Michigan December 2021

 Branden and Amber bought their first house this year, which is super exciting for them!

The house is bigger than the one they were renting, plus it has a full unfinished basement. It also has a 2 car garage and a huge barn that Branden plans to use for his car repair hobby.  

They have a few things they want to fix up in their house so Frank and I made plans to come out in December and help them tackle the first one: a mud room.  

The master bedroom was an addition to the house and they had it arranged that the only entrance to the house from the garage was through the master bedroom. Subpar.

The new plan is to carve off some of the bedroom space to create a small hallway and mudroom area from the garage into the living room.  Frank went out for about 10 days and I joined him for the last 4 days to do the painting and such.

The girls weren't super thrilled that we were not "fun grandma and grandpa" as we usually are but instead we were "working grandma and grandpa".  We did manage a couple of fun things like going out to eat and watching movies together. We made gingerbread houses (but sadly Isabelle was starting to feel sick that day..she ended up with a 102 degree fever by the next morning). Plus we read them a Christmas book each night.  But overall we spent the time working.

It was a pretty big job for Frank to finish in the timeframe but he managed it! 

 When I arrived I painted the new mudroom, the master bedroom, and the kitchen including the backsplash which was sponge painted two different colors of blue. oy.

One day when Isabelle came home from school to discover the kitchen white instead of blue, she was pretty disappointed and said that she had liked the blue.  Amber tried to reassure her that it would look good in the end and that she was painting one wall green. The look on Isabelle's face was of utter disappointment. It was hilarious.  (I think she ended up liking the finished product though)

Other projects that were completed were: new lights in living room, hall, mud room and kitchen. New door knob and lock on front door.

We enjoyed the time we had there visiting and I did end up wishing I had stayed a bit longer. But they had non-stop guests for December so we had to get out of there so Ryan and Kristal could come for Christmas!

Branden had a great idea to take a power tool to his gingerbread.  That worked out about how you'd expect.

Granpa's house had a theme (as usual) of the book we were reading: "The Christmas Pig" 

We didn't finish it while we were there and I'm still wondering how it ends...

One last pic before leaving...you can see the new light fixture and green wall behind us!