~Our Open House in our USA home...part 1~

Wouldn't you know that the day our Open house was planned it snowed several inches. I didn't know if anyone was going to get to come or not...but we were HAPPY that there were 46 of us that evening! =)
Remember, we still have LOTS of work to do in our home...but we wanted to at least show our progress.
~Since I was SWAMPED with trying to get settled in our home, and decorating some...several dear friends of mine helped provide the food that we served at our open house. We served Pepperment punch, sweetened iced tea, and coffee, 3 kinds of soups, hard breads, veggies and dip, and lots of yummy desserts. We had a wonderful evening!!~
~One day in November our b-i-l Daryl happend upon 3 of these antique ice boxes along the side of a road. He called Phillip and had him come and pick one up, and let us have one, and their family got one too. We were thrilled! We love old things!! On the back is a sticker from the cabinet shop where it was made with the date of 1913...the same year our house was built!
I love this cute red Christmas sign that asks, "Is it too late to be good?" =)
(Excuse the plastic cup on top of the ice box! =)
~Our good friend Sherri Patton gave us this adorable antique gas stove! We love it! This stove was still in use when Sherri moved into her neat old house in Monroe, Ohio.
We served our hard bread in a basket on the opened stove door.~
~Fun Christmasy red and white decorations on top of the antique gas stove.~
~Several dear young people came to our rescue the night of our open house! They came early and helped in every way possible! (Most of these pics I'm posting were taken by the Wegener young people or with my camera AFTER our open house! I was tooo busy during our open house to have my camera out so we don't have pics of Corrie, Sarah W., and Natasha!) One of the jobs that Will did was to make a slide show on our computer so people could see "before and after" pics of our house! He also took lots of pics that evening. Thanks tons, Will!~
~Brittany will shoot me, for this picture makes it look like she just stood around . But she, her sister Natasha and her Mother were a HUGE help to me both before and during our open house. That evening they helped me serve the food while I got to give tours of my house. THANKS Bunches!!~
~Kimberly and Rebekah helped in every way possible. So did Corrie and Sarah, but like I said, we failed to get their pictures. =(
(Our Sarah, and Noah, and their cousins Bryan and Darla were a huge help too!)~
~Katrina also was a big help!~

~We were so happy that several of our friends "slip slided" their way to our Open house. =)~



~This was our "Guest Book"! I had wanted to find a real guest book, but with the snow coming and allllllll I had to do, I didn't make it happen! But, it will work out just fine...for I will just scrapbook this page! ~
~A fun picture of the lights on our Christmas tree!~
~We made Mary's nursery in what will become our master bathroom. It turned out soooo cute! It was one of my favorite rooms of our house! I love the letters that spell "Mary" tied to her bed!
(When some of these pictures were taken, I didn't realize that there were blankets covering up the neat antique stroller by her baby bed.)~
~My sweet Moma made her pink bed ruffle and pretty pink curtain.
This is our miracle window! It was broken out when we got the house. It was a "strange size" and to order a special order window would have cost A LOT of money that we didn't have. We didn't know if we would get to replace the window while we were in the USA this time or not. But, one day Phillip was in a store and found this special order window for a GREAT price. He looked up the measurements for our window and JUST LIKE GOD... it was a PERFECT FIT!~

~When we had this picture taken of our 4 kids feet in 2008, JCPennys asked permission to print one off and hang it on their walls. I gave them permission, and then a year or so later, I got to buy it. We never dreamed that we'd have another baby. So, when Jesus sent us precious little Mary... we took a picture of her feet in her Daddy's hands to hang with our kids' feet picture.
(I left the pic in color because Phillip loved her "pink new-born feet". =) ~

~I love her initial "M" at the top of this picture.~

~I got tears in my eyes when I first saw this adorable picture frame that says,
"My Prince did come...his name is Daddy".

~This picture turned out really light...but at least you can see the stroller in this picture.~

~Will took this picture of our family on our stairs in our home.~
Part 2 of our Open house pics coming up!