So if I ever need reminding of how much I am loved all I have to do is remember that my husband wrote a "love note" to me that is more than permanent. It is now a part of our addition. Under the walls. In the back left corner of the room. I know that he loves me. I know that he loves the boys. I know that he doesn't have a problem writing it so that it will always be there. I know it is there. I don't have to see it. He loves me permanently.

So this is what my downstairs looked like a week or so ago. Right now those 2 windows that you can see are gone.. Replaced with plywood to keep the (nasty) weather out. We will eventually have another bedroom and Keegan and Konley will no longer have to share. We will have more space downstairs, which I am determined not to fill up with any more stuff than we already have.

There are now walls and a 2nd story on this frame. I will get those on as soon as I get them to escape my camera (or the 3 different ones I have been using). This morning the truss guy came and we have the trusses up. Which is good because for nearly a week it has been raining and running up and down the ladder a couple of times a day to dump the water off the tarp has been interesting. The first time that Jeff sent me up there i had to climb up the ladder to the 2nd story & climb thru the window. No worries. No problem. Problem came when I had to come back down. How do you climb up into a window, turn around and get back onto the ladder to get down when there is nothing to hold onto? I sat up there for a good 5 minutes ranting at myself for not being able to figure it out. (Obviously I did, but I was wondering how long it would take the boys to miss me if I didn't come back down.) I went back up there one more time but once Jeff got home I wasn't going again. He decided to check it again at 11 that night. The small puddles on the tarp had become a "hot tub-full". How exactly do you get 100 gallons of water off a tarp, over your head? Without climbing up that stupid ladder again? in a thunder and lightning storm? well, you use a bit of ingenuity and climb through the bathroom window. I would rather do that again 100 times over than to climb back down that stupid ladder. Not afraid of heights, just afraid of turning around on a 3" ledge without good handholds. We finally cut a drain in the tarp and ran the water down a piece of gutter we had taken down. Freezing cold water, by the way.

So now we have trusses. Now the tarp can go over the top of the trusses and we don't have to worry about puddles of rain. By next week we should have a roof (I think). No longer will I have to climb thru the window. No longer will I have plywood where my bedroom window used to be. I am thankful for all of the work that my husband & Mike have done, but I don't think I ever would have imagined all that has gone into this. This will be our greatest Christmas present.... hopefully it will be a Christmas present that comes with carpet. We shall see.