The Yard Progresses

Ok so we are finally done with our part of the yard. It is now time to call in the professionals for some help. We did all the stuff for the hardscape, moving the dirt and rocks around and making the base for everything that will be pretty when we are done. I don't have any pictures of the after, but I have some of the before. I would just go out and take some now, but its raining pretty hard and I'm am sick of getting rained on today. So I'll post the after pictures at a later date and tell you what everything is. But we should have the guy here for our water feature and sprinkler system next week. That will be awesome, because then we can plant the grass and start seeing the whole thing come together. But anyway as I said here are the before pictures and I'll get up our current progress pictures as soon as it stops raining.

These are just some shots of our trees that we cut down and sold for firewood. Some of these weeds were seriously 8-9 feet tall. They were beasts. And then we have a mound of dirt in our backyard that became our water feature. So check back for updates.

My Summer

Ok so I haven't posted for awhile as I have been reminded by quite a few of you lately, so here is a quick sum up of my summer.
June was pretty much boring, work, sleep, work, and then sleep again. But July we had some fun.

For the 4th we ended up taking trip with Brandon's family to Jackson Hole, WY (not to be confused with Jackson Hole, MN) We drive up there and start looking for our campsite that Michaelene booked for us and can't find the highway that the map says that the site is by. So we stop to ask a local and they tell us that they are search and rescue for the area and have no idea where that highway is, it doesn't exist. So we call the campsite and find that they are in Minnesota. Go figure that there would be a Jackson Hole by a Snake River in MN. So the nice local directs us up a nearby canyon to camp for the weekend. This property is part of the National Forest and is free to camp on, just don't bother the cows that pasture there. So we made our way to cow pie heaven where we set up camp and gathered wood for the fire.

Our very own tent

It was getting dark by the time we got there and went right to bed. Now, I'm not a huge fan of camping in the first place, but this was really roughing it. I at least expect restrooms when I go camping so I don't have to squat over a bush, but I guess that is too much to ask for when you just show up without a camping spot reserved. Needless to say I basically dehydrated myself for most of the trip so that I wouldn't have to find my favorite tree. But anyway, the next morning we woke up and went to pick up our raft, which thankfully was in the right state. This was my first time down a river in a raft, but I decided that I would have a good attitude and I wouldn't chicken out.

Getting ready for what turns out to be a long day

So we get in the raft, its a little chilly, but not too bad, as long as we don't get wet. We were doing pretty good, until we hit our first patch of bigger rapids. We hit them sideways and dumped half the people out of the raft. After getting Makenna, Wendi, Monette, and Patrick back in the boat we went to get Robert, but it turns out the Robert is about 100 feet down the river so we have to chase after him and he makes a superman leap from shore to get back in the raft. Now that we are all soaked and shaken we continue down the river because we have no choice. I'm now at the front of the raft and every wave we hit comes crashing into the boat and soaking me. But we are doing pretty well. Then we come upon Lunch Counter. The biggest swell on the river. The swells were 11-12 feet. And we were terrified, we had tipped on much less. But we went for it head on. I was freaked out, but totally having fun, which you wouldn't believe from the pictures that were taken. In the end we totally hit it perfect and went down the rest of the river without problem.

Lunch Counter on one of the more happy trips down

By the time I got out I was soaked. It looked like I had fallen in, but it was all just the water splashing in the boat. We went down twice more without incident and I was completely soaked everytime. It was awesome and I can't wait to go again. The next day we went into town and walked around all the shops and made friends with the stuffed animals.

Let me get that for you

Meoww

The next day was the 4th and we drove home. Brandon and I made it to sit outside Stadium of Fire to listen to SheDaisy and the Jonas Brothers. They were both awesome. But that was pretty much my 4th.

The 24th we ended up getting tickets and taking Stephan and Jo up to Kamas to have the Best Burgers in the State 2009 at the Drug Store, then we headed over to the Demolition Derby to be a little red neck and cheer as cars crashed and fires erupted.

Having fun at the derby

This is THE best derby in the state. I know it sounds really stupid, but we all had a lot of fun. And I hope we do it every year.

CRASH!!

But I guess that was my summer so far. August was spent working on my yard that I will post some pictures of in the next few days. Hope this post appeases you all for a few days.

