Exteme Makeover: Home Edition!

We had some major excitement this weekend! Chris and I have been watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for at least 6 years and have recently introduced it to Ella. I'd actually been wanting to post about it because it has been an awesome parenting/teaching tool! We have a "rule" that whenever she has a question or doesn't understand what's going on she raises her hand and we pause the show and talk about it. It's been an awesome platform for talking about things like disease, amputations, parents dying, kids dying, what the military does, and more. These are all tough things to explain or bring up with kids but realities nonetheless. Plus, it's much better to explain why some people ride in wheelchairs or have prosthetic limbs in the comfort of our living room rather than in the grocery store in line next to someone missing an arm. It has been such a blessing to share some of the tough realities of what families go through but in the context of the show where something wonderful happens for them and there's always an exciting, positive ending.

So, it was GREAT timing that the show was doing a build nearby! Friends of ours were volunteering all week so we got the inside scoop on where/when to go and finally, on the last day of the build, we were able to head down there! Not surprisingly they couldn't use me (something about me being 9 months pregnant) or Ella (no kids allowed in the construction zone) but they happily handed Chris a waiver to sign and a blue volunteer shirt and sent us off to the build site!

Though she doesn't look it here, Ella was really excited to ride a bus over to the site with no car seat or seat belt! "This is what big kids do in kindergarten!!"

Not even having planned it, we immediately ran into our friends Kate and Mark who had been working on the house all week! Kate was able to give Chris her hard hat (they were all out!) so he could get to work.

The house at about 8:30am on the day of the reveal. No front door, no grass, no furniture inside!! Because of rain storms all week the reveal had already been pushed back 2 days so this really HAD to be the final day. We decided to leave Chris there to work all day after seeing how much work was left to do.

The house, by the way, was being built for a non-profit called Boys Hope Girls Hope that houses at-risk kids from tough family backgrounds and provides positive role models, educational support, and requires community service and academic excellence. The Boys who are currently in the program have a house and are the ones who applied to ABC to get the girls a house-they've been trying to raise money for years but until now, the girls had nowhere to live. The show built them an 11,000 sq.ft. house on the same street as the Boys house!!! It was the biggest build ever for the show and Chris spent most of the day inside painting, moving furniture, hanging pictures, cleaning and said it's AMAZING inside. Can't wait to see the show in September and see it all!

Ella and I came back at about 5:30pm (the reveal got moved back from 3pm and didn't actually happen til about 7:30pm!) and the "famous" bus was in place in front of the house to block it from the girls when they came in the limo.

Kate was so sweet to help me with Ella-it was 95 degrees and we stood in the crowd for 3+ hours! Chris and Mark were across the street right next to the house with a group of volunteers so they got to see much more of the reveal than we did. We kept asking Ella what was going on because she could see more on Kate's shoulders than we could! The funny part was she kept saying "I see Daddy!" and we kept asking "Do you see Ty???" (Ty Pennington is the host of the show and totally my Hollywood crush)

Ella did really well with all the waiting and practicing yelling "Move that Bus!" for 2 hours before it actually happened! We ended up being there until about 9:30pm and she never melted down!

Ty practicing his lines in front of the house just before the reveal.

After the girls got to go in and see the house they came out and were shocked and screaming again when they found 2 new cars the show is giving them! That's Ty laughing and clapping in the back.

Chris got a pic with our favorite designer/carpenter from the show Paulie!! He actually was up close and personal with Paul, Michael, and Ty throughout the day-cool!

Jillian (the Bachelorette chick who is an interior designer), Paulie, Michael, and Xzibit-the celebrity design team for this episode (Raven Symone was also there-Chris was cleaning in the room while she shot a scene with Xzibit).

Chris and Mark got to work together most of the day and thanks to Mark's leadership (Chris would have stayed away from the cameras) they "happened" to be in the background of lots of the filming so we'll probably see them when the show airs!

The girls who will live in the house (7 of them!), the Boys Hope guys with a producer explaining what would happen next. After this they set up a shot in front of the house and Ty announced they Notre Dame and Loyola are giving all of them full scholarships for college! Plus, all of their mothers get free career counseling and some free classes at either school. Pretty awesome!


It was awesome to be up close and person with this show and this story of meeting the need of a house for these girls. It's also fun to know details like the fact that the back of the house has no brick on it yet because they ran out of time and there are 3 rooms full of junk that they hadn't even painted yet! So, the house is not 100% done but I'm sure those girls won't mind a few more days of construction while they settle into the nicest place they've ever lived! Hopefully next time the show comes around I won't be enormously pregnant and can help and pay them back for the way they help me teach my kid about doing all you can to help those in need.