Amara definitely has tastes already for her new space. This is the palate she picked for her room. 
At Sherwin Williams--she picked lavender and green, still wants Polar Bears and butterflies ;) Gotta love her ambition! We'll see what it ends up as...to be continued...
With Amara's 5th birthday in just over a week, we hit Home Depot for some white and purple flowers to decorate around the barn. We got a ton, but with the planters filled up, at least we had some color and Amara loved doing it.
We didnt' have a purple spiky thing for the 2nd planter, but we planted all the petunias anyway. I'm so glad she likes to get her hands dirty--she's one that doesn't mind it, and in fact LOVES to dig up bugs or anything she finds, while Cora runs away yelling "ew!!"
I'm glad we got to do this together--we have been putting a few things in the ground. Up next we need to get our raspberries in the ground so that we have a nice crop this year ;)
So, Dan tells me it's cheaper and faster (two words I've grown to love) to rip out the existing uneven flooring, fix the joists, then put down a new subfloor. Ok. Sold.
In like 10 minutes, they had the flooring out--notice the old concrete landing, that had to be the old back porch--which makes me think about the whole house layout differently...solves some unknowns...
This is one of our (and the girls) favorite parts of the new property. It's a 12x18 garden stone building with a full basement/storm cellar underneath it. 
It has a lovely entrance right off of the kitchen for planing, and charming doors and windows just perfect for playing--it's actually quite large!
It's got a lot of odds and ends in it--we'll get rid of all that--but the girls love to go out there and explore. It needs a little TLC and cleaning, but we're going to paint it up and can't wait to decorate it for them to love.
So far we haven't noticed it getting too hot in there--the roof is vented, but we'll see as the summer gets hotter I guess. Can't wait for them to have their own yard play place.
Grandma and Grandpa Young graciously brought us some Buckeye tree saplings to plant! I think they brought up 3 or 4, and Amara couldn't wait to get started.
They all dug the holes together--we put 2 just to the east of the big barn and watered them, then one or two in the front, near the front of the flag pole.
Sometimes she likes to supervise--but she got right in there and got dirty. She loved doing the planting and after this was done--they even went down and put inpatients near the entrance!
...and the flooring now doesn't attach to the walls. That has to come out--all of it. Subflooring, closet down to the rotten joists, then build it back up.
You can see the slope--about 4 inches in just a few feet
too bad--i was hoping to save that paper--KIDDING...I just like Mike Holmes says "fix it right the first time." What's another $2000 right? 
This is the back of the house, all joists are original--it's where we found the news clippings from 1924 and 1934 in the flooring. Also, this was previously the cellar entrance to the back yard, pre-bay window of course.
The giant heat/air returns--located behind the stove and pantry in the kitchen. You can also see on the left a stack of bricks--there was an old chimney there too, and the cut-away studs are now supported by the old bricks.
The entrance to the laundry room--you can see the old timbers in the walls--so THICK! That flooring is going to have to come out. The floor joists rotted away and the floor slopes a bit.
Opening up the ceiling too, to move the doorway entrance of the room, also allows for more cabinet space.
The appliance wall where the stove and vent hood will go, pantry behind, leading into the dining room. You can see the new "pass through" into the parlor/playroom too. It's a really nice sight-line now.
The farthest point of the kitchen, note all the layers of wallpaper--this is where the fridge will be located.
In the afternoon, we went out to work on the house an yard a little. It was so cold, playing outside in coats was fine--and the rain loomed overhead, so no one needed sunscreen.
The girls explored on their own for the most part, until bonfire time--finding new things to play with, both alone and together.
I bet Cora ran this path a dozen times, yelling "ready, set go!" and taking off up and down the pavers--falling a few times but getting right back up!
By bonfire time, everyone was ready for some warmth and some snacks. It's a great place and time to spend together in the evenings, and at the end of the day, we're all sad to leave.
We had a fed dead Scotch pines and some Ash that had to come down too--then the occasional branch that needed cleaned up, over driveways and such.
Andy took some of the pine and we saved some for ourselves too--and we had lots of brush piles, LOTS--
I think it's safe to say that since we closed on Denton, if dad wasn't in the field and if mom wasn't mowing any of the other 5 farms, they've been out there working on the yard. At first, it was just cleaning up limbs--so that she could run the mower, but quickly, the green showed up on the leaves and in the flower beds.
Dad helped me rake and rake and rake on several occasions, making and burning piles to clear the grass of all the years of dead, heavy leaves, trapping the grass. We think it'll still need a little shady seed--but it was almost as if the ground could finally breathe.
Lucky for us, we like the bonfire thing and all the scrap brush--this stuff goes up like a --well, a bonfire, as soon as you get a match to it. We just kept piling it on and on. We learned after the first bonfire that even a giant pile of brush is reduced to ash in just minutes.
This was one of the leaf piles--there is a slight charred spot on the yard, but I think I read somewhere that ash is actually good for composting and for growing things. Note to self, I need to look into that. We have A LOT of ash.
At the end of the day though, or even a few hours, you can look around at all the smoking leaf piles and you get a sense of accomplishment. A few more sticks we won't trip over for now--a few more feet of cleared yard for the girls to play. We'll get there. I think it's safe to say we'll always have a burn pile--lots of trees and leaves always falling, but I don't mind it in the least.
The wall in the living room (and floor) was one of our major structural concerns. After the guys removed the flooring, they quickly framed in the supports and they tell me it's secure...
the bowing wall doesn't make me feel so secure--but Daniel assures me he will "strap it back in place" and that right now it's mostly the siding...we shall see.
