Phase 1 of Renovation -Demolition!

I've been told this is actually the "fun" part of the renovation! If there was any part I would've liked to "help" with I think this would be a great stress relief!!! My Dad and brother joined Oscar and assisted in beating down walls, cabinets, counter tops, etc. Check out our newly missing wall and demolished rooms!

Foyer

Family Room (now part of great room)

A shot of Oscar on a break from across the great room
Great room with wall removed

Kitchen

upstairs hallway looking into Lily's bathroom

step down into Lily's play room, behind it...4th bedroom, 3rd bath and laundry room.

Lily's play room (bonus room, door leads to back yard)

My Dad & Oscar after a hard day of demolition!

Our New, Old Place!

With the addition of Lily to our family our current house has quickly become too small for us. It was the perfect house for us when we were childless, and we love our neighborhood so we were determined to find a newer and bigger place in Temple Terrace. The only problem is the NEWEST neighborhood in Temple Terrace is about 20 years old! We already renovated our current, 60 year old house and I swore I'd never do it again. -Well, I guess I should have specified, I would never again LIVE in a home that I'm renovating! Basically, if we wanted to stay in Temple Terrace, and wanted a "newer style home," we were going to have to renovate. I am actually excited to embark on this journey once again -from the comfort of our current house.

We ended up finding a new house about 8 blocks away from where we live now. So, instead of being exactly 2 miles from my parents, (being close to them was a must), we are now about 1.5 miles away, and about 1 mile from my brother. We found a really interesting house, it looks kind of European and was beautifully decorated in perfect "old lady 70's decor," complete with overly cluttered walls and every kind of collectible imaginable on display! We bought the house from a nice old widow, who was kind enough to leave a few of her collectible items behind! ;)

We are now the proud owners of a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house plus a bonus room...but even more exciting not only do we have a 2 car garage this time around, we have an 800 square ft. workshop/storage/building in our 2/3 of an acre backyard! -And TONS of closet space. Coming from a house built in 1950 with minuscule closets and bathrooms and NO garage, we are thrilled to finally have an abundance of storage space!!!! From 1,875 sq. ft. to 2,875 sq ft. to be exact! (Plus the extra building out back).

Of course it wasn't even 2 hours after we officially took ownership of our new home, that Oscar already had an entire wall knocked out, down to bare studs and cinder blocks! Among the extensive updating, one of the major changes was to open the kitchen up to the family room and create a great room. It is a very roomy, traditional style home, and I am so excited about the renovation, and even more eager for it to be complete and to be living in, filling up all of that storage and square footage!!

I will post updates on our renovations. For now here are some pics of the house as we purchased it. If you are not a visual person, don't panic! -You won't recognize this place when we're done renovating it! We don't anticipate moving in until early October at the earliest so I will keep everyone up to date on our move and address change once we are officially moved in.

front of house (second story is blocked by the tree)

back yard and storage/workshop building (it's got AC & heat!)

Yikes! -Kitchen (wall on left will be removed)

Family room (will soon open up to kitchen)

Bonus room...will be a play room for Lily! (door leads to back yard) -can we say clutter!!!!!

Formal Living Room -cozy, Grandma decor!
Dining Room

4th of July 2010

This summer has been a pretty busy one for the Robles fam, hence my lack of posts! I am really going to try to do a better job of staying on top of my blog as I am now trying to update a few different posts at once. Such is the life of Mom to a 16 month old I guess.

For the 4th of July we packed up our family and headed down to Naples Beach where we met some of our closest friends and their families. This was our first vacation with Lily and our friends, up to this point Lily has only vacationed with family. In our crew we had 6 couples and 11 children ranging in age from 9 months to 6 years. Lily and the 9 months old were the only babies, the rest were all at a much more desirable age for vacationing!

our "Kid Crew" (Lily is all the way on the left)

Lily experienced a couple of "firsts" on this trip:

On the car ride down, I gave Lily her first pedicure...check out these piggies!

This also marked her first visit to the beach! She absolutely LOVED it! She was mesmerized by the sand at first and loved playing in it.

Daddy also enjoyed playing in the sand:

We stayed in Naples at The Naples Beach Resort for 4 nights. On the actual 4th, we spent the day at the beach, came back to our room for a nap and a shower, then headed back to the beach for a BBQ and fireworks. It doesn't get more All-American than that folks! It was an awesome day with our friends.

Lily loved the fireworks and sat still on our laps for the entire show!

A couple of pics of the gang:

We had such a wonderful holiday with our freinds, and Lily had a great time playing with all the big kids! We can't wait to do it again next year. Happy belated birthday U.S.A.!!!

Lily's 1st Birthday!

We can hardly believe our little girl is 1! We had so much fun celebrating her birthday! We had 2 parties for her, one with family, and another with friends. First of all, the thought of several infants and toddlers running and crawling around my house was terrifying!!! -Plus, it was just too many people to have in one place. So we celebrated on Lily's actual day of birth at our house with our family. It was a butterfly themed party and we served BBQ from Luptons, (Luptonscatering.com). -Delish! It was so wonderful watching our family celebrate with Lily, you can truly see just how much everyone loves her...and Lily loves her family too! She had such a great time being spoiled rotten by everyone! And let's just say she has a killer 18-24 month wardrobe!!! ;) She received so many beautiful gifts, thank you so much everyone! However, I think she enjoyed her cake most of all that day! She literally dove into her cake...with her whole face! It's was hilarious! She ate about 1/4 of her small round cake by herself! It was so funny watching her, we almost forgot the fact that she was consuming a ridiculous amount of sugar!!! Here's a few pics and a video of Lily enjoy her first taste of birthday cake!

The next day we celebrated Lily's birthday with our/her friends at an indoor play area for babies called Kidz Club. This place is awesome! I didn't have to do a thing. The owner was great, she set everything up, was so great with the kids during circle time, and even cleaned up at the end. If anyone in New Tampa is looking for a great (and clean) place for your babies to play or have a birthday party, I highly recommend Kidz Club! Lily had a blast playing with her friends, chasing after bubbles, shaking her maracas, dancing to music and just being let loose to run and play in a baby safe zone! She even enjoyed her first taste of pizza, which like everything else, she loved! Again, I think the highlight for her was being able to go to town on a jumbo cupcake that we had decorated to match her ladybug party theme. She had the drill down this time and got right to it, and before I could blink, was once again covered in icing! Here's a few pics from her second party.

Thank you so much to everyone who celebrated with us, and helped make Lily's first birthday so memorable!