Father's Day Weekend

I just uploaded some pictures from my camera and just wanted to blog about a couple of them...Most of the pictures are honestly of my niece, Elsie and nephew, Colton. We were over at my mom's house a couple weekends ago for my cousin's baby shower and then the next day for Father's Day. I could eat both of these little stinkers up, they are such a joy to be around and so cute! I know I could be biased just because they are the first niece and nephew in our family, but I think they are the funniest, cutest kids out there. Being around them makes me excited at the thought of Will and me having kids in the future. I want them to be just like Elsie and Colt, or at least have colorful personalities like they both have. I think Bryce and Mary (their parents) have done such an awesome job of raising them thus far and don't baby them too much. Elsie is like a small adult and really does understand the things you say and really listens to you. I love that I can actually talk to her and know that she will remember and she responds to questions and comments we say to her. I know that Colt will be like Elsie in that regard, but right now he is too busy being a boy and would rather be rough and tumble than sit and listen to you read a book or try to talk to him. He can really get me laughing though sometimes, he can be so easily amused and laughs his head off, which in turns makes everyone around him laugh too! I am so glad that I get to live so close to them and that I get to be around to watch them grow up and be a part of their lives the way that I am.

Elsie and Colt both love all dogs. My sister, Betsy, brings her dog, Kodiak to dinner most Sunday's and the kids just want to squeeze him and love on him, and he gets a little nervous around them.



Josh, my brother, also brings his dog, Cosmo (or Mo Mo, as Josh calls him) most of the time and he really does his best to try to stay away from Elsie and Colt trying to clobber him, or he tries to steal the food from their hands as often as possible. He's a pretty funny dog and loves Josh more than anything, so when I caught them sitting side by side on the couch together I had to get the shot!

New Fridge and Stove

Our stove in our house was pretty gross and old. When I bought the house with the girls 3 years ago that was one of the first items we said we were going to replace. Clearly that didn't happen...Will and I have been checking them out here and there and after shopping around a couple of weeks ago found that Home Depot had the best deal going on that week. We were just going to go for the cheapest stove, but after looking and talking we decided we wanted a nicer one that could stay nice for a few years and hope we won't have to update it when we sell the house in a few years. While we were shopping we found such a great deal on a stainless steel side by side fridge that matched our stove we were planning on getting, so we went for it and got both of them! It's so nice to not have a fridge that is leaking water constantly and a stove that doesn't stink up the house everytime you use it! And I've been doing some baking and cooking and they work so well, I haven't burned anything yet, which was virtually impossible with the old stove! And to top it off, the fridge and stove actually match now! We have plans to update the whole kitchen in the next year (at least that's the plan right now) and so it's nice to have our major appliances taken care of already. We don't have a dishwasher now, so that is next on our list of appliances to buy. Will and I came up with a plan of how we'd like to do the kitchen and I can't wait till it actually happens. As you can see from the pictures below, we have hardly any counter space right now and half of it's taken up by the dish rack. I get frustrated sometimes when I'm trying to cook and prepare a meal, when I have to clean up after each step to continue! So when we do get everything set up we'll more than double our counter space, so it will make the kitchen more workable.

Here's the before and after:





And my way of telling the stove and fridge that I love them:




After posting last time about working on painting the house, it's come to a stand still. First we just couldn't decide a color to use and then we decided to just go with White again, but then we've been busy and this rain has not been our friend either! But now that the weather looks like it's going to stay nice I think Will and I are going to finally finish our house painting project. I spent almost 8 hours last week staining our fence and painting the old playhouse in the corner of the yard, and now I just want the whole backyard to look complete and not have 4 different colors on the wall anymore. One day we'll continue on and repaint the whole house and put up shutters, but Will likes to go back and forth on what projects take top priority at the time, so we'll see when it all really gets done! :) Do the projects ever end? It does feel good knowing our money isn't being thrown away on crap now, though. We're putting every extra cent into making our house a better place to live and that makes me so happy. I watch a lot of HGTV and always have ideas in the back of my mind what we can do to make the house prettier...too bad Will doesn't see those ideas as brilliant as I do!

