Almost Done

Here are some updated pictures of the remodel.
this is a view from the Laundry Room looking into the kitchen.
this is looking into the living room from the dining room.-No more fireplace in the corner! Also a great side view of my new pantry.
Standing in the front entryway looking towards the kitchen.

Sleeping Beauty

The week after school got out Jake and Madisyn were able to participate in the Missoula Children's Theater production of Sleeping Beauty. At first they were disappointed with their casting as Trolls but they ended up having a lot of fun. I tried to get Sam to participate but he didn't want to, although I think he regretted it afterwards. He said that he will definitely to it next year.

I love the Missoula productions. It is amazing to me that in one week they can put together such a great production. Not that it is perfect but the kids seems to know all of their lines, they learn a number of songs and they learn the choreography that go with them all in such a short time.

The Wall

Things are really starting to move along. This weekend we went and picked out the tile for our counter tops and bought the wood flooring we are going to use in the dining room and kitchen. Jake and Roger spent two long nights and were able to get all of the drywall hung. Including where we took down part of the wall and made a mess on the ceiling, as well as where we took out the stove pipe. It turned out to be quite a project, mainly because the archway that connects the two walls is at an angle. It was a mess to drywall and a big hassle for the mudder today. Speaking of which the drywall mudder came this morning and worked for 7 hours filling all of the great holes and gaps that we had all over the room. He also is fixing some cracks he found as well as some old very unsightly repairs that were not done very well the first time. While he is at it we are having him round out the peak of the vaulted ceiling a little bit. It had come to a point in the middle but it was very uneven and quite an eyesore. -In our opinion anyway. It took the guy, Jeramey, awhile to it all but it looks really good. He is optimistic that they may be able to spray the texture on tomorrow which will mean I can starting painting Thursday. Yea me!!! I'm staring to run very low on energy but I just keep telling myself that we are getting down to the cool stuff now and are almost done. I called on the carpet and it should be here tomorrow, so I'm going to go ahead and schedule the installers for the end of next week. Hopefully we will be ready for them. I have so many "little jobs" painting projects that I need to do like the base boards and doors, but I don't know if I'll get to them or not by then.(not the best time for all the kids to be out of school) The painting I have to get done is the ceilings and walls of the kitchen, dining room and family room so we can put the wood floors in and install the cabinets.

Yesterday I was also able to get the carpet and pad pulled out of the dining room as well as get all of the staples that were used on pad pulled up. Man what a job that was! Then Jake and I unloaded and brought in the wood flooring. There were 21 boxes. Jake was not a happy camper since he had to bring in most of them. It seems like an awful lot of flooring, I'm hoping I will be able to take some of it back when we are done. It is very beautiful. It is the Thomasville Jotoba Hardwood engineered wood flooring from Home Depot. The nice thing is that the top layer of wood is thick enough that if you wanted to it could be sanded and refinished up to three times. It comes with a gorgious finsih though so I doubt we would want to do anything like that, but it is nice to have the option. Also, it hopefully means that this flooring will hold up to the test of time. It has a 30 year warranty but after reading it I was not all that impressed. It had so many exclusions that I'm not really sure what is warrentable. Jake, Roger and Luke. My hard working crew!


View from the dining room.


Last night at midnight when we were starting to finish up I started having builders remorse. I am praying that this wall idea of mine it not going to turn out to be one of those armature remodel "project gone wrong" stories!! Sometimes I think it is really neat and other times I wonder what I was thinking to go and close in the room like that, as well as, if the lower wall height was the right decision. Does it look good or does it look strange and out of place. I guess only time will tell.

Ward Talent Show

Saturday June 7th we had a Primary sponsored ward talent show. It was lot of fun. There was a BBQ and lots of good friends to enjoy the night with. We are blessed to be members of a church and ward that provide such great activities.

Here is Madisyn during her dance she performed.

This is the group of our Young Women doing a skit. Left to right Jacy Reynolds, Cassy Bennett, Mckenzie Skinner, Miranda Jones, Madisyn, Jessica Henson, Heather Chance, Rachel..., Allison Burleson, Adrianna Noriega, Lexie...

This is our Primary Presidency having a Tammy Faye makeover. (Done with their husbands hands.) Left to Right Karen Hyde, Angela Bennett, Becky Reynolds, Julie Bassett

Madisyn in another skit with the Young Women.
Jakob played some Star Wars songs. He did a great job considering he has just recovered from such a serious injury.

Madisyn and her friend Jessica choreographed a dance to Shaina Twain. It was very cute and they had a lot of fun doing it. Here is a video of part of the dance. (press the play button in the left bottom corner of the the picture box to watch)

8 th Grade Gradution

Here are some of the pictures from Jake's 8th grad graduation. The first few are pictures of him and some of his Church friends that graduated with him. A few of we mom's took our boys out to dinner and a movie after the ceremony. It was a late night ( we got home at 1:30 am) but we had a really fun time. Thanks Lesa for arranging it and inviting us!

