William (Willie) Lee Barta...need I say anymore

Jared and Becca gave birth to a delightful baby boy at 5:45 PM on January 16th, he is a whopping 8 pounds and 9 ounces and 22 inches long. All are doing well after a long 22 hours of labor. Here are a couple photos...check out their blog also there is a link over on the left of this.

OK.....so Tomorrow is a relative term

We have now been in our new home for 4 weeks as of today. Moving day was such a blessing, we had over 25 friends and family that came to help. Sandy's brother Alan, Philip and Amanda came back a few days later to help unload the POD. Some shots from moving day....there were boxes and people everywhere you turned.

They were loading cars, pick-ups and vans in addition to the moving truck. That allowed us to only need to do two trips with the moving truck.

I was really thankful for the "young blood" that was there to do the heavy lifting.

There were folks unloading in the new kitchen while we were still loading the truck back in Bolingbrook.

We even found some time to fellowship over a couple meals that day with our precious family and friends. They will never know what an encouragement they were to our family that day.

No time to waste - Christmas is just over a week away. HollyBeth got to crown the tree with the angel this year.

Then it was time to bake the cookies for stockings. Mom and Dad Carter were able to come and stay with us for the holidays and Alan came over to help bake cookies.

Valerie was quick to jump on decorating for Christmas. It was only about a week until Christmas Eve and the Carter clan was coming over. Here are some pictures of the progress.

Valerie did a great job at turning our new house into our Home.

We had 31 for dinner on Christmas eve...and we didn't even need to move any furniture to be able to sit down for our meal.

As always the food was great and plentious.

We took a few family pictures...this is Scruffy and Becca....and yes we are still awaiting our first wonderful grandchild. :^))

Our first Family photo in the new house.


Granddad, Grandma and Aunt Margie were a blessing to have over the holidays.



We have been enjoying the new fireplace and extra space.

On Christmas day we were able to go over to Bill's sister Kathleen's for another special time with the Mueller side. We even took the time to call Becca and Raymond over the phone and sing to them...that brought back some sweet memories.

Aunt Lucille and Aunt Roselina were able to be with us again this year. Each year comes with its challenges as they continue to age and we are thrilled to be with them when we can. They have set a wonderful heritage before us and we love to just sit and talk with them.

Through all the activity the children still found time to get out in the new yard and play. No, this is not an ice skating pond...it is our backyard. After some snow and then freezing rain the little ones were able to go out and ice skate in their boots and enjoy their time.

That's all for now....hopefully I can share about a new grandbaby next time I am able to update this blog.

Finally Connected...Yippee

We are finally back on line with High Speed internet. We will try to make some updates tomorrow.

Moved in, but internet challenged

Hi all, sorry for the break in updates but we have been busy. We have moved into our new home and have been rapidly settling in. Moving day went very well as we were blessed to have over 25 family and friends there to help. It went very smoothly.
We needed to get unpacked and settled pretty quickly since Sandy's family would be coming over for our annual Christmas Eve celebration only 9 days later. The team all kicked in and worked together, it was great to see. We even had some time to finish out our Christmas shopping. Sandy's brother Alan was able to come by a couple days and help us unpack and put the beds back together...that was huge. Valerie took charge of decorating for Christmas and did a really great job...there is some real talent in there that she has been suppressing. The Christmas holidays have been really enjoyable and we were even able to sit in front of a cozy fire in our new fireplace and enjoy time together as a family.

My one glitch of the move has been getting my high speed Internet connected...they are still working on getting the DSL activated hopefully by the end of the week...so we have been Internet challenged this past week and email deprived. Consequently I am driving in to the office to work in Downers Grove. While it is more miles than from the old house it was about the same amount of time, maybe even a little quicker with the light holiday traffic.

I will update more with some pictures when we get connected from home.

Walk-thru

Dad and Mom did a 4 hour walk-thru on Monday, checking to make sure everything worked. There were a few cosmetic things such as touching up paint on walls, but pretty much everything looked good. Here's a few pictures from the walk-thru.

Our lovely fireplace and family room! Perfect for these cold winter days.

Living room inspection.


Main entry and stairs.

Music studio (with beautiful arches) and entry into the kitchen.

Kitchen (picture taken from family room)

Morning room (we will use as dining room), big enough for our table!

Upstairs is looking good as well.

Outside......we now have 3 trees (1 in back) and a couple of bushes planted. The front is all sodded although that's hard to see with the snow. Just about ready for us to move in!

In the midst of all this packing and moving, our little Lisa turned 5! It's hard to believe that she is already 5, but she daily reminds us that she is growing up.