Grow Old With Me, The Best Is Yet To Be...

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Trips Back Home

We drove 6 1/2 hours to Casper over the 4th of July weekend... My family has a huge BBQ every year for the 4th, so we were happy we were able to make it. It sure was nice to see everyone! We missed my brother in Maryland and sister in Florida though!
This picture of my mom and Isla is PRICELESS!!
What a beautiful candid moment!

Our sweet little Adiee Grace... LOVE her!!
And Mikenna, she is such a pretty girl!
Look at those EYES!

This was the lovely photographer of the first few photos, my cousin Paige.
Thank you for such beautiful shots of my babies!!
My mom and I.
I love her!

Also while we were there, we took the kids to see Monsters University, had dinner on the mountain, and Kasey put in new lighting in my moms basement and master bathrooms while we were there! Then we stopped in Rawlins on our way home to have lunch at my mom's fiance's house (now they are newlyweds!) before we continued on our long drive home.

August 10th: We drove another 6 1/2 hours to Kasey's hometown, Worland. Our nephew Chance got married!! He's the handsome man in the middle...
We stayed at Kasey's dad's house, and it was SO nice to see (almost) everyone in one place! It's been a L.O.N.G. time since we have seen Chloe and Tennyson, and we were able to visit with them while we were there. Miss them so much!


Mikenna got a fake mustache from a vending machine in A&W... Too funny!

My mister and his dog.

It was a short trip, we got there late Friday and had to leave Sunday afternoon but it was a very nice visit!

New House to Home

Our first big purchase - a new refrigerator. Kind of a necessity... 
We had it delivered a couple days after we closed on our home. Boy that was fun, dry goods and dishes at the new house, cold and frozen foods at the rental. Meals were a little bit of a challenge, ha!

One of the first things we did to make our new house our home was take down the shelves in Isla and Adiee's bedroom. They spanned the entire length of a wall and it dictated where I was able to put their furniture, and I just don't do well with being told what I can and can't do... ;-) Haha! So that was project numero uno.
Case in point - Isla's four poster bed couldn't fit anywhere besides under the shelf without the posts... The dresser and mirror was too tall as well, so something had to be done about that pesky shelf.
These are the during shots taken in Adiee's bedroom. The shelves have been there since the house was built. There was bare drywall under these bad boys.

Kasey filled all the nooks and crannies, then sanded it all down and sprayed texture to match the rest of the wall.

Impressive! This is the 'after' shot (obviously), you would never be able to tell there was ever a shelf there... Besides the high plug ins, I will have to figure something out to hide those ugly things that now look like they are just floating in the middle of the walls. Isla's room has that problem too. There is still a similar shelf in the playroom - until I have an alternative way to organize their toys that is!

I spent a day painting Isla's room this sweet shade of purple right after Kasey was done with the shelf project, it's been that way for a couple months now and actually THIS weekend he is taping stripes as an accent wall. I can't wait! I actually started doing it myself but he kinda took over with absolutely no objection from me, haha! Getting them perfectly straight is quite hard with the limited resources I was trying to work with, HA! But that was all part of my master plan anyway, right?! ;)

I have a shoe cabinet that I got from IKEA a couple years ago and I LOVE it. It corrals all of the kids shoes so we don't normally have trouble finding our shoes in the morning - one less hassle we have to deal with. There wasn't any place for it that made sense in the new house except right behind the front door. Trouble was:
It didn't fit. Just a little too long - Ugh! But my handy dandy husband flawlessly executed his first IKEA hack. He took the top off, trimmed all the excess off the one side and drilled new holes so that the nice, neat, lacquered edge still showed on the one side you could see. He also had to trim the legs so it would fit flush against the wall, but with that he also had to notch the trim.
And here it is in the perfect place behind the front door. 
Now I just need to decorate! What a guy!

Just a quick little project that was on my to do list: paint the barstools. I have NEVER painted a piece of furniture before... until now! I was a little intimidated by all the steps, but they turned out so pretty! To this day, there are a few dings that could use a touch up but overall they still look great! 

Kasey installed a surround sound system in our family room last weekend. The next best thing to going to the theater! :) And on September 5th, we are having a new couch and loveseat delivered. It is gorgeous - 100% leather recliners. We originally bought a set from another furniture store and we were going to get them delivered the next day, but I had to call and cancel because they were power recliners, and the way I want my furniture to go in my living room the cord to the loveseat would have been a tripping hazard not to mention unsightly. We found a set that looked almost identical except it is a little more comfortable and not power so NO cords! PERFECT! They also threw in a leather kit and a 5 year warranty for free! Done. Deal. Just wish I didn't have to wait 3 weeks. Moving that stupid couch (with a hide-a-bed) and loveseat upstairs from the family room was ridiculous, glad that's over with... But at least my "bike riding room" aka front living room isn't empty anymore! Haha!! I would post a picture of that room now but it is lacking some serious personality, it's all a work in progress. Slowly but surely.

