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.