moving on, not in

We won't be moving in to the new house by Christmas.

It wasn't for lack of trying,

I assure you.

Between life

and work

and illness,

there is just plain too much left to do.

We do have water in the house now,

not just to it.

And we even have a working toilet!!

We also have a functioning tub
and an almost functioning shower,

and should have a fully plumbed sink

complete with faucet by Sunday afternoon.

We have a water heater!

We have carpet upstairs,

and luxury vinyl plank flooring in 2 bathrooms.

as soon as the carpet installers left,
Josiah had the bag of bolts for putting together his
new to him loft bed that we purchased in the summer.

There are only 3 receptacles that still need to be wired

and all lights (that have been purchased) are installed.

The upstairs closets have custom shelving and rods

built by yours truly and the 3 youngest (but mostly Josiah),

though Tyler stepped in to help on one shelving unit

after somebody had a fit and mini-breakdown

(over what, exactly, I can no longer recall)

and quit temporarily.

We have a railing upstairs at the balcony

(but we still need to build the stair rails.)

obv. this was before install....

Kitchen cabinets are partly installed,

and we have all of our appliances

thanks to Black Friday sales.

We even have ice in the freezers.

Made automatically!

The kids are pretty excited about not having to 

crack and refill ice cube trays.

Little by little,

we're getting there.

We just aren't there yet.

We'll camp in it on Christmas Eve,

so the kids' dream of waking up in the new house

on Christmas morning

can still be a reality

even if we aren't actually living in it yet.

And we'll keep plugging away

until one day,

it'll be done enough
that we can move in.

when I saw this tree a month ago, I wanted it for the girls'room; I knew they
would love it! But funds are tight, as we pour everything into the house,
so spending $80 on trees for my kids' rooms (need one for boys, too...)
 wasn't really an option. Still, I thought about those trees a lot,
and really wanted to surprise the kids with them.
Yesterday, while at Walmart, grabbing a few things that I wasn't able to find
the night before, at a different WM, they announced over the loud-speaker that
all display trees were 75% off. I hightailed it back to the garden center, thankful.