"Dirts" at Grandpa's

Logan's company is developing the land adjacent to Grandpa's farm, so one weekend when we were at Grandpa's me and Chap walked over and took a couple pictures.

Family Reunion

While Logan was STILL RAFTING my family had a family reunion in Junction, UT.
It was actually pretty cool because my Great-Grandparents house is for sale and the realtor gave us the code to get in and tour it.  Very unique opportunity, and very memorable.  Especially when Chap fell down the cellar stairs and got a bloody nose:(  Poor kid, but he's tough!

Moab

While Logan took the scouts from our ward rafting, the kids and I went to Moab with Anisa and her kids to play the days away.  SO MUCH FUN!

Full Load:)

Me and OREO

Lots of Balloon Animals

Ken's Lake

Canyonlands

Their Awesome city pool

Birthday Buddies!

We even found 32 cent Oreos at Shopko.  Yes, we bought all of them:)

Group shot of the whole gang at Mesa Arch.  I didn't realize how crazy we were until I looked at this picture and realized we had a lot of kids!

So fun! And thanks to Anisa for the ride:)

Dentist

What a difference 6 months makes!  Chap loved the dentist this time and was so chatty he had the ladies laughing the whole time! This was Merit's first trip, and although I didn't get any pictures of her in chair with the hygienist, she really liked sitting in the empty chair while Chap was getting cleaned and examined!  Hooray! We are still cavity free!

The Great Wall Removal of 2016

This post is about 3 months overdue.  I always want to wait until everything is "done" to take after pictures, but I know myself, and I'm not a decorator, and my house will never look "done".  This is real life people:) Only cleaner:):)

The wall dividing our front room from our kitchen dining areas has bothered me since day one.  Seriously, this was almost a deal breaker for me and the fact that the wall made it so the front door entered into the kitchen/dining area drove me to the brink of insanity.  The problem with simply removing the wall was the hallway.  It has a dropped ceiling to accommodate duct work and it was kind of a dead space anyway.  Simply removing the wall was not an option. We have literally spent 5 1/2 years brainstorming how to fix it.  Move the kitchen?  Expensive and not really helpful.  Move the stairs?  Hmmm.  But that would mess up the basement.  Etc.  For FIVE AND A HALF YEARS!  When we finally settled on the perfect solution of putting a hall closet in the current living room door and opening up the wall  between the kitchen/dining and living room, we started within a month.  AHHH!  I don't know how I lived with it before, I am so in love!

Lots of pictures!
Living room before.  The front door of the house is behind that wall.

 Kitchen side of the wall before.

We panicked when we tore the drywall off and saw this X framed into the wall.  I literally cried.  We were certain that this wasn't load bearing, but this was definite cause for concern.  We called our neighbor Dan the contractor and he told us it was most likely a shear wall, which would be no big deal if we added one somewhere else.  So we put it in the back wall of the closet we added.

Here you see the new closed being framed in and the old wall is gone!  Already so much better.  

Recessed lights are in and the popcorn ceiling scraped and the drywall up and patched and partially re-textured.  

This pretty much speaks for itself:)

Starting to put the flooring down.  We ended up going with laminate, mostly because of the price.  It's inexpensive, and really beautiful.  Everywhere we went looking I said I wanted something interesting with a lot of grain, not too dark and without big gaps for stuff to get stuck in.  And I was shocked at how little there was to choose from.  Seriously, I don't want your beautiful dark shiny flooring with massive cracks for mac & cheese to get wedged in.  No thanks!  We finally found one and bonus! It was discontinued and heavily discounted.  So lucky!

 My new favorite view of the house!

So in all we ended up adding 11 recessed lights, all new plugs and switches, added a hall closet (this having a pantry now), new flooring, texture, and paint.  We are so happy with how it all turned out and we seriously don't know how we lived with it the way it was before.  It was by far the messiest thing I have ever experienced, but, like childbirth (haha), I hardly even remember that part, only the great new house we are enjoying now.  

Independence Day

We started the morning by going up to Kanarraville to attend the parade and go to the "program" and eat lunch at the Cobble Crest with Logan's side of the family.  

 Such a pretty little girl! (side note: She has recently learned to say Uh Oh! and it is hilarious!  She also thinks every animal she sees is a "kitty kitty")

Merit with Uncle Heff.

Then we drove back to St. George to meet my friend Jessica to trade her our extra Sawyer Brown tickets for a snow cone the size of my face.  Yes, it made us sick:)

 Then we did smoke balls and pop its (Chap's favorite fireworks) at home and ate dinner.

Then we headed over to Dixie to claim our spot on the football field for the Sawyer Brown concert and fireworks!  It was SO HOT when we got there and we were thankful that we brought out giant CAT umbrella.  

 We were close enough to the stage to enjoy without it being too loud for the kiddos. They estimated about 15,000 people there, but it didn't really feel crowded.  We had so much fun!  It was 2 hours of songs I forgot I knew.  I love how music really takes you back in time and suddenly you remember all the words.

 Great seats for the fireworks. I'll do this again next year, even though getting tickets was kind of a pain.

This is my favorite picture from the whole day!  Chap put on his ear muffs and fell asleep about halfway through the 23 minute fireworks show.  Such a funny boy!

70th Birthday Party

My mom turned 70 on July 2nd, so we threw together a little party up at the City Creek campground above her hometown of Junction.  Logan cooked dutch oven and we had a great time until it was interrupted at the end by a pretty epic hail storm, very memorable!

I made everyone take a family picture, which they hated, but we have like zero, so even if Marshal and Justin are missing, this will have to do, haha.

This is the only picture I got of her present.  I even cut the lumber myself.  The left one is Chap's fingerprint flowers.  You can tell which ones I assisted on (I hope) and the right is a little bird made from Merit's foot.  That one really could have gone either way with my meager artistic talents, but luckily, the foot did all the hard work.  I may have to make one of those for our house, it turned out so cute!  

Happy Birthday Mom!