Basement!

Dear Jessa,

This is probably going to be a shorter letter, as it's BJ writing, and not Tianna. (Tianna is very descriptive in her writing, you may have noticed.) Tianna's busy working on some stuff tonight.

For the last couple weeks, we've been getting some bids on finishing our basement. I've been working down in the unfinished basement, which has been mostly been fine. It's been a little chilly in the winter, but with a space heater that hasn't been much of a problem. At some point, though, we'd like to finish it so we can move the play room away from bedrooms, etc. We got a few bids in, and they varied wildly. The highest bid was more than double the lowest bid. Of course, there would likely be a difference in quality as well, but even at the lowest bid, it was going to be almost a year more before we could finish it. We weren't terribly thrilled at waiting that long.

When we mentioned this to Tianna's brother, Damian, he said that he could do it at a much better price by doing a lot of the work himself instead of subcontracting most of it out. He's done a bunch of work on his own home, so while he doesn't build homes professionally, he's got quite a bit of experience with it. He's self-employed, so he can mostly set his own schedule. In face, it turns out that he has quite a bit of open time this next week! So we talked about it, debated back and forth for a bit, and decided to go for it.

Yes, this means that we're finishing our basement this week. Or starting on it, at least. It might take a couple weeks to finish it up, but we hope to get a good portion of it done while Damian is down here this week. We've moved my computer up to our bedroom, so I'll be working from up there for the week. Tianna's working with Damian to get everything ready to go first thing tomorrow so we can get as much done as possible before Damian has to go back, which is why she's not writing this right now.

So, you'll get more details from us next week. One quick story, though.

Kessa's had her second loose tooth for a couple weeks now, and this morning it was to the point that it was pretty much laying sideways, just waiting to fall out. Kessa's still not used to losing teeth, though, and was very protective of it. She didn't want us to even touch it, much less wiggle it. This morning, Kessa was showing it to uncle Damian while talking on FaceTime to her cousin Lexi (Damian's daughter, and one of Kessa's very favorite cousins.) Lexi was telling Kessa that Damian is a great puller of loose teeth. "He just pops it right out, and you don't even feel it." Somehow, they talked Kessa into letting Damian pull it out. (Tianna and I were shocked at this.) So he reached in and popped it right out! I managed to get a picture of it.

He's holding the phone so Lexi can see too

So that's our news for the week: Kessa lost another tooth, and we're finishing the basement. We'll take some pictures of the basement along the way so you can see the transformation next week. Until then, have a great week and enjoy General Conference!