Oh, and cabinets too!

Our cabinets came today. They unpacked them, but haven't set them yet. I was giddy with anticipation, so I already started taking pictures. Here is our bathroom.

And Kaylee's bathroom.

Our kitchen island, with a hole for where the dishwasher will be.

One side of the kitchen, with an opening for the stove.
The other side of the kitchen, with the above cabinets where the fridge will be.

And my laundry room.

No matter what you say, I love my cabinets. Even more when they finish them. Sigh.

Merry to Christmas to all, and to all good luck cleaning up Christmas. . .

Here is the pile 'o snow that we had in our driveway. This is after it has melted for the past few days.


Here are the small glass tile that Clayton laid in our shower.

Here are the tile on our bathroom floor.

The tile that Clayton's brother, Bill laid in Kaylee's shower.

The entry from the garage and the kitchen in its tiled and grouted perfection.


Our Merry Christmas tree and our family room with a new fan and working lights.

Our entry and front door with the cool pattern that Clayton made up.


The dining room and light fixture.

Kaylee with her cousins in front of the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.

Here is Kaylee opening up her gifts with Clayton's family.

Hope you enjoy.

Pass the Scrunchy-Face Smiles around

I will leave an addendum to the previous post. Clayton is a great first-time builder, but we had high expectations of him tiling our entire house in his spare time in just a few weeks. So, we are on a more realistic time schedule and will hopefully be done the 2nd week of January. I decided to post some pictures of Kaylee. We were at Lonestar Steakhouse for the Full/Ton Masonry Christmas party. And this is her new thing the past few weeks. When she really smiles, it is a scrunchy-face smile, as we call it. So, here are some scrunchy faces smiles for you.

P.S. And a picture of Kaylee eating steak. She is actually starting to get an appetite.

We get a step closer each day, but not close enough. It looks like Clayton isn't a good enough builder because he won't have it done for his family by Christmas, but we will be in soon enough.

A Christmas Miracle

On Friday we went to Scoffield to cut down Christmas trees with Clayton's family. It was a lot of fun, we just wished there would have been more snow. The one on top of my truck was about 22 feet long, that was for Clayton's dad.

Be Thankful

So, on Sunday, my primary class was in charge of sharing time. We are in Junior Primary (tons of cute little kids) and we talked about things we are thankful for. All the 8-year olds in my class got up and gave a short couple-minute talk on the things they were grateful for and why (we put a big emphasis on why to eliminate the long list). I was very impressed by them. It made me think about how blessed I am. I am one of those people that looks at what is right in front of me, that little speck of something, and doesn't look around to see everything else.

So, I am writing them down cause it feels better to let it out.

1. I am grateful for my beautiful daughter. She just loves me, no matter what. She giggles at me, always wants me near her, and really NEEDS me. There aren't too many people or things in life like that.

2. I am so thankful for my husband. I can be a bum sometimes, but he is always there to love me enough to let me know so I can be better. He really believes in me. And right now, he loves me enough to stay over at our house until all hours of the night and all Friday and Saturday so that he can give my my dream of getting in by Christmas.

3. I am grateful for in-laws who let us live in their basement and eat some of their food. And give free labor for the house. And take care of Kaylee so I can help out with the house.

4. I'm grateful for all my friends and family and how you love and support us. I think about how much you all do for us. THANKS!

There was my thank-a-mony. But I just felt so blessed to be around and acquainted with so many wonderful people.

Late Halloween Pics

Halloween at Corn Belly's in Lehi. It was fun!

More Brick

As you can see, we have more brick done

Blessings

Kaylee is quite a ham. I love to get her to laugh and giggle. She is getting to such a fun age where she loves to get into everything (which is a drawback), but she is just so fun to watch when she gets into everything. You can just see how curious she can be. And she loves attention, but if it is too much she plays her coy "shy" game. I feel like this is such a fun age!

And she is now standing and walking around with the help of chairs, mom, tables, bookcases, etc. She gets up on everything and if she is not close to anything she whizzes by crawling to get there. My favorite is that she can get down from standing up, but sometimes forgets how. So you see her desperately holding onto the chair/table while the other hand is reaching down trying to brace her fall. The tuck and roll is another one of her favorites. We will keep working on the preferable method of just sitting back (much less dangerous and fewer bruises!).

