So this one is the benefit of our parents and Grandpa- anyone else reading this, this is definitely too much detail!

Here's the rental house where we hope to be for a few years. As we've explained, it was not officially listed yet, so the owners hadn't actually moved everything out. Most of the furniture is out but there's clearly just a lot of junk lying around. They are having everything removed, and then the house professionally cleaned before we get in in about 9 days. All of the walls will be painted next month once we're already in there. But yes, we know that it currently looks like a strange wreck with all of the stuff around. Also, it was tough to get decent angles of a lot of rooms since it's a cape house with smaller rooms and lots of angles. But since I know everyone is curious:

Master bedroom-

Lily's room:

Living Room:

Dining Room:

Stairs:

Kitchen, looking into family room:

Powder room:

Hallway:

Third bedroom (1st floor)

Backyard (the hot tub is being removed )

Front:

Across the street:

Next door (in middle of renovation/addition, like many houses in neighborhood)

Street views:

We almost have a functioning kitchen!!! Thanks to several diligent hours last night by my wonderful and capable husband, the dishwasher is (almost) installed. The granite guys were here today and put on the counters and sinks. I have to say, our experience in major renovation projects has been nothing like the horror stories people usually tell. We had a wonderful contractor help us with removing the old (two-layer) tile floor, he referred us to a fabulous kitchen place who gave us a great price on cabinets and granite, and they all installed this stuff in less than three days. Not to mention the fact that Dad, Alex, Great-Grandpa and everyone else were absolute superstars in helping us with all of the hard work on the tiling, demo, etc. And not to forget our invaluable sitting services from Mom (and Deana). So with a little luck, we have created such a great kitchen and home that we won't even get to enjoy it very long .

Lily is very generous with her praise all around, although she's also quick to say when she doesn't like something. (Mommy, I like your necklace. Daddy, I like your shoes. Mommy, I don't like your pants.). Last night it was "Mommy, I like our beautiful new kitchen," followed by a walk over to the wet bar, then "Mommy, I like our other new kitchen."

And here was my project for the day- spent several hours working on removing the doors from the fridge so that it will fit through the door! I think the counter guys thought I was crazy when they saw me up on a ladder taking bolts off the fridge and disconnecting wires and hoses while they were doing the counters.

And a special thank-you to our sponsors

So for people who are interested (whom I assume are limited to grandparents and great-grandparents ), the end is in sight on the kitchen!

Thanks to two nights of grouting until midnight, we brought it this far:

And today, we brought in the big guns (the cabinet guys) to take it home! They did all of this in one day, and will be back tomorrow to put on the doors, crown moldings, and put some other finishing touches on. The granite people come to measure tomorrow as well, and then we can look forward to some non-microwave meals! Next week we have a few nights planned of tiling the backsplash with some neutral tumbled travertine.

Unfortunately, my camera lens apparently needs to be cleaned. The cabinets aren't really spotted.

The wet bar:

I'm sorry for the lack of postings lately! We've been awfully busy this summer, as you'll see below. We finally got a chance to post a few new pictures after finishing tiling the kitchen last night.

So this is the famous pink kitchen that is now history! Lily was helping Daddy make pizza (not that she'd eat any, of course- she still seems to subsist on about 500 calories a day, despite all of our efforts).

As we've been getting ready for our kitchen renovation, Lily has been amazing at keeping herself occupied and happy. Definitely an amazing kid. We came back to the family room to find that she'd set up a neat, orderly "parade" with all of her toys and animals. Fancy Nancy apparently got to take a ride on Elephant, with some princess tea set pieces and a basketball.

Grandma Sunshine made Lily some beautiful ponytail accessories!

It seems that Lily might take after her Aunt Lauren with art skils.... or not. She was incredibly proud of this picture, which is really the first time we had seen anything other than scribbles. "Look, Mommy, it's a dinosaur!" Which seemed not too far off the mark, until we realized that drawing this figure is now her representation of virtually everything. "Look, Daddy! I drew you!"

Lily had a great time at her friend Carson's birthday party. The kids are all admiring their bowling shoes here.

So not only do they put up bumpers at kids' bowling parties now, they also have these big racks to help the kids aim the balls. The start them at the top of the ramp, and it slides right down with enough velocity to actually make it to the pins. Daddy took her to the party and it looks like she had a great time.

Our yard backs up to conservation area where deer- among other animals- live. This big buck and his family have been cutting across our yard a lot lately! We looked out Lily's window and saw them resting in the corner of the yard. I can't recall having ever seen deer just sitting down (as Lily said, "the deer are hanging out").

As we've been preparing for our kitchen renovation we've been fortunate to be able to spend several weekends at our house with Great-Grandpa, Grandma Parade and Grandpa, and Uncle Alex and his girlfriend Deana. Lily is enjoying playing games with Great-Grandpa. She even shares her headbands.

Lily took this picture.

And this one!

Grandpa brought Lily some special ice cream that she LOVES.

Demolition Day!

Grandma brought Lily her own tool set so that she can help. (No, our couches aren't quite this hideous...these are sheet dropcloths to protect them from the renovation dust).

We had the ceilings raised on both sides of the kitchen. Making progress!

One advantage of having the whole house in shambles and pieces of kitchen equipment throughout the house (utensils in the bedroom, toaster in the guest room, coffeemaker out on the lanai... and we do dishes in the laundry room) is that Lily finds fun things to play with all over the place. Like this lampshade .

Lily has been helping us measure things for our projects. She's measuring Daddy's shoes here.

Grandpa and Lars getting ready to tile! (I would like to add that I was right in the middle of things, too, and they taught me to tile! But someone had to take the picture ).

Lily has also been occupying herself while we've been working with doing her own work. Here she is getting ready to install a new hard drive (ok, not really... but she did somehow learn how to turn on the computer, log in, and can access her Dora games and switch among different games).

Grandma has been a savior taking care of Lily while we've been working on the house. Here she is, with Lily showing her how to use the computer.

Grandma decided that we needed to reorganize our closets with all white hangers before we put our house on the market. She took everything out of my closet, and Lars' closet. Lily decided to help her put all of the old hangers back up in the linen closet. I don't know about you, but I always reorganize the closets in my bikini.

Breakfast al fresco with Grandma and Lily.

Lars cutting the last few pieces of tile!

In our spare time, we realized that the pool bath needed to be redone as well. Lars and Grandpa took up our old counter, Grandpa built a new top, and we're going to put granite down this week!

The end is in sight! The tile is down... no grout yet, though. That's tonight's project!

She has been the best kid throughout this process. I think we're wearing her out, though.