Exterior house Before and After

We visited with Libby and Paul the other day and she brought it to my attention that I never posted a bunch of the renovations we've been doing to our house.

We're currently in the process of tearing out a wall and that means I'm about 2-3 major changes behind in posting.  The exterior was the first MAJOR thing we did,  It got started almost 2 years ago (oops!) when we did the roof.  I think I posted about that (or not) but I know I never posted the after because the trees grew leaves and obscured the view.  Then last spring we painted the trim and the door and that was a huge transformation.  I'll throw in a few pictures:)

The only true "before" I have of the entire house, even if the dumpster had already arrived.  Notice the chocolate brown trim, the peeling chocolate brown shingles, and, you guessed it, chocolate brown shutters, haha.  

 The Elder's Quorum from our ward came and helped strip 2 layers of shingles off our house.  I would be remiss if I didn't document the fact that the original layer was stapled down, and apparently the staples were in at a variety of angles making it especially frustrating to strip them off.

 See, I told you it was a long time ago.  Look at my tiny helper monkey:)

 Our friends Taylor and Jenny were very helpful with putting the new shingles on.  Josh even showed up one night to help.  Others who helped were Ryan, our friend Glen, and Ron.  I got up there the last day thanks to Anisa being willing to babysit.

 Here is a progress shot. (Oh man, all these Corolla pictures are bumming me out :( )
The roof got finished but then the leaves grew in on the trees and obstructed the view for a good "after".  Then a year went by and I finally talked Logan into painting the exterior.  I don't remember exactly when this was, but we hired Clark (a guy from our ward) to paint it.  I think it may have been after I had Merit. That would explain my confusion and no progress pictures, plus I think it was hot outside because I remember giving him drinks because I thought he was going to die.  Then we got new black shutters and painted the door red.  I was a little worried about doing grey, black and red on a white brick house with brown mortar, but I really love it and I think it looks more modern (even if all the haters wanted us to paint the brick:) OOOH! And you can see my Birthday Boulder in this picture!

We also redid the basement last winter, but I can't take "after" photos right now because all my upstairs furniture is in the basement.  I'll get around to that sometime if I remember:)

Our kid is an artist:)

Chapter's favorite Christmas gift was his little Vtech Kidizoom Camera.  It's been used thouroughly for the last 10 days and it's still alive.  It's been washed once in the bathroom sink (!!!) and it's still going strong on it's first set of batteries. The picture quality isn't great, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it might be operator error:)

Here is a sample of his best work.  We uploaded the pictures and Chap made some editing decisions in Picasa and here are the results.  Haha.  I think the blue one is my favorite.  We might have to get some printed:)

Our little Sunbeam

I can't believe Chap is old enough to be a Sunbeam. He has been saying all week that he is too big for nursery now and I'm pretty sure that was because Grandma Sherry and Grandpa Jim (his nursery leaders) had been prepping him.

Here he is, in all of his 3 year-old Sunbeam glory.  Looking a little shy and a little confident in his new church duds:)  When I asked him if he had fun he told me, "Actually, it was a little bit boring." We almost died laughing.  So blessed to have this one in our family!

"Sometimes Snow is Cold" -Chapter

We went up to Elsinore on Christmas afternoon and drove through a blizzard at least half of the way there.  We even had a pee accident in the thick of it in Paragonah that was really fun to deal with on the side of the road, oh the memories:)

We had fun there, my kids got SPOILED by their aunties and had a blast.  We even got to go sledding on Chap's new sleds from Grandma M.

We were awakened at 6 am by the sound of phantom weed wacking.

Since we went to Toys R Us all Chap could think about was getting a toy week wacker for Christmas, and Santa Delivered:)

Santa brought Chap a week wacker, a baby phone (as per requested) and a stuffed Perry the Platypus.  Merit got a singing purse toy, a lalaloopsie newborn and a large beanie boo.  And Santa stuffed everyone's stocking to the brim!

When we heard the sound of weed wacking in the morning, we got up and Chap had already dumped all the stockings, luckily he remembered what was in which stocking or we could have been terribly confused!

Gift List:
Chap got: Weed Wacker, baby phone, Perry, Lego Duplo set, digital camera, books, headlamp, clothes and a large duffle bag.

Merit got: Purse, doll, beanie boo, dresses, ponies, books, sleepsack and large duffle bag.

Daddy got: a multi-tool and some other small stuff since his custom seat covers for his truck haven't shipped yet:(

Mommy got: a new Shark Rocket vacuum.

Mom and Dad took it easy on the presents because if all goes according to plan, next week at this time we will be in demo mode of redoing the living room, adding a hall closet and moving a wall!  Yay!  It only took 5 1/2 years:)

As always, I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I thought I did, but it was a great morning for all:)

Merry Christmas from the Blakes

Santa

We took the kids to see Santa on Harmony Place this year.  The best of the best as far as Christmas lights go in my opinion and the kids loved Santa!