From left to right: Wyatt Brazell, Lance Johnson, Jake, Austin Bassett, and Austin Noriega

Here are the mom's with the boys in the back ground at Sizzler's.

From left to right is Lesa Brazell, who invited us all, Amy Johnson, and Julie Bassett

-Mary Noriega was sick and wasn't able to come with us.

Jake had a steak dinner. He said it was great and he would like to go back there. Then afterward we went and watched Indian Jones and the Crystal Skull. It was pretty good at keeping us all awake!
This a some of his graduating class. I believe that there were 289 all together.

Jake wasn't too excited about the whole graduation thing. He thought it was stupid that they were celebrating making it through 8th grade. Roger kept telling him that not too long ago it was really something to get an 8th grade education. Roger says he had grandparents that even didn't get to go through that much school.

We are proud of him and the accomplishments that he has made and know that there will be many yet to come.

Sam's Graduation

Tuesday June 3rd was Sam's Promotion ceremony. The kids had been working really hard on some very cute songs. We really enjoyed the program. Roger even got all choked up seeing the future of our world standing in front of us.

Sadly Sam's teacher couldn't be there because she had to have her appendix out the day before!


Boy, he is just so cute sometimes.
Mr. Chapin the Principal and Miss Kendal, the other kindergarten teacher.

Here is a super cute video of the kids singing their song about what they did in Kindergarten.

FHE Geocaching

Geo Caching is another fun way to use your GPS. There are a number of websites devoted to giving caches coordinates and clues to find them. The official one is geocaching.com

Here is the official definition from the website.

"Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for GPS users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a GPS unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the Internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache."

Since Roger got his GPS I have been wanting to go Geocaching. The Gull's, a family in our ward go a lot so they suggested that we have a family home evening together and try it out. They showed us how to download sites from the Internet and then how to go find the site. There are two caches at the Out of Town Park that we went and found. Then when we were finished with those we went and found a cache they had places for our FHE. Sam found it and brought it back to the table. The lesson was about what our treasures are. We each wrote down something and then we opened the box and got to choose a treasure from the box. Then we had brownies that they had brought.

It was a great time. They had planned everything so we basically just showed up at the park.

I work with Carla in the RS Pres. and really enjoy her. I'm really sad because they are going to be moving about the 14th of June. But I'm glad we had a chance to go make this fun memory.

Sam found our FHE cache and is bringing it to the table.

Maddy found the first cache we went looking for. It was hidden under the bark on an old cottonwood stump.

Jake and Roger are learning how to download site coordinates from the Internet.

Luke and Carson were having a ball tossing pebbles in the air while they waited for us to get going.

More cabinets

Here are some more of the pictures we took last night. This is the pull out trash bin that will be between the Fridge and the sink. It will have hardware on the bottom two drawer fronts so it will give the appearance of being three drawers like the rest of the kitchen.

This is the full pantry. The very bottom two shelves will pull out since they would be so hard to reach into.
This as you can probably tell, is the corner lazy susan. Joe built the spinning trays himself and they are incredibly space efficient.
The long big cabinets are my pan drawers. The little ones next to them are going on the other side of the stove.

Almost done

We went over to the cabinet makers last night to decide on placement of the outer hardware. Here are some pictures. Joe the cabinet maker has done and incredible job. They are just beautiful.


This is one of the pan drawers. It has a lid tray that slides from one side to the other. To access the items below it.

More of the pan drawers.
This is the peninsula it will have a bar hanging into the dinning area. The other side is 4 beautiful panels.
This is the island that will hold the dishwasher, cookbooks on the shelves and cookie trays on the other side. It is also finished with panels on the two other sides.

Remodel

Here are some pictures of the messes we have been making.

This is what things looked like last Saturday!

Sam is painting in my bathroom.

The foggy look is the drywall dust. It is everywhere in the house right now.




Roger building on to the wall.






I went to work on the fireplace. Boy was it a job!

Roger's Birthday

It was Roger's 38th birthday! My is he getting on in years. We had a nice evening together as a family with an ice cream filled chocolate cake. He got the GPS he has been wanting for a few years, but wasn't too excited about it at first. I think he is enjoying it more now that he got to take it sailing and we tried it Goecacheing.

Timber!

Hi

Here I go at my first attemp at blogging.

Here are pictures of our first tree casualty. We have had a very windy Spring, and on April 30 2008, just after school the wind finally took one of the main branches down from one of the trees in the back yard.

Maddy and her friend Jessica were sitting in the sun room when suddenly they heard and loud crack and saw the huge limb come crashing down. I was in the living room with Jessica's mom, Tonya and my visiting teachers, Rita Henninger and Lindy Lewis. The girls came running in to tell us what happened. We then spent the rest of the day worried that more might come down. Thankfully that was the only one and no one was hurt and no damage was done.

A few days later Roger went at it with an ax. Now it is sitting in a corner of the yard waiting for the scouts to come chop it up for firewood for their camp outs.