We went to visit/have lunch with Clayton today and I was just thinking about how blessed I am (and we all are). How often I drive around (usually late) in a hurry and don't notice all the beautiful changing colors, or the bright fall day, or the nice people who open the door for me cause I have hands full. Or the nice husband who works all day and night or the cute little girl who wants nothing more than for me to hold her and laugh with her. Cheesy, yes, but today I remembered why God has asked us to count our blessings. Hope you enjoy the pictures. And I hope you like her pigtails!

Here are the latest pictures of the house. Yay for sheet rockers and brick-layers! I give a shout out to all of them in the world.

Real Work

Now some real work is getting done. You can hopefully see that the roof is totally done, the glass block windows are done, the brick has started and we are getting our retaining walls done in the back. We originally were going to use retaining wall block, but Kristi wanted to use boulders because she liked to look better. It cuts down on the gardening area, but we will still have some room. Oh, and we have started insulating, the blue stuff between the studs is a spray in foam that expands, so as the insulators spray it in, it fills all the small voids and cracks. It is an excellent insulator for both temperature and noise. We are building our home to energy star standards, so when it is built (according to our energy inspector) it will be 36% more energy efficient that a home built to the standard building codes. Overall is has been an added cost of about $4,000; however, we qualify federal tax credits and rebates from Rocky Mountain Power and Questar Gas. The value of the tax credits and the rebates is about $3,800, so the true added cost is insignificant on a mortgage; furthermore, we will have a significant savings in utility costs. We find it to be a wise investment.

Tagged

Well, I have been tagged by Kathi. I don't usually do things like this, but I enjoyed hearing all the funny and different things about her, so I'll try it.

So, random and/or weird. . . hmm. . .


1. So, you have heard of adrenaline-junkies. I am not sure what the exact opposite of that is, but I am it. If it was in the dictionary, my picture would be by it. Anything that is a little scary and gets your blood pumping gets my worry-wart brain going and just freaks me out. My poor husband has found that out the hard way with his love of jeeping. After a few years of marriage, I am getting better and at our last Moab trip, I drove for a mile. That was HUGE. You think he had caught a 50-pound fish by how proud he was of me!

2. I have never been skiing. I live in a state that has the best snow, or so the license plate says, but I have never been. My friend Brenna hurt her knee the first time she went skiing, maybe that plays into it. . .

3. I snore, or so my husband says. I am not sure that I believe him, but if he is right, then that is weird.

4. I went white-water rafting while I was 2 1/2 months pregnant. Amazingly, I was less sick on the trip than at home. Maybe the seasick movement and already being sick is like two negatives equaling a positive. Lots of fun and glad I went, but will probably not do it again.

5. I have a bad memory. I have few childhood memories, not because I didn't have a great childhood, but because I just plain don't remember. In fact, if you make me upset, give me 10 minutes and I forget why I was upset. The downside is that if I make you mad, in 10 minutes I will probably make you even more mad because I forgot why I made you upset.

6. To refute number 5, My sister, Cheri, and I still remember a song (and sing it) that we learned from a park ranger/wildlife person while "camping" in California almost 15 years ago. It is the epitome of weird and random. Here goes:

"Bats eat bugs, they don't eat people. Bats eat bugs, they don't fly in your hair. Bats eat bugs and insects for dinner, that's why their flying up there."

7. I am married to former-almost-child-star! Clayton had a speaking part in Sandlot. His part got cut and they didn't tell him. Sad days. He was almost in a few other movies, but things didn't work out. But hey, he still gets small royalty checks from Sandlot to ease his pain.

And I tag:


Brenna

Lara

Misty

Emilie

Brooke B.

Brooke C.

Darci

All their blogs have links on my sidebar. Hopefully you have fun realizing how crazy and interesting we all are!

Naked Baby

For cuteness now and for her embarrassment later, we took some cute pictures in the bath. She is just so darn cute splashing and talking in the bath.

Learning to crawl

So, we were in St. George as a family last week and it was Kaylee's eight month birthday (if there is such a thing) and she showed us that she was learning to crawl. This is 4 days later, and she looks like she is figuring it out. We are also excited because her first tooth came through about the same time, although all the fussiness of teething isn't so much fun.

Good grip

So we think that Kaylee just might make a good rock climber. Dad thinks that would be SWEET!

