Things are growing!

Believe it or not, our yard is turning green! Just in time to go dormant. I am so excited, and hope that the young grass we have growing will survive the winter.

I can just imagine what it will look like when we have a bit of top soil, some decorative rock,

thick, beautiful grass, shrubbery, flowers...


...and kids!?

We had better weed those out before they get too big and start taking over the whole yard!


There, problem solved.

Our household super-hero

I don't know how popular the movie Mystery Men really is, but in our house it is a much quoted movie. Why? First of all our taste in movies is a bit dorky. Second, it has a little known super hero in it called The Shoveler. He uses his shovel to fight crime. John likes to quote the movie-- "Lucille, God gave me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well." I often compare John to superheros, because he has so much energy when it comes to projects that it is almost super human. I have tried to put my finger on which super hero I should compare him to, and it changes according to the project. Right now John is the shoveler. The project in progress now is our sprinkler system. In a neighborhood where most people hire out the landscaping it seems strange to see someone working hard everyday, and sometimes into the night on their own yard. John decided to do this himself because he loves to get out and work hard, and he also likes to save money. Two things that I love him for.

He has installed the system in our front yard and almost all of the west side and back yards. It is a race against time because the water is turned off for the winter in the middle of October, and we at least want to get the front side and back yards seeded. Our east side yard and park strips will probably have to wait until next spring. We also were able to get half of our curbing put in, we were very excited about that. We will do the rest when we get the rest of the sprinklers in.

An evening with Lucy

Last night Aunt Vera decided to have a cousins sleepover party. Since Lucy is still so young we kept her with us. It was so cute to see how pleased she acted about getting so much undivided attention from mom and dad. We discovered a few things about Lucy while the others were away.
1. Even with being so young, she is just as talented at making messes as any of our other children.
2. She talks just as much as any of our other children, we just can't understand her yet.
3. She absolutely loves attention, from anybody, when siblings aren't around that attention must come from mom and dad.

This time together helped us rediscover how incredibly cute this little girl is, and how much we love her. Here she is helping her dad with his Labor Day project--putting the newly stained porches back in place. I still have a bit of touching up to do because after assembling the porches we discovered that the top step was missing. We salvaged the broken step and John made it almost as good as new.

By the way, Hannah, Johnny and Maddie had a great time!

This was TERRIFYING, but I did it!

John and I have been talking about how we have been doing so much work lately and not having enough fun. John is very good about combining the two, but I had a hard time with this until yesterday. Maybe I wouldn't go straight to "fun" but it was the same terrifying feeling that I got last month when we went to Cherry Hill on a date and climbed the rock wall. I am not sure that I picked the right color of stain for the project, but I think that it does make the house look better cared for.

And in the end, I was very proud of my self, so I gave myself a big ol' sticky brown pat on the back.

It's done, it's done, yay it's done.

We have a patio now. Thanks John for doing such a great job, and for Alex, Billy and Melissa who came to help. It has a beautiful rustic look and we will enjoy it for many years to come. Now we will focus on staining our porches so that we can actually get to the patio.

Sometimes it's the little things that make a house a home...

...and sometimes it is the really big things. John decided that he wanted to do our back patio himself. He has divided the job up into three separate pour sessions and Saturday was the first one. We did it with the help of a very talented cement truck operator and a generous neighbor. Our neighbor and I screened the cement while John operated the rake and did the finishing work. It was exhausting work, but he did a great job despite the freak rainstorm that coincidentally started up minutes after he finished smoothing the last piece.

Good old outdoor dusty fun

We have been working on reclaiming the land which will someday be called our yard. We had a nice man with a tractor come and till it all under, it was very hard soil so it was a bit frustrating for him. It kicked up a lot and dust, which the kids have thoroughly enjoyed.

The morning after the yard was all tilled under, Hannah and Johnny decided to make a mural of our family out of dirt. They even included the fish and birds. Johnny wasn't feeling too well in this picture, but I was happy to see he had enough energy to go outside for a while and play. As you can see, Maddie was still enjoying some of her sweet Saturday breakfast cereal.

We're getting there :)

I just wanted to share some of our house updates. We are slowly working on things here and there to make our house a little more beautiful. Here is our fireplace and computer nook...

