Our big news

No, Gabby isn't here yet. Thank God. But we have some other very important things happening in our life that we are ready to let you in on. As a side note, this will be a longer post with no pictures of Olivia, but it definitely concerns her. Try and stay awake grandparents.

So, to start, when Brian and I moved to Kansas City 5 years ago we knew we were coming by ourselves. We didn't know anyone and our parents didn't live here. When we had Olivia 2 1/2 years ago I bet some people wondered how we would make it without the support of parents around. Today, you will see how we made it. Besides wonderful parents who come as often as they can and are totally supportive of us, we have acquired some amazing friendships. Friendships that might be as close to family as you can get without being blood related. We are so blessed with lots of friends who look out for us even in ways we aren't looking out for ourselves. A couple of months ago these friends came to our house with an idea. Today, you will see what happened with that idea.

For a while now Maggie, my dear friend and a physical therapist, has been asking me reasonable questions about making our house more accessible for Olivia. I didn't know the first thing about our options as far those things go, and knew for sure we wouldn't have the money to do any kind of huge renovations to the house. So, I just kept pushing it to the back of my mind and putting it off in conversations with her. I just didn't know what to do. Her husband, Wes, is a very talented carpenter and works all kinds of construction and renovation projects, both as a full time job and on the side. A few months ago Wes, Neil, and Steve (all building professionals in some capacity and friends from church) came to our house to discuss our options as far as accessibility. It was obvious (especially given my pregnant state) that it was difficult for me to carry Olivia and her Kid Kart or Kid Walk to the car as they were both beginning to get heavy. Olivia will not be getting any lighter and with another baby on the way they saw that we would need some help. Here is what they proposed. This is a letter from these three wonderful men to you. Please take the time to read it.

Ramp letter

Along with the information in the letter, they wanted us to pass along two things: the official budget for the ramp/porch project and a picture of what the proposed changes will look like. (Sorry about the size. Click on it for a bigger picture. We had to change the format of some of these documents.)

Here is what our porch looks like now

Here is what the proposed project will look like finished

We are so humbled and very excited for these changes to our house. If you would like to give towards the projects there are two ways to do so outlined in the letter above. If you have ANY questions, please email me (kelly.s.yocum@gmail.com). If they are "official construction" questions or something I can't answer I will forward them along to Wes. If you would like the PDF of any of these documents printed out or emailed to you we would be happy to do so. Just let me know.

Told you. Long post. But worth it, I think. This project will make life for us and Olivia more than manageable. I can't believe that people care about so much that they would offer their services and their time to organize every bit of this project just so we can get Olivia in and out of the house easier. Amazing. Thank God for them.