Birth story {Part 1}

I have decided that I need to tackle some of my Pinterest projects and will be doing one per week. So tonight I will decide on my project and begin working on it and upload how I did it and the outcome!

I have read many blogs that have posted their birth stories and I absolutely love reading them! So I thought I would post my own for my own purposes of having it written down so I don't forget and for anyone else who loves to read these kind of stories!

It all began on Memorial Day weekend. My husband's cousin had just graduated from high school and we were attending the graduation in grand forks. I remember everyone sitting around the table talking about when they were expecting my sister in law and I to have our babies. I was just about 36 weeks pregnant that day. We laughed for awhile talking about it landing on special occasions and who was going to be right. It's always fun to guess the birthdays of babies. We packed up our stuff and headed back to Ada for the weekend.

Aaron and I were living in Fargo at the time but we decided to visit Aaron's family for our long weekend since we both had Monday off. We also wanted to work on the "Polly house" which was a house we were planning on staying in come the first of June until we bought a house in Ada. Aaron's parents owned that house and it wasn't in great shape at all. I wish I had a picture of the house but I can't seem to find one. This is where we really started realizing DIY was made for us. We decided to work hard on that house all weekend! I wasn't exactly small in my eyes (many people let me know I was a tiny pregnant women but I didn't feel it). This was one of the last pictures I took before having Carson.

 

My clothes were starting to fit funny, haha. So I had just finished hand mopping the floor and I was getting pretty soar and tired so we decided to head back to Aaron's parents house for the night for supper and watch a movie together. After eating supper and watching the movie for maybe 30 minutes, I told Aaron I wasn't feeling the greatest and wanted to go to bed. We went to bed for a few hours and right around midnight, I woke up feeling strange. I was having cramps and felt like I may have peed my pants. I went to the bathroom where I had found I was bleeding and still having cramps. I wasn't sure what was going on. I was scared. I woke up Aaron and told him what was going on and he asked if that was supposed to happen. I didn't know. So we woke up Shelly (Aaron's mom) and let her know what was going on. I was only 36 weeks pregnant. This seemed to early.

 



We thought it was best to call the doctor and let him know what was going on and asked what we should be. My contractions were about 8 minutes apart and they told us to wait an hour and see how its going but what the doctor didn't realize was that we lived an hour away from the doctor. We waited about a half hour or so after the doctor call and around 1:00 in the morning, we thought it was best to head into the doctor.

My contractions were staying right around the 8 minutes apart all the way to the doctor. We walked in to get checked in and the front desk receptionist had recognized me from my work and just seemed to want to chat about it. I didn't want to chat.

We were put into a room where they would monitor me for an hour to see how my contractions were going. After finding out I was at 4 centimeters already, they decided to admit me into the labor room. It was now around 4 in the morning and my contractions were getting closer and more painful. I had to wait until I was at 6 centimeters before getting an epidural and that finally came around 6:00 in the morning. After that, life was great. I felt zero pain. We watched the news, Regis and Kelly and just really waited until I moved farther along. Right around 9:30 the doctor came in to check how far I was dilated. She said I was at 9.5 centimeters and by the time they got the doctor and everything set up, I was ready to have a baby. The nurse had me do a practice push to see how fast the doctor had to come in. She said push like you're having a bowl movement. I couldn't feel anything below my waist so I just basically held my breath and squeezed. The nurse yelled to stop after 3 seconds and said this baby is coming out now!!

I was in shock! I couldn't feel anything. No pain, no pressure. My midwife came in at 9:45 in the morning and told me to start pushing and at 9:59, Carson Aaron Kappes was here. There he was, laying on my chest once the doctors placed him there. I took a quick look at him and noticed his nose was squished sideways. I instantly asked if this was going to stay that way and they said no, he was probably just being squished against something and it would go back to normal.

 

Carson weighed in at 5 pounds, 12 ounces. He was perfect. It was one of the easiest things I had ever done in my life. Our lives had changed in such a short amount of time. We were truly blessed. We had many family and friends stop by to welcome our new baby boy into our lives.



 

Nobody could believe how little Carson was.

 



Aaron was so proud.

As was I.

 

Life is beautiful.

 

After the birth of Carson, I told everyone it was the easiest thing ever. I could have kids all day long if that's how is always goes. Well, then I was pregnant again and things were a little different the second time around. Until tomorrow....