28th Birthday

I've already alluded to the fact that my birthday was kind of a sad one this year with selling the car.  But it wasn't all bad.  I got some cool stuff, had a YW party and had some fun.

I got a huge lava boulder from Ron and I LOVE IT!
I got a waffle iron and a snowman family from my little fam.
My mom and neices and nephew drove down to visit which was fun.  I got a necklace from my sis and a cd from my mom.
I got a cake and a bunch of hugs from the YW, and some of the very best YW (Alexa, Cierra, and Olivia) brought me cupcakes with a decorated box:) Love them!

Ode to the Corolla

So we decided to sell my Corolla.  It was the smart thing to do and what is best for our family, but that still doesn't mean I'm happy about it.  We really want a van, and this was the best and fastest way to do that, but Logan selling it on my birthday didn't exactly make me happy:)

So this is my tribute to the Corolla.  My Saturn never got a tribute, but hey, this car was family.

This car was the nicest thing I've ever owned and I never really felt like I deserved it since the only reason I got it is because I wrecked my car.  This Corolla took us many places, I grew in this car.  We bought it 5 years ago when I was student teaching.  It took me to countless job interviews, disappointing part time jobs, to the hospital in labor (2 times) and it brought both babies home from the hospital.

Good times Corolla!  You will be greatly missed!

The only thing that made this a little bit easier is that we sold it to a family who was buying it for their missionary who is coming home soon.  They said he's going to college and looking for a "family" car to get married and have a family in.  That made me smile.  I hope my Corolla can be the Ford Escape in his life.  Thinking about that makes me smile.

8 months Grandma Photo Shoot

This little one is 8 months old.  I decided to dress her up in all the stuff my Grandma made for her pictures this month.  It makes me happy.  She's even worn the dress to church a couple times.  We always get lots of comments on it, which I'm sure is code for "Why the heck is your daughter wearing an outdated tricot dress?" But I don't care.  The nightgowns will never get used because they are just too thin and slippery.  But they are kind of adorable in a grandma chic kind of way:)

At 8 months Mer is crawling like a little monkey!  She started crawling on Nov. 11 and started pulling herself up on furniture pretty much immediately.  This girl is in a hurry! Still no teeth, so I suppose I can't blame the radical change in sleep habits on teething anymore.  She has been an angel since day one and mostly only woke up once a night, but this last month has been torture where 2 times up is a treat.  Good thing she's so pretty, because this momma is tired! Her current nickname from Chapter is "Fuzzy Guy".

Fall Leaves

The Saturday after Thanksgiving ALL the leaves fell down.  It doesn't make for a very pretty autumn but it makes the leaves nice and soft to jump in, and since they don't crunch you can get a pretty colossal pile.  

I have about a million videos of Chapter jumping in leaves. I picked this one because it's short and would upload quickly:)

Thanksgiving

We had the worst Thanksgiving ever.  Chap threw up on Tuesday.  Thank you Nursery.  Then Logan got sick Thursday morning so the kids and I went to dinner without him where Merit threw up.  Yay.  She was probably the sickest of everyone.  Early Friday morning I got sick.  By Saturday we were all feeling good enough.  So basically I have no pictures of Thanksgiving.  I did, however, fake some pictures of Merit in Chapter's Thanksgiving get up from 2012 this morning.  Haha.

 And just for kicks, here is one of Chap in the same stuff on his first Thanksgiving.

Bathtime

Merit is finally old enough that I trust her sitting up in the bathtub.  One day we were short on time so I threw them in together.  Adorable:)

Valley of Fire Day Trip

A few weeks ago we took off and headed down to the Valley of Fire.  Neither of us had ever been there and I always perceived it as being kind of lame, but all my expectations were completely blown away.  What a fun little place to go and everything we did was very kid friendly. This was only the first stop of our day of fun in Nevada so we didn't stay too long. Next time this will be the only destination.

 Stop 2 was driving down the shore drive of Lake Mead.  This did not meet my expectations.  A perfectly good waste of $10.  On the other hand, the kids slept the whole time and it was almost like being on a date:)

Stop 3 was Hoover Dam.  We hadn't been there since 2009 and had never seen the bridge completed.  We were going to go on a dam tour (like we did last time) but they are expensive and our kids really aren't going to care anyway so we walked out on the bridge.  Free and very very cool.  We will do this again.

Stop 4 was Toys R Us to get a feel for Christmas gift ideas.  Chap was unenthusiastic.  Lame.
The drive home was very eventful.  We had recently potty trained Chapter and we kept having false alarms and flat out refusals to use a gas station bathroom.  Suffice it to say we saw every gas station bathroom between Henderson and Overton where he finally gave in and went potty.  Haha.  Good times:)