Introducing Derek Kingston Gene Mast

He's finally here. Derek made it into the world on March 12, 2009 at about 10:30 am. His delivery was relatively easy. I was induced at 5:30 am and 5 hours later he was here. He weighed 7 lbs 14 oz and is 21" long. He's a great baby. Generally eats every 4 hours and sleeps in between those feedings. He's pretty happy unless he has to wait on his bottle, then he turns into a grumpy old man. The girls are absolutely in love with him. They love to hold him and feed him and give him kisses any chance they get. Willem is very happy to have some testosterone in the house. Derek has already been introduced to the tractor and the dogs.

As promised I took some pics of his room. We went with an extreme sports theme. We'd love him to be into skateboards and bikes like his daddy. Only time will tell. In the meantime he seems to like looking at the lines on his walls.

Master Suite Update

Finally we have a fully functioning bathroom. It is still void of wall trim, doors and a little paint but for the most part it is finished. I'm so happy to have tiled floors and no more plywood subfloor. Our bedroom is much cozier since the addition of the changing room/closet. We still have to put flooring down in our closet but we're going to just put down the old carpet for now until we can afford to floor the entire bedroom and closet at once. Our closet is going to be filled with wall to wall wardrobe units from IKEA called PAX. We have a few units and will be putting those up this weekend. Anyways, here are some pics so you can see the dramatic difference so far.

MASTER BEDROOM

The second pic is a pic from the bed and it's at the entrance to the closet.

MASTER CLOSET/DRESSING ROOM

Picture of closet entrance and the lighted room at the end is the bathroom. There will be a wood door with a frosted glass panel in it into the bathroom.

MASTER BATHROOM

The First pic is to the left of the door. The second pic is to the right, note the toilet area will have another wood door with frosted glass panel and the shower will be in that heavily junked up area. Shower construction will begin in a couple of months so that we can take a break and spend some time getting adjsuted to the new baby.

BABY UPDATE: As of Wednesday, I had already begun dialating so the doctor is thinking he'll be here by the first week of March for sure. We'll post pics of the little guy and his room once he's here.

Kicked out of our room!

Last I left you we had gutted the bathroom and were well on our way to driving ourselves to delirium with construction. Since that time much has happened. For starters the bathroom got a lot worse before it got better! Then just in case the bathroom wasn't enough we decided to dive into the dressing room/closet project in the master bedroom. Willem began framing up the walls and laid out the electrical. Literally the bathroom and closet project were getting closer and closer to our bed making it feel as if it was out to get us! Finally all has been done that we can do and drywallers are coming in tomorrow to finish it all off. I can't tell you how happy I'm going to be when there will be no more drywall bits and dust finding its way into every room in the house. Here are some pics of it tonight before the drywall guys do their magic. (The pictures have captions on them, just click on them to get a zoomed in version)

Sometime during all this construction I managed to pull Willem away to get the painting done in the baby's room. I knew this whole project was going to come very close to the baby's due date so I wanted the baby's room to be ready. Now that sheet rock day is here we have had to move out of our bedroom and we are now sleeping in the baby's room for the next week or so. I took a few pics of the baby's room since it's been painted. It was difficult getting pics taken as our bed is in there and a ton of other crap that we had to put somewhere until our bedroom is complete. I'll take better pics when we are all back in place and ready for baby boy to come home.

Also in the past two months we had a contractor come out and replace our siding that had gotten destroyed by Gustav. Thank you Vance Henry! You did a great job! We also had our buddy Addison Henry and his crew come out and put up a privacy fence along the side and back of our property. I'll post some pics of that sometime in the future.

I'm getting bigger, due date is getting closer, winter is leaving us and we're looking forward to a spring with our new baby boy and lots of down time!

I'll show more updates as they happen!

By the way, I just wanted to say a public and very big THANK YOU to my husband! He has worked almost every weekend from morning to night since MARCH to make this place my dream home without complaint! I couldn't ask for a better, more loving best friend! Thanks Willem for not giving up and walking away, God knows you have had every right to! I love you!

master bath and baby boy

We've got most of the Gustav aftermath picked up and our insurance claim has been settled. We should be receive a check in the mail soon so we can beging repairing the damages that were done.
In the meantime, renovations continue as we get closer and closer to my due date (March 19) for our little one! Realizing that things will come to a snail's pace after the baby is born we have decided to forgoe finishing off the mudroom bathroom and hammer on the Master Bath Renovation. Willem began gutting it several weekends ago and we are finally seeing some progress. He's managed to reframe the whirlpool tub so we can have a suitable surround and sitting bench at the end. The next step is to get the plumbing in place to accept the new vanity. Once that is done we can put up new drywall and prepare the floor for tile. Getting tile on the floor is our utmost priority as the plywood subloor is beginning to shred and give splinters. All the while, we are still using the bathroom. There is no other bathroom on the second floor besides the ensuite bath in the girls room. Therefore it is a tricky balance between getting work done and still having a semi functional bathroom.
Below are a couple of pics of the work in progress as well as a picture of a sketch of what the bath should look like when it is all finished.

The shower will most likely be postponed until after the baby arrives. I am using the closet that will eventually be the shower and a closet/dressing room will have to be built in the bedroom before shower construction can begin.
Somewhere in between getting this stuff done we will also have to prime and paint the bedroom which will become the baby's room. We'll post those pics too as we get it done. ALSO in case you haven't heard we're having a BOY!
That's enough for now. I'm getting a headache just thinking about it all! Or it could be the constant whirl of power tools!

GUSTAV!!!