My Babies

As I sit here on a Friday night, my husband playing with his "home projects" and wondering what I am going to do with myself, I decided I had two options; help him or write on my blog. Obviously the later won out, cause here I am. I don't know what to really write about because we haven't done much exciting except work for the past couple of weeks. So I decided to write about my babies. As most of you should know I don't have actual human babies yet, but I decided that my dog and cat were close enough. And I'm bored so bare with me while I procrastinate actually going and helping Brandon finish "projects."

So lets start with the oldest shall we?? Mia, she's our dog for those who don't know. She will be 9 years old this July. She was the puppy of my family dog Trixie. She was born under the couch while I was at work one evening. My grandma was none too happy to find our dog giving birth on her carpet. I immediately fell in love with the little brown and white spotted puppy. She was just too cute, she fit right in the palm of my hand. Long story short I convinced my grandma to let me keep her. Mia is a very anti-social dog for whatever reason, but she is your best friend as long as you have food and play with her and her toy. She'll eat almost anything. Most recently we have discovered that she enjoys grapes, carrots, and lettuce. She loves playing with her squeaky toy with currently has a broken squeaker, but she doesn't seem to mind. She also has many talents such as; playing dead, rolling over, shaking hands, begging, and my personal favorite "who's a snob." She also enjoys "playing" with our other baby, Roxy.

Mia loves her Hippo

"Who's a Snob?"

Now Roxy is our cat. She is currently 3 years old. She doesn't like doing much of anything but laying around the house, oh and playing with the feather toy that we bought her. She plays fetch better than Mia. She dislikes the dog immensly, probably because Mia tried to eat her when we first brought her home. But they do seem to tolerate each other for the most part. She hates to cuddle and if she is to be pet, it is on her terms. I've had a hard time convincing her when we moved to our new house that its ok to not hide under the chair all day long, that she won't get locked in the basement, and that eating is a good thing. But I think she's finally getting it after 2 months of living here.

Roxy, the Great Escape Artist

She is ready for her close up!

I'm sure this was a very exciting blog for most, but it gave me a reason not to work on the stupid low voltage panel in the basement. But I guess that's all I really have to say about that. Check back next time for a hopefully more exciting story.

Anni-Vegas-ary

So as you may or may not know Brandon and I celebrated our first anniversary last Friday. We spent most of the actual day working, so we didn't end up eating at all until 9:30 that night. Pretty much the same story on Saturday, but Sunday after church we packed our bags and headed to Vegas for a couple of days. It was so nice and warm I think it was above 80 degrees everyday. Sunday we didn't do much because we got there late and it was Sunday. We ate some dinner and just walked the strip and through some of the shops. We stopped at the Belagio and saw there gardens and the fountains. At the Belagio

We were pretty much exhausted and went to our hotel room at the Luxor. The next day we went to buy tickets at the half price ticket place by the M&M factory. We bought tickets for the Tournament of Kings and Mystere. We decided to go and lay by the pool during the day to maybe get some color in our albino skin. Luckily we had some sunscreen or we would have come back as lobsters. After a couple of hours of sun bathing we went back to the room to get ready for the night. The Tournament of Kings was of course awesome.

At the Tournament of Kings (Our King Won)

We met a lady that owned a McDonalds in Pennsylvania and they were apparently having a world conference there in Vegas. We went to our next show which was interesting. If you haven't heard of it, its a Cirque Du Solie show. Once I realized there was really no story, I just started enjoying the acrobatics, and the comedy acts in between the performances. On our way back to the hotel that night we saw a motorcyclist, but the odd part of this was the dog perched on the front of the bike enjoying the ride and barking at people.

I am getting Mia that Helmet and Sunglasses

It was pretty funny. The next day we checked out of the hotel and headed home. That's pretty much the weekend. We had fun and having a weekend away was well welcome. Hopefully we will do something else fun that I can blog about soon.

We Passed the Final

So we passed our final inspection on Monday and we have been cleaning house ever since. We should be closing sometime this week, but the inspector said we could move in whenever we wanted to so moving day is Thursday. We are so excited to be done and moving into our own place. It looks awesome and we are so happy with it. We are having a house warming party in May and would love to have everyone come down and hang out and see the house. So if you want to come send me your address on facebook and I will send out invites. We just want to have a fun party and hang with our friends and family that have been neglected during the building process. But here are a few pics of the finished product.

