Thursday, November 16, 2017

The wall came down!

This is the fun stages of the wall coming down and getting the beams in!  It's been a very productive week!

Open to the kitchen.  The framing for the pantry still supporting the ceiling.

The new beam in! 

The smaller beam connected to the trusses.




Hello, Open Concept! 

The view from the family room to across the whole kitchen area


New windows!  This will be the sink wall!  


What the outside looks like now.  The new windows look great!


Sunday, November 12, 2017

In the beginning

We have hired a contractor to come and put in large beams and take out the kitchen wall.  It's the beginning of the kitchen remodel!  I want to start by saying that I'm kind of nervous about not having a kitchen.  I'm sure it will all work out, but with us doing a lot of the work it could be a while before my kitchen looks like a kitchen again.  

The night before the contractor was to come we opened up the wall so we could label wires.  It was a good thing we did because it would have been a pain to figure it out once the wall was gone.  The kids really enjoyed getting to help open the wall!  Here's to more construction.... and maybe an end in the future :).  

Chica fell asleep on Jeff's shoulder while he was talking with his parents.  It was just too cute!






Investigating the wires


I must say that I'm very happy to have the yellow wall going away!  It's going to be an exciting week!

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Polishing Time

After we removed the hardwoods the floors were covered in glue!  It doesn't just come off either.  After a bit of research Jeff decided to try the floor polisher from Home Depot.  It took a little bit to figure out, but it scraped off the glue pretty well.  It took longer than we thought it would, but it sure was nice to get some of our floors back!  Jeff started in the living room.



We worked in the dining room and there was a layer of thin set on the floor.  Let's just say that the thin set made a huge mess!  Our whole house is officially covered in a layer of dust!  It was so disgusting!  We got a shop vac to help suck up the dust, but it didn't really make a huge difference.  After lots of work the floors were smooth!  It was sure a lot of work, and we still have a lot of floors to smooth out!  The joys of construction!  

Grant was a good worker! 

I even got to try.  That polisher is a beast! 

  

Friday, November 10, 2017

Broken

We were at the neighborhood park waiting to go to our monthly 4-H meeting.  The kids were playing tag and suddenly Tiffany told me that Talmage fell.  I didn't think to much about it because the kids usually jump back up, but she told me it was bad and we went to help him.  Talmage had slammed his shin across the top of the rail when trying to jump down from the playground.  All of his force hit his shin and he face planted 5 feet below him into the wood chips.  His face was bleeding, but luckily his glasses were OK.  We were so focused on his face until he started talking about his shin.  After examining it and seeing if it was alright he told us that his bone popped.  I decided his leg was definitely broken and we needed to go to the urgent care.  Tiffany helped me fireman carry him to the car and we were off.  

Grant was there to help me get him into the urgent care.  I told them I think he broke his leg and they got us back and x-rayed.  The Dr. was thinking that I was probably overreacting, until he saw the x-ray.  It was definitely broken!  Poor guy.  They fitted him with a splint with instructions to get into an orthopedic doctor to get casted.  

Friday we got him in and got new x-rays and a full leg cast.  The cast is supposed to last 6 to 8 weeks.  That makes for a long time without showers!  Talmage's pain was pretty strong on the first day, but the IBuprofen has kept it pretty controlled.  I'm glad he is surviving as well as he is!

Here is the leg with the bruising on his shin.


His nose was pretty gouged 

The break.  Lateral view of his tibia

Close up frontal view 

They glued his face back together ... looking good!

Talmage's seminary teacher dropped by with a treat and card signed by the class.  That was super sweet and lifted his spirits! 

The new x-ray.  Poor leg!

The before casting leg shot.  Man, those are already skinny legs!


And he's ORANGE!  No one will miss Talmage coming now!   

Time to get good at crutches! 

Saturday, November 4, 2017

Knife Making

The boys have a mountain man campout at the end of December.  To prepare for it they got to make their own knife!  They got to shape their blade and handle.  They also will be making their own fur caps to wear while they are there.  



Daddy Daughter Date!

I was able to put together a Daddy Daughter dinner and dance for our stake.  I love that I was able to be part of creating this wonderful experience for these dad's and daughters!  It was just a huge plus that my Hunny got to attend with his oldest 2 girls :).  It was a fun night with good food and fun music!  I think that everyone that came had a great time!

We set up a photo booth area for the girls and Dads to enjoy!
Mhari and Sandra had fun taking pictures with Daddy!



Dinner time


The beautiful cupcakes that my counselor, Sandi, made!

Dancing time!  
The conga line 


 Sandra helped throw out balloons :) 


Me and my awesome counselors, Monica and Sandi!  I'm so grateful for them and all of their hard work to bless the primaries in our stake!

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Will-YUMS

It's time for 4-H cooking!  This time we only had an intermediate team.  We couldn't get a senior team because we only had Talmage and Ella and we have to have 3 people for a team.  I was pretty sad about that since this is the year that Talmage could go to State.  It was nice to only have to coordinate one team though.  We also only ended up with our own kids so it was the cooking cousins team.... until we found the perfect name "Will-YUMS."  Our team has Mhari as introduction, Owen on food safety, Bree on how it's made, Grant on MyPlate, and Sandra as nutrition.

Overall things went well for only having a couple of weeks to practice.  They took second at county and advanced to district.  We could have taken 1st, but we made some mistakes that we will need to work on for district.  

Here the kids are practicing: 



Ready for County! 






Judging Time 






Ella hanging out with Lorna during the competition ;)

2nd place ribbons!