So it's been forever since I've posted. Summer led into the beginning of school and our schedules got hectic and we've done very little inside the house since July. As most of you know Gustav just left us. I promised some pics of the damage it left behind. It looks bad but the buildings and fences were all things we knew needed some work to update. Unfortunately, they were not high on our priority list which is frustrating knowing that just cleaning up this mess is going to delay progress on the inside of our house, but we're rolling with it.
Things for us could have been SO MUCH worse! As I type thousands in my area are still without power, running water and even roofs over their heads. We are super grateful and are praying that relief comes quick to our friends who are suffering!

On a happier note...We are expecting another Mast come March! I am three months along and feeling quite well. The girls are super excited as are we. We're all hoping for a boy but are happy for another girl as well. While this is fantastic amazing news we are feeling the pressure to get some renovations done prior to Baby #3's arrival. A master bathroom with flooring other than plywood subfloor would be a great start! Hopefully we'll start on this as soon as we clear out the Gustav aftermath! We'll try to post as soon as anything of interest occurs.

FREE TRACTOR RIDES!

Last weekend was Father's Day. I think Willem had a great day. The girls and I got him a couple of adirondack chairs to put around the pool or wherever. He got breakfast in bed then we headed off to church and then my parent's place for lunch. Mom made lunch and afterwards I expected to just mill around and relax. Apparently the men that my dad and Willem are wouldn't allow them to just sit still. They moved furniture, a new bed into our spare room and then Dad got all ready to cut grass. Apparently he had been itching to get on our tractor and do some cutting. I think he was feeling nostalgic about when he was a boy growing up on his family's farm. Far be it from me to stand between a man and his desire to cut OUR grass on Father's Day or any day for that matter. We all ended up getting involved. Below are a couple of pics of Daddy riding our IH.

Anyways that whole "Dad wanting to ride the tractor thing" got me thinking. If any of you out there want to "ride" the tractor. We are giving free tractor rides every weekend! They last about two hours long and you go in circles until the grass is all cut down!

We have this enormous slab on the side of our house. I say enormous, it's about 20 feet by 18 feet or so. It used to be a little house. Anyways it's too big to break up easily and dispose of and it's too big to ignore. And it's very close to the house so we're unsure what we will do with it. In the meantime we have decided to make good use of it. We put our above ground pool on it and it fits perfectly with enough area to sit and chill. Not permanent, but until we can afford to get someone out here to bust it up it'll be home to our swimming hole.

For those of you who are wondering how our bathroom reno is going here is an update. We needed to bust up the concrete in order to relocate a toilet and to move the shower drain into place. It was a pretty daunting task but it ended up being not that bad. Willem cut with a concrete blade on his circular saw to try to score the concrete. He then tried busting it with a sledge hammer. He finally decided to rent a jackhammer and it was smooth sailing after that.

We got the drains in place, plumbed up and concrete is now curing downstairs over what was a huge gaping hole. During the week we hope to finish all the plumbing and get sheet rock up so that we can begin floating the walls and tiling the ground. We're still shooting for it to be finished by July 6 but my guess is we'll be lucky if it's operational. Keep your fingers crossed.

That's it for now. I'll leave ya with a couple more pics of bathroom demo and that pic of the tree house i've been meaning to put up. Hope all of you dads had a great Father's Day!

Yardwork, Drivers Ed and Demolition!!

So I've grown to like the look of a freshly cut lawn. Problem is we have way too big of a lawn and it's the beginning of summer. In order to achieve a fresh cut lawn we have to cut at least once a week. The section off the back porch took it upon itself to populate with crab grass which grows at a tremendous rate. I swear i cut it with the mower and the next day it is back to where it was the day before. It's astonishing! Just another thing we need to take care of.

Due to my new fascination with fresh cut lawns, i've had to learn how to help maintain this jungle we own. I've learned how to cut with the tractor which I have to say is quite relaxing. I climb on with my ipod and just ride....for hours. I can get some great thinking done as well as a great tan. I've been caught several times singing at the top of my lungs. The birds don't seem to mind and I can't hear myself so my hope is no one else can either. The picture below is of a very frustrated me on the tractor. I needed Willem to help me figure out how to turn the thing off and he was busy snapping away pictures!

I think our tractor looks like something off Bob the Builder. It's cute! (Don't tell Willem I said that) We've yet to give it a name but i'm working on that.

We spend a lot of time cutting down branches these days. They hang too low and one has to duck and maintain control of the tractor to get anywhere near the trees. Therefore the fourwheeler gets used a lot to haul branches to and from our burn pile. The girls have come up with their own mode of getting around too. They've taken the once neglected Barbie Jeep and now it is their very own off road vehicle. They will go to get the mail for me. Run up to the house to retrieve stuff for us and ride all over the place just for the fun of it.

Maddy took it upon herself, being the big sister that she is, to teach Savannah how to drive last weekend. It's a scary glimpse of the future. Savannah isn't the best driver and Maddy gets really impatient. I guess the front yard is the best place for Savannah to learn. Thank God we won't be letting her get behind a substantial wheel anytime soon!

We started our next big project tonight. Below is our mud room. I am in love with this room. I have this vision of it being the entryway from our outside chores and play. My goal is for the kids and us to clean up in here before tracking dirt and mud in the house. It is already equipped with a half bath. We decided to add a shower in there so Willem can really clean up when needed and we have a full guest bath on the first floor. Our goal is to get this done before July 6, when my sister and brother in law show up for a visit. We wanted to have something for them to use and we need it when we start demolishing the master bathroom after they leave. Josh and Janelle we can't wait for you to get here. We'll be taking a much needed break!

I know the pictures look fuzzy, but Willem tells me it's from the sheet rock dust in the air. Maddy loves demolition as you can see. She's a big help. Savannah, well Savannah likes the thought of helping but she's there for moral support and posing for the camera.

We'll post more pics as they develop and some pics of our new tree house and "swimming hole" soon. Till then Happy Trails!