Learning to Swim

Okay, so we aren't really learning to swim and this is an old video, but we thought we would post it any way. Kaylee, mommy, and grandma are spending time in the pool and grandma was teaching Kaylee and mommy about babies and mommies learning to swim.

Moving Along

Push on the caption bubble next to the person icon in the left corner to get a blurb about what the pictures are!

Ouch!!

Well, Clayton came hopping in (quite cute to see a grown man hopping, but I don't say these things aloud) on Saturday evening. He had been doing the thankless job of cleaning up all the trash accumulated on our lot after framing. When he was at the dump, he fell out of his truck and landed on sawdust that was slippery enough to make his foot fold under his leg. We had an eventful couple hours at the Instacare. Luckily, his foot was not broken, but definitely not feeling well. I took a picture, though it doesn't do justice to how gross it looks:) He is hobbling around quite nicely now. If there is any silver lining to this cloud, it is that at least it doesn't seem like he is too hurt and can hopefully get started on shingles and brick soon for our house!!

Spitting: yucky or not so yucky?

I just wanted to write a note about how cute kids are (most especially my bias towards my daughter). She likes to spit. And while this should be a disgusting habit that we frown upon, it isn't. It is so adorable and I often giggle like a small child when I see it. We have spitting wars. She does it, then me, and so on.

I have decided that having kids turns you in a child again and makes you very old with responsibility at the exact same time.

p.s. did I mention that despite our fun spitting wars together, she has says dadadadada all the time? where is the loyalty?

Trusses

Now it is really starting to look like a house. Framing should be done by the end of next week. Then we can get the other subs in so we can get our four way inspection and start laying brick.

Taking Shape

So, we were a little discouraged when we got back from Chicago and not a stick of lumber had been nailed in place for our house. Well, we now we don't feel so bad. We have some of the exterior walls up and tomorrow all of the exterior walls should be close to being done. The only problem is that now Clayton has to start laying brick and putting the shingles on, so we will probably slow way down. But our goal is still to make it in before Christmas. We will just keep hoping things fall into place.

First Flight

As you can see we went to Chicago as a family while Clayton was there for a training related to his job. We weren't going to drive all the way, so we took a chance a flew with a near 7 month old baby. After hearing some horror stories from family and friends, we were quite nervous.


To our delight, aside from the normal baby fussiness, Kaylee did quite well on the 3.5 hour flight. Both the trip out and the return flight went well. The return flight was especially nice because the woman at the gate moved the person sitting next to us so our little family could have an open seat and extra room. Thanks American Airlines (but not really since you made us pay to check our bags) for moving that unknown person.

Chicago

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

We need to get some pictures off of our phone, so this isn't comprehensive. You can still enjoy a brief show of our trip to Chicago. Special thanks are due to the Pike family, for sponsoring our trip so we didn't have to sleep in the Hostel and carry our bags everywhere. Thanks again for a great time and the help. (By the way, Clayton went to be trained for work, but that isn't exciting so we didn't chronicle it)

Curly Hair

If we had the pictures of Kristi and I when we were younger you would see some curly hair, so we think that Kaylee is going to have some very curly hair. Here is a picture of here after a bath showing how her hair will have curls. (Thanks to Joe and Marilyn Pike for letting us stay over) While we were in Chicago, the humidity really brought out the curls but we didn't get any pictures of here showing the curls

Floors!

We now have our concrete floors in the basement and the garage. This means that are ready for the framing. Progress is moving along well. However, we still need to find someone to take our dirt. If you know of anyone please tell us.

Thanks for looking, and the pictures are in the link below (if this works)

She's growing up.

Just a quick word to others who may the same situation. I went in to work yesterday to do a few things and left Kaylee home with Grandma Fulton. This is a good practice, because I am going back to work next week. I will be working about 2 days a week this school year.

Kaylee woke up as I was leaving and Grandma went in to take care of her. I came in to give her a kiss as I left. Well, she was fine when I in, but she started screaming knowing that mommy was usually the one to come get her in the mornings. I heard that scream continue as I walked down the hall and out to my car. I love my job and I am glad to be doing speech therapy, but that was a hard realization that she can't watch me like when she was younger.

I had to put in a sad face to go with the situation. But she was okay, had a great day with grandma and it will be good to her to be with people other than mommy and daddy.