Before.

and

After

In the end we decided against keeping the cat food container

and screw organizer on the mantel ;)

Could This be it?

We heard back from our Realtor and he says that our buyers have iron-clad financing, so we are starting the closing process. They want to close around the middle of May, but that seems really fast to get all of the paper work and stuff out of the way. We are extremely excited, but trying to reign the excitement in a little bit until the deal is completely wrapped up on both sides. We know that housing is a fickle market sometimes.

Here are some pictures of the house that we are in the process of buying right now. It looks like a nice humble home from the outside, and it needs a little TLC on the inside. Nothing compared to our Kearns home though. I am sure a few flowers and grass, a bit of Johns handyman magic, and some elbow grease will do wonders. It was such a screaming deal we just couldn't pass it up.

These pictures really don't do the house justice. I was a little concerned about the all of the arches, but in person they just feel right. When we move in (hopefully), I will get better pictures. Overall the house is everything we wanted and we have shamelessly fallen in love with it.

Johns requirements were: A three car garage (check), a big plot of land (1/2 acre--check) an efficient newer construction house (built in 2007--check), Unfinished basement (he needs plenty of work to keep him happy--check)

Cheryl's requirements were: A family friendly neighborhood without a high crime rate or drug dealing neighbors (Kaysville has a low crime rate and we have no neighbors on the culdesac yet--check) A good kitchen (check) 4 bedrooms (check).

A more palatable dining room

Here are some pictures of our more neutral dining room. I had a chance to tidy up while Maddie was napping, so I thought I would take the opportunity to capture the moment. It's kind of funny, with all the happiness that bright colors bring me, I felt this strange sense of relief as my sea-foam blue was covered up by "oats". I was a bit surprised by this and tried to make sense of the feeling. I came to the conclusion that it must be like skydiving, it is an extreme sport and gives you a rush of adrenaline, but I am sure skydiver's wouldn't want the feeling to last forever. I have never actually been skydiving, but now I don't have to --because I have experienced extreme painting. I can check that off of my list of things to do in my lifetime.

Johnny was so excited to help me paint, and I just couldn't say no (one of my many weaknesses). I decided a good safe spot would be under the computer counter. He was more than happy to, because it is his "favorite hiding spot". I gave him a paint brush and let him go to town. He did a pretty good job, but I did have to touch up a bit with the roller when he wasn't looking.

Hey, anyone want to buy a house?

A few weeks ago we made the bitter-sweet decision to sell our house. For a while I have been wanting to move to a little more of a rural place, and we found one (thanks Lori and Matt for the idea). We are planning on finding a place in Kaysville as soon as we sell our home. I am such a small town girl at heart, and this is about as close as I will get to a small town close to John's work. It will actually be a better commute for him, something that we are both looking forward too--fewer city streets. We bought our home 5 years ago, for super cheap, when John decided to take a break from engineering and try his luck at flipping houses. We held on to this house for our own enjoyment even after he started his job at L-3 because we just couldn't beat the price of living in it. We refer to this house as our fun house because there was no possible way we could ruin it when we moved in. It was hideous, and we have learned so much about how to fix and remodel and what is really important in a home and family. John built the garage of his dreams, we completely demolished and rebuilt the kitchen with an added dining room, and so many other little things it is hard to count. We feel like we are ready to graduate from "home remodeling 101" so now the time has finally come to flip our house!

We plan on moving into a house that is not a fixer-upper this time.

Here are a few "before" pictures:

Our scary partially finished basement

Really gross downstairs bathroom

Old, worn out shingles. There was a hole (the size of an inspector) in the roof at this time.



carpet with cigarette burn marks the size of hockey pucks and who knows what stories these walls have to tell.


Kitchen--need I say more?

As I said this was our fun house, so please don't pay attention to our bright dining room, I painted it that color to look like a retro 50's diner (and also to impress my kids of course). I will be repainting it a more neutral color this weekend. Also we were kind of in the middle of a landscaping project when the photographer came by, it is nearly finished now.

Click on the link below to see the after pictures.


www.obeo.com/522568

Enjoy!