If you’re on our blog to find out why we chose a homeless theme for our Christmas card, you’re in the right place. But first, I should probably give you our year in review. We started off 2017 anxiously awaiting our tax deduction…I mean son! The doctors were sure that he would be here before Christmas last year but he was stubborn. Granville Lee Francis arrived on February 2nd and Ellie was absolutely in love with him!
This year has been full of blessings and change for our family. We ended 2016 with 5 weeks of hospital bed rest and 10 weeks of at-home bed rest. We are eternally grateful for the Hervey family coming all the way from California to babysit Ellie and I during the day! There are plenty of blog posts about that if you’re just dying to know how that went. Spoiler alert: it was very uneventful! About three weeks after Gran was born we took him on his first road trip. We loaded the kids up in the evening and headed to Arkansas to see some great friends! That little vacation resulted in us having a new piece of yard art.
You’ll see the yard art up close later!
At the end of April we moved out of our tiny house while we finished the process of buying our first home. Yes, we do miss the tiny house sometimes! 
We spent the next six months living in the basement of my parents’ house while we gutted and totally remodeled most of our new house. We had to insulate, run new electrical, redo plumbing, fix floor joists and sub flooring, rip out walls and ceilings, move walls and doorways, and then we had to decide how we were going to put it all back together again! The transformation was incredible! We are still working on it and will be gutting and remodeling the rest of the house (the living room and kitchen) soon. There are blog posts here and here about all of that process. Most of this year has been spent working on our house. We finally moved into it at the end of October. I still need to get updated pictures of all of the rooms. We don’t have carpet in the bedrooms and hallway yet.
We also took a vacation to Tennessee and North Carolina this summer. We stumbled upon a little town in Tennessee named Granville and decided to make a pit stop there. Ellie was in grandma and grandpa’s car so she didn’t visit with us. We celebrated my grandma’s 70th birthday while we were in North Carolina and spent some time visiting with family. We couldn’t go all the way to Tennessee and miss out on the Dixie Stampede! Of course, on the drive home (both days) Granville cut his first two teeth, so that was fun!
I’m starting to think that our family only invites us on trips with them so they’ll have a concierge mechanic!
Austin found a small piece of Heaven at an antique mall! Look at those smiles!
It was quite the vacation for all of us!
In July, Ellie had her first date…with her dad! She talked about that date for weeks! Austin came home with flowers and a dress that she had fallen in love with at the store. 
At 6 months old, we let Gran get behind the wheel of our Valiant. This is the yard art that we brought home from Arkansas.
Austin’s highlight for the year was FINALLY taking the RV camping. Yes, the famous one from last year’s Christmas card! He has been waiting so patiently to go camping and we finally made it happen. 
After summer, our year got pretty boring as we were spending every evening and weekend working on our house. We had a few breaks for things like Halloween. This year Ellie dressed up as Judy Hopps from Zootopia and Gran was a cowboy. He wore the same cowboy hat and belt buckle that Austin wore for his first Halloween. It snowed on Halloween so we really didn’t trick-or-treat but we did go outside for a few pictures!
I’ve always wanted Ellie to have an interest in photography so she could be my trusty assistant and it’s finally happening! She was by my side through most of my fall sessions this year and carried her camera around snapping photos with me. She’s also learning how to pose people and it’s hilarious.
Ellie turned 3 this November! We can’t believe that’s even possible! She chose to have a Beauty and the Beast themed birthday party this year.
Also, if you’re needing adorable and delicious cookies, you need to call The Cookie Queens!!
Austin and the kids got their Christmas gift a little early this year.
After seeing her coat and her blue eye, we were all sold! Ellie named her Dog and anytime we mentioned picking a different name, Ellie would cry. It looks like Dog is going to stick despite us trying to convince her to at least pick another name to go with it. My suggestion was Holly Dog and Austin is trying to convince Ellie that Pretty Dog is a good name.
All in all, we had a wonderful year. We weren’t really homeless but at times it felt like we were. There were stages of the demolition and remodel, that we wondered if we were making a huge mistake. It felt like we would never be done with this project. We are still far from finished with the house but despite not having a bathroom door, it’s starting to feel like home. We are pretty sure, we will never buy another fixer upper. It’s not nearly as fun as it looks on HGTV! We could not have done any of it without all of our friends and family who gave up their evenings and weekends to come over and get their hands dirty with us. They spent countless hours tearing out walls, ceilings, and flooring, running new electrical, putting up new insulation, hanging sheetrock, mudding and sanding, plumbing, assembling our bathroom, laying flooring and tile, painting, and sometimes watching our kids so we could work with both hands. We owe you guys much more than a simple Thank you! The picture on our Christmas card was taken in Ellie’s room. The studs behind us were for the wall separating her room from the bathroom. In the picture, you can see from Ellie’s room into the bathroom and from the bathroom you can see the mudroom and kitchen. At one point the only thing separating the mudroom, bathroom, Ellie’s room, our room, and the hallway were studs. The black and white picture that is featured on this post is us sitting at the end of the hallway after it had been insulated and we were starting to put sheetrock back up.
We hope that all of our friends and family have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
And Francis Makes Four 