Our to do list updated!!

I thought I would fill in everyone on where we are in our house updates. Some things haven't changed at all and some things have changed a lot! I will go through each room and cross off our things that have been accomplished and add a picture of the before and after!!  

Kitchen

 

This was our kitchen when we moved in

This is our current kitchen. We have done nothing in here since the last to-do post.

 

 

• We are contemplating the ceiling right now. We are thinking about actually wallpapering it a bead board pattern. Either way, it needs to be fixed and painted or wallpapered.
• Finish the toe kick ( you can't see it in the picture)
• Finish putting up trim as soon as the ceiling is done
• End cap counter
• Organize some of the cupboards with built ins

 

Stairs Wall

This was the stairs wall when we moved in.

This is the stairs wall from the previous post.





 

And this is the current stairs wall. Other than a little different decorating, it also hasn't changed much.

 

 

• Cut the wall in half and open up the stairs. Build a ledge on top. I want the ledge high enough so kids can not climb on top and fall. We were thinking right above the light switch.

 

 

Desk Area

 

This was the desk area when we moved into the house. A simple closet. 



 

This picture was from the previous update post.

 

And this is the current state. We got to cross of two of the tasks that needed to be done. We removed the old window and added a door and we also took out the basement door (which you can not see in this picture) and put in a DIY gate that we made! I also painted the desk, the chair and cleaned up the mess! I also painted the paneling gray.

 

 

 

 



•  I thought having a desk in this little area would be great with me having my business at home. As you can see, it's not. It collects junk and I hate junk collectors. So this will be a pantry. I am thinking something like this .
• Finish trim 
• Add a door where the window is so it will lead to our patio.
• Take out basement door when we cut the wall in half.

Dining Room

 This is what our living room looked like when we moved in.

 

 

This was previous post.



 

I had to take this picture from instagram because my phone wouldn't give enough light to take a decent picture. But we sold our beautiful farm house table and Aaron will be making us a new one as soon as the Junk Market is over! So this is acting as our dining room table right now and we did paint the walls gray.

 

 

 

 

• Paint the walls gray
• make a valance to cover the curtain rod.
• Aaron is going to make us a new farm table for our dining table.

Front Entrance

This was move in front entrance.

Previous post front entrance.



 

Current front entrance. Again, the sun was to bright for my phone to take a decent picture so I had to steal this from Instagram. I painted an old dresser I bought from a flea market for $20 and decided to use that as our storage area. I just hate those cubbies you can buy from Target. They are not durable at all. We also got a new front door! I love this one ((: We painted the walls gray and I went over the windows with a bright white one more time. We still need trim around the door, decent storage and fixing up the closet!

 

 

• Replace door with a new one and a much smaller window. I hate feeling like someone is looking at me at night. I also hate curtains on windows and I need that to not feel like I am being watched. A door like this would be awesome. Little or no window. We don't ever use this door but maybe we will start later down the road.
• paint walls gray
• turn closet into a more functional closet. Lots of storage space
• Have Kappes Concepts build me a nice storage bench for where the cubby storage is now.

 Living Room

Living room when we moved in.

 

Living room from previous post.

 

 

 

This is our current living room. I just about have it all painted gray except where our T.V. currently is but I was thinking about doing something fun their and possibly getting rid of the fireplace all together.

 

 

• Paint walls gray.
• Possibly get lighter furniture and move this furniture downstairs.
• New windows
• Update fireplace surround. Maybe do some sort of built in like this.
• Build a breakfast bar where the window is into the kitchen. Add a few bar stools and eliminate one of the couches for space.

Small Hallway

This is the only picture I can find of what our small hallway looked like when we moved in. You can see there was a bi-fold door on the bedroom.

 

This was the previous post.

 



 

I am really realizing how crappy my phone is starting to take pictures, but this is our current hallway. I started a little gallery shelf and hope to get more pictures and frames on the wall. I also need to finish painting the rest of the wall. We built a little gate for carson's room and I painted an old mirror I had lying around blue.

 

 

 

 

• Hang a picture of Hudson. :/ I have one, just haven't bought a frame for it yet.
• Add door for going upstairs.
• Paint walls gray
• Create a new growth chart to hang up
• Organize pictures on other side and maybe make into a whole picture wall

Carson's Room

This was Carson's room when we moved in. It was actually their laundry room.

