The 'not so fun' part of owning a home

Last August we bought a home! We couldn't be happier and absolutely LOVE our neighborhood and ward. There are always kids running around outside and it is such a safe and fun neighborhood. Our neighbors have been so great to help us out with anything and let us borrow so many tools and cooking ingredients! Now to give you a little background of what comes next.. our house is essentially built on a spring. Yes a huge lake is right under our neighborhood! Now luckily we just moved in and didn't have to deal with the initial basement flooding that happened to pretty much everyone.. but we have had some of our own problems that had taken a ton of work.. and $$!

About a month ago, we started noticing that our guest bedroom closet had this old water/musty smell. We knew there had been water damage there before, but we didn't know how much. Well looking more into this problem we found out that we need to put in a drain pipe that started in the closet and went all the way around the room, through our living room and into our kitchen where our sump pump is located! On top of that, Spencer had to dig a trench going from our backyard to the front yard and onto the street so the water had someone to go somewhere away from the house.

 Spencer is such a hard worker and has been doing so much to save money. He dug the trench and the other day we bashed out the walls in the guest bedroom, tore down the sheet-rock and insulation and then spencer cut all the studs off! It is a crazy mess right now, but hopefully it will prevent water damage in the future!

On a happy note.. this was one of my student's reflection forms after getting in trouble for talking too much. He had to write what he did. This is his drawing of him and above it, it says "LOL" and then it says, "I lost my mind for a little bit and talked too much" :) My students crack me up!

 Here are some before pictures of us ripping out our living room and guest bedroom! Hopefully it makes it back to one piece soon!

 Here is why all of our stuff is!!! hallways, our bedroom and whatever and wherever we can fit things!:) ahh I hate messes, so this has been really hard for me to have things EVERYWHERE!!!