A little of this, a little of that...

I haven't blogged for a while. We've been preparing the outside of the house to be painted, which is a slow and tedious process. We've been cleaning all the windows, and re caulking the edges. We are scraping off the paint, and Will is using a grinder to really get all the paint off the house to start fresh. We've also tried 3 different colors of paint and can't seem to find one that we both agree on and like. Originally we wanted to do a sage green, but the 2 greens we chose were a no-go...then I moved my idea to doing a taupe, but that color isn't working out as well as I thought it would. Because paints have a different base in them, sometimes they just don't turn out the right color when the computer goes to mix them up. So my taupe turned out a purple color, and although it was a pretty color, I do not want to be the people with the purple house! Right now Will is on a weird kick of trying to do 3 colors and doing them in layers and then running the grinder over it to have some of the layers pop through, etc. to have our house look like some sort of art project, I guess. I am so not into the idea, but he is so gung-ho on the idea there's not talking him out of it right now. He's gotten some green, white and yellow (because those apparently are the colors he wants) samples and has painted them on and will grind it to see how it works. I already have a ghetto house in Kearns, let's hope we don't make our house blend in more by making it as ugly as most of the houses on the block! Ha Ha! I may be surprised and find that his idea works, but the colors he has right now I'm thinking are a little too bright.




May is a busy month for my family with birthdays! May 4th is Kylie and my grandpa's bday, the 8th is Jared and Josh's, Betsy's husband, Brant's is on the 12th, Devin and I celebrate ours on the 14th, Will's is on the 16th, and my mom and sister in law Autumn have their's on the 17th, and then last but not least, my niece Elsie and brother in law, Dave have their birthdays on the 24th...Oh yeah, and of course I can't forget my mother in law on the 27th! My mom is so good at making sure she remembers everyone's birthdays and had a whole bunch of dinner parties to celebrate. I convinced her after the 3rd party to just combine Brants, Wills and Devin and my bdays into one dinner, since we're all starting to get sick of one another! :) But then I ended up seeing most of them again anyway when Brant had his birthday celebration last Friday night and then Will and I had a BBQ at our house to celebrate ours. Then everyone was there again on Sunday to make sure Mom got the birthday she deserves!

Will and I decided since we just got done with our backyard that we should splurge a little on our birthdays and went out and got patio furniture! I went out and bought a bunch of pots for flowers a few weeks ago, and had some tiki torches from when I bought the house from my housewarming party. Our backyard feels complete and Will and I spend a lot of our extra time out there now. Will surprised me with us going and picking out a fire pit for my birthday to complete the patio. We got to try it out at our BBQ on Saturday and I love it! I'm now trying to convince Will to let me bring a t.v outside so we can watch movies together out there...He'll break down one day, he always does. :) Now if we could just finish our painting project, then the backyard will be complete and gorgeous! We've decided that since our backyard looks so good, we are going to lay sod in the front yard next spring. That grass has had trouble the whole time I've lived here and I've kind of given up on working so hard for almost no results. I need to get out there and do something to make it presentable, though. I haven't given it any attention in the last couple months, except mowing and fertilizing the lawn a couple times and it could use a little TLC right about now.

Finally!

I am happy to announce my backyard is finally finished! When I bought this house 3 years ago there were things I wanted to accomplish on the backyard that never quite got finished...they were just too big of projects for me to take on by myself. Now that I've got a good ole hubby around to help with these things, I'm starting to see projects get started and finished with his help!

Will and I started a couple of months ago by building a new gate on the side of the house for the dog run...then spent a couple of days and took a couple of truckloads of junk to the dump (mostly branches from the previous owner stashing them there) from cleaning up the side of the house. We then worked on clearing up the backyard of the branches I've piled up from cutting down a couple of Chinese Elm trees, as well as from my apple tree that split last year. We were able to rip out a couple more small Chinese Elms and a couple of HUGE flowering bushes as well as digging and ripping up a couple of stumps and grinding another couple under the ground enough to lay sod over them. Will has been such a hard worker and I am so glad we were partners in making the backyard look beautiful. Will spent a few hard working days putting in a sprinkler system all on his own and I couldn't be happier that I won't have to move a sprinkler around and will be able to water the lawn in the wee hours of the morning, when it's most effective! Here a a bunch of pictures showing the transformation over the last 2 months...
Beware, there are going to be a TON of pictures to go through, it was a long process!



















