December 10th-24th 2013

The title of this post is a date, I am aware of that.  That is because between getting home from California and it being Christmas was completely crazy. It went so fast and there was so much to do and accomplish.  

Birthday party for Papa

Putting up the Christmas tree

Sending out Christmas cards

AHHH!!!! (this is how I felt most of the month)

Making a gingerbread house

Skiing!!!

hot chocolate in the lodge

Dressed for the Christmas concert at school

Making candies. This was so much easier this year with the kids helping. They loved opening all the rolos for me.

We painted a canvas for our wall. We couldn't find anything big enough for the space that was affordable so we saw an idea on Pinterest and just made our own.  

 

New carpet to match the new decor

 Christmas cards all hung

Presents ready for Christmas morning

It's finally gone!

When we first bought this house there were 4 big cottonwoods on the south side of the house.  This one was definitely the biggest.  Since we got the house in the spring we didn't realize that 3 of them were dead.  We had those 3 removed last year but had planned on keeping this one.  It was good shade, and a pretty tree.  However, we hated it because cottonwoods are aweful trees that are constantly dropping something; cotton, little green sticky things, leaves, sticks/branches.  There were sticks and branches falling off this thing all the time.  So we definitely had a love/hate relationship with the tree(more hate on Paul's part because he was always cleaning up after it).  This year, this tree decided to die also.  It lost all of its leaves in June.  Since it really draped over the house we wanted to make sure to get it down soon.  We did that this week.  

The company we went with this time was much more professional than the ones that took out the other trees. They came with all sorts of equipment

Almost down

Colin enjoyed the tractors in the back yard

Some videos of the process

Just the trunk left to come down

I guess I need to go take a picture of the backyard now.  Paul left before they were totally finished and it was dark when we got home.  It obviously looks a lot different.  We will be planting another tree, or trees, in the area this came down from. 

Our Garden

I recently changed my eating habits and haven't been eating any meat. Around this same time I decided that I would like to try a garden this year. We had talked about it before but never felt we had the time to do it. We decided we'd give it a try, start small, and not get our hopes up. Paul told me this was a project that was all mine and he didn't want to be stuck doing all the work, I had to do it. I talked to my dad about it and got him on board to help. He did a lot of preparing the area that we were going to use. It didn't stay very "small".

Since it was late in the season when we decided to do the garden, we started with mostly plants, instead of seeds. This was right after planting.

This one was taken a couple of weeks ago after my dad decided to plant corn. We've all had a lot of fun watching it grow. Colin gets really excited each time we go out and find more vegetables.

Starting to get some vegetables!

We actually had some zucchini from our garden for dinner last night. I didn't realize how rewarding it would be. This picture was taken with the phone for a size reference. I took it to send my dad, whose back in NY, so he could see how it was going. I figured I'd add it to the post.

You'd love running too.....

....if these were the views you saw on your running trail.









I often think how happy I am that we ended up in the house that we did. I am reminded often that I really think it was a perfect choice for us. I could go on and on about all the reasons but everytime I go on this run I am thankful and happy about where we live.

House Projects

Paul has been working on some projects around the house this spring.

We have been having some issues with the dogs being in the garage during the day. When my dad is here it isn't an issue because he lets them out. They were not handling being stuck inside while we were at work(at our last house they had a kennel and could go outside). We decided that we'd cut out a doggy door to the kennel that we had on the side of the house.



Now they could go from the garage to outside. This made it that we could leave them home when we went to St George for the weekend with a neighbor feeding and walking them. It's been great....except they were getting a ton of dirt into the garage. Paul spent yesterday building up the area with pavers and retaining walls.

It turned out really nice. Hopefully it keeps our garage clean!



The other project Paul worked on was some landscaping in the front yard. We had never done much with the "flower garden" that was under the front window. It always was just weeds and messy. Paul cleaned it all up and extended it out by the front landing. It turned out really nice.



He then painted the landscape timbers of the flower beds and got them all weeded and with new mulch.



It looks really nice. He's been hard at work. Only a couple more projects left and then hopefully we can enjoy the summer.

Front Door

Last weekend Paul's dad came out to help us put in a new front door. I've had this post ready to put up for a week but kept forgetting to take a picture of the finished front until today.

Playing with Grandpa while he was here



Colin was home with his daddy and two grandpas to keep an eye on him and this still managed to happen. He was outside while they were working on the door and he fell down the stairs.





The door: before. Paul made this video to send to his dad before he got here. I didn't take a "before" picture so the video will have to do.


Taking out the glass


Some pictures of the process











The door is almost done. It is done from the outside, but some things to be finished on the inside. We're really happy with it. The front of the house looks SOO much better. Paul painted it black and we are going to do black shutters to match.