kitchen pics

Unfortunately, I never remember to take really good before and after pictures of our projects. Will some "during" and "almost done" shots do? I hope so. The kids had fun helping with the kitchen demo...after that they they had to make themselves scarce so Dad, Mr. Huntley, and various other suckers - I mean, good friends helped out getting the place put back together. What started out as "let's paint the cabinets", turned into a complete gutting of the kitchen, mudroom and bathroom. Leaky plumbing, old wiring, and crumbling walls were replaced. The fridge was permanently moved to the mudroom which opened up lots of wonderful space in the kitchen where little bakers can be put to work! After six weeks of feeding six kids with a microwave, a toaster, and a fridge in the garage (I'm sure our neighbors thought it was strange to see us go out to the garage in our pj's each morning for the milk)....we made it with relatively few meltdowns. Note: I said "relatively few", not none. Considering all the things going on in our life in that six weeks, which I'll address in another post, I think we fared incredibly well. And thanks to the very hard work of Tim, Dave Huntley, Grandpa B, Kirk, Aaron, Barry, and a couple of late-night rescues by the Kelsalls, we have a kitchen. And I am a very blessed mama!! (Okay, the pictures are in backwards order, and were supposed to be at the end of the post, but I can't figure out how to change it so we'll just have to deal with the anti-climactic-ness. Sorry! :)