Now all that's left to do is accessorize my patio and make that brighter to match our bright green grass! We have tons more projects lined up for us to do to make the house look better...paint the outside of the house and put up new siding and rain gutters along the tops of the house/roof. I need to finish the front yard...I tore up all my rose bushes and now need to find new bushes and flowers to plant there, as well as nurse my lawn in the front back to health, it's not looking so good right now! One day, huh?

Academy of Country Music Awards

I just got done watching the awards show tonight and just wanted to blog about it! :) I look forward to these shows and always cross my fingers for Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood to win anything! They are my favorites and deserve not only the nominations they get, but the awards they win! Keith didn't win anything major tonight, he took home the award along with Brad Paisley for vocal event of the year for "Start a Band"...but he performed and sounded so good and I'm totally diggin his new hairstyle! ;)

Carrie also sounded GREAT when she performed, although the dress she wore kind of had me distracted...it was kind of an odd dress, huge and strange, but since she's Carrie and I think she's gorgeous in anything, she can pull it off.

She took home the 2 top honors tonight...Female Vocalist of the Year and Entertainer of the Year! She is always so cute when she accepts her awards, she genuinely seems grateful for the chance to be a part of the country music community. I think she is awesome, so I couldn't be happier to see her take home these awards!

Will is such a good sport and lets me watch these awards shows without complaining...and doesn't make fun of me when I jump up and down when people win awards I think should. I was also happy to see Taylor Swift get the album of the year award...even though I like Carrie's album better, Taylor's album did so well and sold a record amount...Taylor is going places in country! The show was great tonight, I can't wait for the next one!

Sleeping Beauty

Little Elsie Bug

So on Sunday when we got to my mom's house, my sister in law, Mary, and my niece, Elsie greeted us and Mary told me she had a story for me, but to not be offended. They've been reading a lot of books with Elsie lately, but she especially loves to read her Sleeping Beauty book, which is basically just pictures taken from the movie and put into a shortened book version...anyway, she has all the characters named in the book. Aurora is Mary (mommy) and the prince charming is Bryce (daddy)...a couple of the fairies and the kings are both of the grandparents...well for some reason Elsie has picked out the evil witch Maleficent as me! Mary went to get the book and sat down to read it with her...sure enough as soon as she got to a page with Maleficent's picture, Elsie said, "There's Darla, Hi Darla!". Now, she doesn't seem scared of this witch, so maybe it's not as bad as I'm taking it? Ha Ha! Maybe I'll take it as a compliment that she's putting me as a character in her book at all! :)

Cozumel, Mexico

Back in January Will and I went with some of both of our families to Mexico. My parents, older bro and his family, and my younger brother and sister were there...as well as Will's dad and step-mom. We had so much fun! Although I complained that the weather was overcast and rainy the first 3 days, which really does put a damper on what you can and can't do...the ocean was too rough to do anything in, and the wind was too cold to let us stay out and swim for very long...but it was A LOT warmer than it was back home! I always secretly wish it would snow 27 feet while we are gone, in hopes that it will be done for the rest of the year :) but it never seems to happen that way! This year it was just plain COLD while we were gone and man did we feel it when we got back. I wanted to wear a couple short sleeve shirts to show off my tan (which is just tan for my pasty whiteness), but instead I layered as many clothes as I could to keep myself from going into some sort of shock from the cold! While we were there we spent lots of time walking back and forth to town...it was so nice to have such a short walk from our condo. The grocery store was right across the street, and the walk to town was a ten minute leisurely stroll. Most everyday there was at least one, if not 3 or 4 ships docked, so going into town on those days was just insane! You'll find that the store owners will not give you the best price, because they think that you are from the ship and if you really want something you will choose to buy it, since you have to be back on the ship by 4 or 5:00. I got pretty good at my bartering skills this time around...I would tell people, no way...this is my 3rd time here and I've never paid that much for anything like this ever! It's all fun and some of the shop owners are pretty fun to talk to and tease. Will and I walked away with some great finds...I wanted to find a Mexican hand painted plate, with the Aztec calendar. Betsy got one a few years back and there was one in our condo in Cozumel, so I decided that was the item I really wanted to leave with. Unfortunately there are things that come in and out of style and the plate was one of them. I couldn't find one anywhere! After a couple of days of shopping Will and I came across a wooden Aztec calendar...It has a bunch of wooden pieces put in to make the whole plate stay together in one piece. You'll see the picture soon, to know what I mean. Some of them were so beautifully made, while others were sloppy and not worth the money! We spent a good couple of hours walking from store to store to find the best deal. It's funny to hear a store owner telling us the same stories of how the plates are made (all made by hand, no machines) and how some of them have such outrageous prices on them! Some people would more than double the prices of someone else's...In the end we went back to the first store we'd been to. It had the best deal and the best quality of work.