Living Room

Hallway and Stairs

Kitchen (with awesome lighting)

Master Bedroom from Bath

The Building Progresses

Ok I just wanted to give you a quick update. We now have carpet and our kitchen is put together. I feel like the fridge is massive, but maybe I just need to get used to it. We put our mirrors up as well. We took small 12x12 mirrors and put them together to make a couple of larger ones. I think they turned out pretty good. We just need to put up some light switches, patch some minor holes in the drywall and finish up the huge amount of low voltage that we have left to do. I'm so excited for this to be done so I can go and sleep there instead of work there. We are hopeing to be done next week. That would be awesome, and then we throw our House Warming Party, which everyone is invited to. So I will let you all know. Here are some new pics that I took today. That's all for now, cause I'm exhausted.

Our Deck/Backyard

Master Bath/Our Mirror

Living Room Carpet and Fireplace

The Painting never ends...

Ok the painting did finally end, except for the fact that I walk around the house and still see spots that I would like to fix, but that is for another day. For today I am done with painting, the cabinets are in, the countertops are on, and we have hung most of the light fixtures. We'll see how well it all goes together. We have the carpet going in tomorrow, and the tile should be finished up soon. I'm so excited to be done with everything. I want it to be finished so so so bad. I don't know if I can ever stand building another house. This has been so much work. I had no idea what kind of effort went into building a house. But as I promised, what a week or more ago, here are some recent pics of the place. We got a killer deal on our granite countertops. Our bathroom counters are remnants that cost us a bunch less, so they don't match our kitchen, but we feel its an ok thing, because they rock! I can't wait for it to be done and show it off to everyone. Well here are the pictures that I promised.

Master Bath Vanity

Hall Bath Vanity

Kitchen

Cooktop

More House Stuff

Ok, so I haven't taken many pictures of the house lately, but it is still coming along. We actually have texture on the walls now and we are going to start painting this week. The finish carpentry guy is coming in this week as well. So its going to be way fun. The cabinets should be in next week, and then they come to measure a template for the countertops. We are also currently having our tile layed. I don't have pics of that yet, but I promise I will get some when he is all done laying. He is also going to start on the tub and shower surrounds and doing the wall around the fireplace. I love seeing color in the house. I am getting really sick of white. We are also getting the stucco on the outside of the house. They finished the brick last week, and put up the garage doors as well. So its coming along, we are slowly doing what we can to finish up the electrical and all of our fancy low voltage stuff. I will take some pics tomorrow and add them to this post. But here are what I have so far.

The Master Bedroom

Our Fireplace

The Kitchen

The Brick

Update on House

Hi All!! Sorry its been a couple weeks since I updated. I've been doing the wiring in my house over the past couple of weeks. But it is finally done. The roof is almost done and they are putting up the drywall as I type. I realized that I didn't tell you were I was building in my last post. We are building in Lehi, a Patterson Construction Subdivision called Willow Brook. Its just off Main Street and 1700 West in Lehi. Its awesome we are the only house on our street right now. Anyway as I was saying we finished up the wiring in our house today. I think it may be the most wired house for its size in the state of Utah. I have never seen so much wire in one place. We have places (4 I think) for Plasma TVs on the walls for our pictures. They will be hooked to computers so that we can just have a slide show going on. We have our multi-room sound system that also links outside to our covered deck. This sound system is also hooked into the security so that when the door bell rings the camera by the front door will turn on and show who is at the door on every color keypad in the house. There are 4 keypads in the house. I can also put a camera in one of the bedrooms so that when we have a baby I can check in on baby from anywhere in the house. I think that rocks. Anyway I guess that is all the updates for now. I'll take pictures as they sheet rock and get some more stuff done and post. Hope to hear from you all soon.

Our House is a Very Very Very Fine House (Sorry couldn't resist)

So as some of you may know we decided to build a house. It all happened kind of suddenly. We went to our good friends at Patterson Construction and they decided to help us out with our goal. We looked at floor plans and found one that we really liked (pictured below)and then decided where we wanted to live. We found a sub-division that wasn't too far out there and the lots weren't too expensive. Turns out that they already had the foundation of the house we wanted poured in that location. So a week after we went in to talk about building a house we had a floor. Luckily it has been great weather and they have been able to work everyday and now after a week of actually working we have walls!! In the picture I am standing in the master bedroom. It looks like they are starting to put the roof on Monday and will have it done by the end of the week. I will keep you posted at least once a week. Lots to do so I will do my best.