House Remodel: Progress and shopping

It's hard to believe that Christmas is just a week away, especially when there is no snow on the ground and the sun is shining!  I'm secretly hoping for a dusting of snow on Friday or Saturday this week, but the weather channel is not as hopeful.  We may not have a white Christmas, but it will be Christmas nonetheless and I love this time of year snow or not!
Our house has been hopping this past week.  There have been so many people here working and it is exciting how far they have come in just a week.  The windows and insulation were put in early this past week and the dry wallers started on Friday.  They have been here all weekend and promise they will be done today (I love them!).  Workers have also been busy putting on new shingles this week and they are here today working as well.  I don't think these guys ever take a break...they are fantastic!

The windows on the north wall with insulation.

Dry wall!

The windows on the north wall with dry wall!

Since the workers have been working so hard this weekend, Kevin and I thought we needed to get some work done as well.  Yesterday we went countertop shopping.  I have never done this before and neither has Kevin, so we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.  That was okay because we were excited and motivated and apparently we didn't need to know what we were doing because it's a pretty simple process.  We pick out what we want at the warehouse, they fax it to the fabricator who quotes us a price, we okay the price, and then the contractor purchases the slabs for us and puts them in our new kitchen.  Ta-daa!  That's it.    So, we had two different warehouses in Omaha to check out.  The first one we were overwhelmed with the selection of slabs, so we just started wandering.  They were all beautiful, but none of them were jumping out at us.  Kevin liked the dark pieces with lots of movement and I liked the lighter pieces with lots of movement.  As I was sipping on my coffee and Kevin was getting tired from crutching around, I didn't know how we were going to agree on one, which is pretty typical when Kevin and I shop together.  You see, Kevin is one of those guys who has an opinion about this kind of stuff, which is something I LOVE about him...but sometimes something that makes decisions like this a lot harder.  As Kevin was giving his argument on why we should go with a darker slab, there it was...THE slab that jumped out at us, THE slab that made light and dark not matter!  Bordeaux River!  It is this amazing piece that has intricate movement and great colors that could go with countless color schemes.  I absolutely love it and so does Kevin.  YES!  Now, we did go look at the other warehouse, but didn't find anything that could stand up against our top pick.
It was a great shopping day and we are so excited that we found a piece we love.

THE winner!

Kevin thought this was a better picture.

The piece Kevin still likes a lot, but not THE one.

 
To reward ourselves for all our hard work (haha), we went to Annie and Drew's house for a cookie party.  Annie and Drew are an amazing couple from our Journey Group, which we started a year and a half ago through Christ Community Church.  Annie had everything ready to make yummy gift baskets for our friends and neighbors, which was so exciting because currently I don't have a kitchen!  It was incredible how organized and prepared she was for this party.

I mean INCREDIBLE.  

There were a total of six women there and we spent the afternoon making cookies and packaging them in neat little Christmas wrappings, while the guys watched football in the basement.  We had a great time talking about Pinterest, Christmas, and kidos.  I went home with way too many packages, as Annie tossed more in my arms on the way out the door.  I know my neighbors and friends will be grateful that Annie had that cookie party, and so am I.

All of the goodies!