Front Door

My Mom is always into things before they become cool. She found out about Feng Shui a long time ago. In fact, she pronounced it "FENG SHOE WEE." It is really pronounced more like "Fung Shway." Anyway, she is really good at creating things, so I was asking how to better my house. She says that an entry way to a home should be welcoming and warm. Here is what it was. Blah.



I had been wanting to do something for my front door forever. I wanted to paint it but couldn't decide what color. So she took me to home depot just to buy me a new welcome mat. We could easily start there. And we found the perfect one!



So she got this for me! It was so nice.

Well, doing one thing makes you want to improve other things. So, I really wanted to paint my front door. This mat helped me pick a color.



Then I wanted all the weeds in the front dug out and looking nice. We got some new perennials and here is how it looks now:







Then, I didn't feel like the curtains that were on the door when we bought the house looked right anymore. So, I made some new curtains. I saw this material months ago on Joann's website. And right when I wanted to make these curtains, they were on sale! Ta-da!



So here are my curtains. I love them. And now I love my whole front door area. So nice.

My Mom

My Mom came to see me in July! I have been lucky having family come see me. And her hair was...Red! I never know. :)

She brought each one of the boys a book, some candy, Arizona socks and a bag of little rocks. Since the boys are on a treasure hunt kick, the rocks were a big hit!

Here she is reading one of the books to the boys.



The boys got her playing the Wii. That was fun.



She took me to home depot and got me a new welcome mat for my front door. That got me thinking, my front door needed more sprucing up. So while she was here, I painted my front door too. More to come on that later.



We made some flip flops :)



And typical for July in Northern Utah, a small storm came through. We got a pretty rainbow afterwards. My mom was wearing a sweater! Of course, she is from Arizona! We were all wearing short sleeves. :)



While we were getting ready to go to the willow park zoo one morning, she could not find her sunglasses anywhere. The boys had already headed out to the van and buckled themselves in, but we stayed looking in the house. After a few minutes, we gave up and were going without them We got in the van, turned back to check on the boys and...



there was Dallin wearing her sunglasses. He seemed to be asking, "Hey, what took you guys so long!" Ha ha! Silly boy. He loves sun glasses. My Mom and I laughed about that.







She took us out to dinner, which was yummy! Mexican food is my favorite. The boys loved it, they ate everything!



Since her plane left in the evening, we spent her last day with us at the aquarium. It was so fun! We hadn't been in a while. You can see Blake's sleeve is all wet, he reached in to touch the sting rays. He sure experiences life to the fullest.

Then we dropped her off. I am trying to talk her into coming for Christmas. Maybe she could really freeze having a white Christmas with us!

Grandpa John

I got a random phone call at the beginning of June. My grandpa John called me. First off, he never calls anyone. Ever. I call him every month or two and chat. But he doesn't call me. He even says, "I don't call people." But he called, and then he said, "I am coming out to see you." I was really surprised. I thought he would never leave his farm in California. He even went so far as to get a credit card in his name in order to get airline tickets. He always said he wouldn't get a credit card but he did in order to make this trip. I was definitely shocked but was also getting really excited. The boys were pretty excited too! And it was a great visit.





He taught the boys to play poker! They loved it! And he really loved playing with the boys.



Dallin had to be part of the poker game in some way too. :)





The boys never seemed to annoy him. In fact, when they would get kinda rowdy and loud, I would herd them outside to the back yard to burn off some energy. And there would be Grandpa John pulling up a chair with us. It was awesome!





He did such a nice thing for me. He dug out my weedy patch where I should have had a garden and planted tomatoes and strawberries for me. I can't even say how much that meant to me. I have been struggling just to keep the house up and the kids going while working. And so to have such a nice service, it was awesome. So now I have strawberries and tomatoes! They look great!



The boys taught him how to play the Wii. I think he really liked it! He did bowling and the airplane.





We went fishing too at Tony's Grove. I forget what a long windy drive that is. But it was beautiful up there.



Each of the boys gave him a great big hug goodbye.







I think we are going out to California in October to see him. Then the boys can see where he lives too. There is lots of stuff to look forward to! We are getting excited about that trip.

Kyle's 9th Birthday

I have no pictures of Kyle's birthday. There was some unhappiness at our house about this.

Kyle really wanted a friend party this year, so we decided on doing the fun park. He got to pick 2 friends, and I would pick them up and take them to the fun park. They got to do laser tag, and got some tokens to play games. Kyle forbade me to take pictures. I knew this day was coming. He also got mad that Brian won the laser tag game. I still think he had a good time. His friends sure did. They were running around giggling. It was fun.