Click on this picture to bring up the bigger photo, so you can see each piece...It's a beautiful calendar.

The whole trip was so much fun. Will got the chance to certify to go scuba diving while we were there. He used the first couple of overcast days to his advantage to get certified. His dad has been bugging him for months to get him to go scuba diving with him, and the silly boy waited till the last possible second. We've known we were coming on this trip since June. He loved scuba diving and seems to think he's going to talk me into getting certified for our next years trip. But until you can get me to enjoy snorkeling for longer than 20 minutes, I don't think it's going to happen! The mask always hurts my face and head (I have a tiny head so the mask always let water in, so I cinch them up as tight as I can stand it, which only last 15 or 20 minutes). I have a fear of drowning, so asking me to dive so many feet under water just isn't gonna happen! :) We went snorkeling a couple of times, Bryce, Clayton and my dad went everyday that they could and most days a couple of times. We went to the Money Bar and The Wall...at the Money Bar we saw a sting ray and followed it for quite some time. Seeing those kinds of things is so cool.



I read 3 books while we were there, and got to take naps most any time I wanted...there was the one day that Will literally dragged my out of the bed to go to the ruins with him and his dad. I'm so glad I had Kylie to come with us! I have never cared about history, so spending a couple of hours walking through some old run down concrete houses is not my idea of fun. Will and his dad loved it, so it made it worth it...I made Will do a lot of shopping with me, so you won't hear me complaining.


I had so much fun being around my niece and nephew the whole trip. I teased my siblings that when we got back Elsie and Colt would call me their favorite aunt...that was not the case. I forget just how much they love Gammy and Gimpy (my parents)...sure they love me and I have fun playing with them, but if those two are around no one else matters! Elsie has such a big personality and is such a hoot to be around! There wasn't a day that passed without laughing at her hundreds of times. She knows she's funny too, so the more you laugh, the more she'll entertain. Mary and Bryce are such good parents to those kids too. They were so fun to watch interacting and doing day to day things with. I am so glad Mary was there for me one evening after having a little bit of a bad day...she is truly a sister to me and knows what to say to make me feel better.




Almost every night I got to have Will to myself for dinner and a walk around town. We got real churros almost every night, oh what I would do for a churro right now! I love being around my family and his, but sometimes it gets to be too much. I can't please everyone, and someone always ends up hurt. I wish there was an easier way to figure out these family vacations. I have a hard time trying to please everyone, and also need to learn that I have to do what makes me and Will happy, and if that includes everyone else, then great! We had a great time with both our families and were so glad we had the chance to go. I can't wait till our next vacation, already!

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At the end of the trip I think we were all happy to come home. Being away from home and the dogs for 10 days is hard. I was fortunate enough to have my best friend Stacey and her fiance Ben spend the week and a half with them. They stayed at our house, so the dogs had constant interaction and attention from them. They love Stacey and can't get enough of her baby, Garrett. Ben is a little bit more relaxed and allows Mia and Bosley to kiss Garrett here and there. :) They love their little cousin!