used to look with its vinyl siding....

We have pulled off the front and one side of the siding so far...

Also that poor little Holly tree had to go as it was growing too close to our foundation :-(
It has nice old wood siding that we are going to repair and re-paint the whole house if we can decide on colors!! (definitely not baby blue or blood red though! ha ha)

Asics Athena Volleyball Club

My 14/15's volleyball team. We won our tournament today!! YA!!!

No more garden boxes! YA!!

Our street corner

There used to be these 3 random garden boxes in the middle of the side yard...
Well...... not anymore!
It was so beautiful out today so I had to get out of the house and work in the yard!
I dug them out and used the dirt to even out areas of our yard that were lower from the old owners dog who had created a running trail through the yard.
Eventually we will be putting grass seed in, figured we would wait a little bit until it stays warm outside :-)

It's beginning to look a lot like.....

The half wall progression
It was load bearing (aka holding up the house) so we had to wait to take it out until we built a support for it
Notice the lovely blood red and turquoise the previous owners had for trim and the stairs!!!
No more half wall, no more entry closet. It has really opened up the space in the living room! Nate did an awesome job putting up the new support beams
Eventually that old brick chimney will be taken apart and the little chimney flue boxed in smaller when we tear apart the kitchen and build in an island so it won't block the kitchen so much and will look like a wood pillar that will match our kitchen cabinets.

Nate and I have signed up for the Tacoma (near Seattle for those of you from the East Coast) 1/2 Marathon to get back into shape. It's not until May 13th so if any of you would like to come out and run it with us you still have LOTS of time to start training! I will even send you our training plan if you want! It will be a beautiful run along the water...
Check it out at: http://www.tacomacitymarathon.com/Index.htm

Well we took down the rest of the wall and the 2x4's and it really opens up our living room. We are thinking of building some kind of built in for the TV etc in the corner of the space.

Another wall bites the dust

So there USED to be a wall and a coat closet under the stairs when you first walked in the door....I have wanted to knock it down for weeks but Nate kept telling me to wait.

I leave him home alone for one night and what do I come home to find?? NO MORE WALL!