I figured my picture consolation would come later. I could just get some 9 year old pictures of Kyle. Maybe it wouldn't be his actual party, but I would still have pictures of him. Well, that didn't work out either. He gave me angry tears about pictures. So I was pretty bummed. Then his hair grew out longer than I liked, and then it got cut shorter than I wanted and we just never got great pictures. :(

I think I am going to have to lay the law down with Kyle, that this is just a side effect of having me for a Mom. There will be pictures. I can negotiate a little, I don't have to take tons of pictures while his friends are around, but I am going to have birthday pictures later. So this was a learning year for me. And next birthday, we will have cute pictures of Kyle!! He is just going to have to smile and endure it!

Blake's 6th Birthday, 6 Months Later

Better late than never.

Back in February, Blake turned 6! It was so fun! Since Blake is such a treasure hunter, we did a pirate party.



I put a bunch of toys in a bin, with lots of plastic gold coins floating around the bottom, then they "dug" for treasure!





We also launched cannons at boats, or rolled bouncy balls at 2 liter bottles. The kids loved it! We also had a good ole fashioned treasure hunt. Argh, matey!



We ate ocean blue cupcakes, with shark sprinkles. Blake had 6 candles!





Look at these cute friends! He is a lucky kid.



And I am a lucky Mom. Happy Birthday Blake, I love you!

Repaint

Since I had some time off over Chrismas break, I decided to get some painting done. I redid the hallway:


At first, I was really worried about how dark the gray was. But I actually really like it.

My success there encouraged me to try another room: The upstairs bathroom. Here are the before pictures:




I don't think this room had ever even been painted. It seemed like it was just primer.

I thought green would be really pretty. A light spring green. So after two trips to home depot getting swatches and checking how they looked in our bathroom, running the color past Brian, AND doing the online virtual painter, I bought a gallon. I got all my prep work done, did all the corners, and edges. Then the paint started to dry. And the color started to change. It was awful. I didn't like the shade of green I had picked out. Brian came in and said, "It's Grandma Lou green!" His Grandma Lou was always painting stuff in her house crazy colors, like pink. She would paint the electric heaters, the piano, cupboards, even the light switches.

I had quite a bit of gray from the hallway left over, so I figured I would just use the gray. I started covering up the green, once again edging and doing corners. So. Much. Work.



You can see the hideous green poking out from under the gray. Bad.



I was pretty disappointed that the green didn't work. I had my heart set on it. So when Brian came up to check on things again, he saw me doing the gray. He had an idea that maybe he could combine the gray into the crazy green that I bought. So he poured a little in a bowl and mixed it. I loved it. It was really pretty.

So once again, I edged and did the corners. This all took an entire day! It was a lot of work, but, I really like how it turned out.



I even made these curtains. I'm no seamstress, so I am not going to confess how long these took me. I followed a tutorial I found online and it wasn't too bad.



It's amazing what a gallon of paint can do. I have been feeling lately like my house is just in terrible shape. We have so many things we need to redo. Pretty soon, we need to reshingle our roof, redo all the downstairs floor, redo the upstairs bathroom floor, put in new trim and repaint the downstairs. Our cupboards and looking pretty shabby too. But getting these two small areas repainted and looking nice has made me feel less overwhelmed. And it reminds me how nice my house really is. I love this home, and feel so blessed that we have been able to buy this place on our own. I know God led us here and I feel good about having the boys grow up in this cute little place. :)

Camera

Blake was playing with my camera the other day. Here is what he found worthy of picture taking around here:



There were several of Lamb.





Some of little brother:


And some of himself. I like this one with him and Lamb.


Anyway, it was kind of fun to discover these pictures on my camera. I sure love my Blake!

December in Arizona - Part 3

On my last night in Az, my mom took me to the Desert Botanical Gardens. They were having their annual Las Noches de las Luminarias.


Most of my pictures at night don't look so good, so I took grabbed this one (above) from their website to give you an idea. Everything was all lit up outside. The path ways, the gardens, even the cactus. They had live bands and little shows. We listened to an indian story teller. It was really neat. It does get cold out in the desert though. Once the sun went down, the temperature dropped quick.





Here is the view of the city from the mountain we hiked up.

The next morning before I headed to the airport, we went to the superstition mountains to hike a little. We watched the sun come up over the peak.





After hiking, I packed up and was off. I wasn't nearly as nervous getting on the plane to come home. I am so glad I overcame my silly fear and went. It was an awesome visit!