 

The only thing that has changed in here is the bedding. So I didn't even take a new picture. 

 

• Move Carson upstairs and this would be strictly a guest/toy room.
• Create a wall full of built ins to store toys and movies in
• Re-Sheetrock the walls and update electric.
• Paint the Revere Pewter color by Benjamin Moore. Here.
• trim
• knockout Hudson's closet (which is on the other side of Carson's) and make a deeper closet for more storage.
• Add closet doors

Side of House





The only thing different here is the concrete is out and so are the steps. Next step will be getting that door out and adding new shutters.

 

• Put new siding on. We are thinking this color.
• Build a storage Area for a couple garbage cans so they don't blow away in the wind.
• Take our concrete on side of house and add grass there
• Paint foundation or maybe get a stone paneling to cover it. Something like this.



 

Front Yard 

Previous Post

 

Current picture of the front of our house. It's a little hard to tell in this picture but we trimmed up the branches on the tree. We are hoping to remove it still this summer and plant some nice bushes up front in the planting area up front.  We also updated our mailbox post, painted the new front door black and added new side lights.

 

 

Here was our previous door with the old lights and after I painted it and Aaron installed two new lights.

 

 

 

• Side house this color.
• Remove large tree in front of the yard. (It just covers the whole house and takes up a lot of the yard)
• Add pillars and a better entrance to the front of the house like this one.
• New Front Door
• Change the steps to come down in front of the door instead of sideways and add a landing to have a nice little porch. Right now the steps cover half of the window in our bedroom.
• Add a wrap around porch like this one .
• Plant some sort of plant/flowers in the front mulch bed.
• Make a brick mailbox like this 
• Level out our lawn and add grass.



 Driveway

 

Still looks the same except no concrete on the side of the house and no steps.

 

• Add a two stall garage with a room on top for Aaron's "man cave". He calls it his man mountain. This would eliminate loud noises from games and friends coming over from the basement.
• hopefully purchase the lot right next to ours to add a double garage



 Back Yard

 

Previous post.

 

This is our current back yard. Aaron started fixing the gutters and will hopefully get those done by the end of summer. We also moved Oakley's kennel and added a deck! That is what our new door walks out to now. We are thinking we will add a lower level deck maybe next summer to give our family some more room to sit.

 

 

• Excuse me while I barf. We still haven't fixed our gutters from when the tree landed on our house. That will be fixed this summer, for sure!!
• Side the house
• New windows upstairs
• Connect the roof lines so they meet each other which would make either another room upstairs or an open tall ceiling in our entrance/dining room. I am leaning towards a tall ceiling. (Kind of a dream of mine)
• Create a patio where Oakley's kennel is right now.
• Make the window on the farthest right into a door that would lead out to the patio.
• Create some storage for the boys toys.

The "Man cave"

 

This was the man cave when we first moved in.

 



This was the previous post and what it looks like right now, except no couch.

 

• Create a small hallway between this room and our room and make this into a bedroom. What is the bar right now, would be a closet. And where the jerseys are hanging would be an egress window.
• Sheetrock/ Mud/ Paint
• Add hallway
• Move into this room.

Bathroom Upstairs

 

This still looks the same.

 

• This wall where the door is will be knocked out. The bathroom will be twice as big as it will be using half of Hudson's room. The other part of Hudson's room will be our laundry room! Both boys will be moved to the two upstairs bedrooms.
• Shower will stay where it is but be a tiled walk in shower with no doors.
• Toilet will stay but we will add a double sink on the window side of the wall.
• Tile bathroom with possible in floor heat and do something fun with the walls. ( still undecided)
• Laundry room will look something like this. Actually nothing really like that, but I just wanted to find a laundry room with lots of storage space. And this was the closest I could find.

 

 

So some things have changed and some are still the way they were the last time you may have seen them. This summer we accomplished;  Painting the paneling, taking out a window and adding a door, building a deck, new gutters, taking out old concrete, new front door and painted, new outside light fixtures, two new gates and lots of decorating updates. I am learning what my decorating style actually is and trying to incorporate that into our house! I can't wait for my updates!! Until then....