Kisses

Well, just thought I would share a cute moment. Kaylee woke up a little earlier than normal today and I put her in bed with me for a little while. She likes to get up on her hands and look around. While she was doing that, she leaned towards me put her open mouth on my cheek. She proceeded to intermittently lick my face and then blow softly to make a funny sound. She then would then lean away, lean back, and repeat the process. So I got 2 or 3 fun kisses from Kaylee today. My favorite was one of the first kisses. She sat open mouthed on my cheek blowing and licking and then she took her hand to feel my face like she likes to do. But in her feeling my face, she got a few fingers up my nose. So I had her licking and blowing on my face with a few fingers up my nose. Oh the joys of motherhood:)


So I obviously don't have a picture of her giving me kisses, but I seem to have a hard time adding a post and not putting a picture of Kaylee. So, here is a cute one of her yesterday.

Sundays

It was a crazy Sunday with bumps and scratches. First, during sacrament, Kaylee was given one of the little plastic water cups to play with. She was enjoying herself with the smaller half of the cup for quite a while. Then, without Clayton or I seeing, she flipped it around and got the whole cup stuck in her mouth and the edge was just sharp enough to cut her gums! Who knew it was possible? So, we ended up having a very upset baby with gums that were bleeding!

Then, that night, she was playing with the banister and had her arms resting against it. Then, all of a sudden, she pulled both of her hands out that she was resting on and bumped her head pretty good on the banister. We should have taken a picture last night, but I didn't until just now. So, last night, the entire side of her forehead right above her left eye was red with a very purple bruise. You can see the small bruise there now if you look closely. It looks like a small purple circle.

Just wanted you to see her first bruise!

So I couldn't figure out how to flip the picture of the potty. But these are the latest pictures of the house. The black stuff helps so that moisture doesn't get into the basement. And the window wells give a way for people to get out of the basement in an emergency. Right now, there are plenty of ways to get out.

Stay tuned, the big piles of dirt will be greatly reduced today and the rest of this week!

American Idol

So, I thought I would share a funny moment. Kaylee and I visit Clayton about every week and have lunch with him up in downtown Salt Lake. So, we have been taking Trax because of gas prices, besides it being kinda fun to ride a train.

Well, we went up there yesterday and had a wonderful lunch. On the way home, I remembered that American Idol is in town doing auditions. How did I remember? There were about three or four people that had just come from signing up for an audition. Little did I know, Kaylee and I were walking onto a whole audition there on the train. These people were giving concerts of some of the songs they had chosen to sing and performing them right there on the train. They were not bad, but it was interesting to see their complete enthusiasm.

But, my favorite was when were going through Murray and they got so excited about that being the town David Archuleta (the almost American Idol last year) is from. Good luck to them all and it made for an interesting ride.

Certification

So, I wanted to just add a few notes. First, very exciting!! I got my letter from ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) saying that I have been "approved" and am now a CERTIFIED Speech-Language Pathologist. So, I thought that was worthy of a post. Oh, and lucky me, there a is a $100 frame they will sell me to put my paper in that states that I am now certified. I think I will pass. . .

There is now concrete in the hole in our dirt!

So a quick update on the house! Here are the forms (I believe that is what they are called) so that they can make the footings for the house out of concrete.Here is Clayton checking them out after they are poured. They were poured where the walls will be in our basement (especially load-bearing walls)
And here are the foundation walls. They are behind the wood that you see. This is the side of our house.
And this is the front of our house. That opening in front is our garage with the garage wall next to it.

And so the process continues!! We will keep you updated!!

Fun in Phoenix with the Family

We spent last weekend in Phoenix with my family. Here she is spending time with Grandma Burnside. And then she went for the first time in a big pool. Here she is swimming with Daddy!I think she spent a little too much time in the pool, cause look at her feeties when we got out.

Just some extra pictures

Just wanted to post some super cute pictures. The first is just cute--she was getting sleepy and that is when she will let you snuggle with her.

We also went to Four Corners last week and that is the picture of us frying in 4 different states.

The next two are just funny pictures with her pacifier. For the first one, she was just playing on the floor and all of a sudden we see that she has her pacifier just sitting on her face like that. And the next one is her doing a combination of sucking her thumb and the pacifier at the same time.

And I thought I would throw in the last one to show off the cute flowers that I got for my anniversary. I never posted the picture of the beautiful flowers that Clayton got for me in my favorite color. Such a sweetie pie!