Kasey and I had no idea that our house had an infestation of ANTS! The girls are normally only allowed to eat in the kitchen and outside except as an occasional special treat such as popcorn or dinner and a movie night. They have to go through the living room to get to the back yard, and one of them dropped a goldfish on the carpet. I didn't notice it right away and within minutes, the little orange cracker was engulfed with swarms of little black ants. You could see the carpet moving in about a 2 feet radius, and that is no exaggeration. YUCK!! Grossed out, I grabbed the vacuum and sucked them all up. A couple days later, I was vacuuming the stairs and dusting the banisters. I caught a glimpse of a few ants walking towards Pete's dog food bowl. Thoroughly disgusted I tried to suck those up too. When I removed the top layer of food and ants, the whole bowl was crawling. It was awful! I grabbed the whole bowl and threw all the contents of the bowl in the outside dumpster, washed his bowl, and moved it away from the main levels of our home. We bought some ant poison from home depot, but they completely ignored them. We kept seeing them and finally got fed up so we hired Moxie Pest Control to come out and take care of those nasty pesky bugs. Within a few days, I was cleaning up ant corpses and couldn't have been more happy about it! We have had 2 applications to our house and yard and are happy to announce we are ant free! Haha :-)

What do ya think? Bold choice, Eh? I wanted a serious pop of color. It was between this and a buttercream yellow. Can you believe that he let me go with the "pink" as he likes to call it. He must really LOVE me!! Haha ;) There is a hint of pink in the brick of the exterior of our house and I think it really brings it all together... I have whined about how I wasn't too fond of that color of brick since we saw the house in the daylight. But now, I love it. I also chose not to cut a window out of the new door and add a black door knocker. We had that exact door handle but in silver on the old door, but I thought black would really look sharp not to mention match the porch lights and bistro set on our front porch. It was a little hard to fork over almost $200 for the exact same door knob (and a couple other things) just so I could have a different color, but I think we made the right decision.

Other than the door, this is my next favorite addition to the exterior of our home - a beautiful welcome sign I got from Hobby Lobby. More black to go with the door's hardware...

L.O.V.E.

I bought these 2 pillows to go on our bistro chairs because: A) They brought in coordinating color to our porch and B) Metal chairs aren't the most comfortable seating in the world.

Kasey trimmed a tree in our front yard to make it look less like a giant bush! Haha :) He has also done tons of work to the sprinkler system. Noteworthy but not really pictureworthy... He has had to replace valves, sprinkler heads, troubleshooting, dig out a sprinkler box, etc... It's been quite a chore but Kasey's awesome at everything he does!

Another thing I'm proud to show off is my garden. I have never been a gardener, I've even killed a couple cactus (as in more than one) in my day. Sad but true. Turns out, I absolutely love spending time working on my garden. I have way too many at the moment to keep up on all of them, but I did get a handle on the ones in the front yard that everyone can see!
This is what I started with... I almost forgot a 'before' picture! That is full-on lawn turf inside my flower beds. Now that is tough to get rid of, no joke! I spent many full days and weekends out there pulling, digging, and sweating only to stop to feed the family every once in a while until it was done. It took a LONG time!!
I love the way the dark, freshly cultivated dirt looks! My hard work has finally paid off! 
GORGEOUS!!
I pruned that rose bush like crazy, came out with some serious battle wounds, but it was so worth it when it flourished the way it did. I bought some perennial peonies, bleeding heart plants, and a lily of the valley to plant for us to enjoy next spring/summer too. I love my garden!

How's that for curb appeal?!

Friday, August 23, 2013

Anniversary, Birthday, and Fathers Day, Oh my!

All of these things were packed into ONE weekend! Friday Kasey and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. We have officially been together for slightly more than a decade now! I get all giddy inside just being able to say that! Kasey's brothers - Kerby, Kyle and families came to stay at the Cherry Hill Campground in Kaysville, about 10 minutes away from our house. They offered to take the girls for the night so Kasey and I could spend some one-on-one time with each other and the girls could have fun with their cousins they don't see nearly enough! We went to dinner, and 2 movies - a real treat! We love going to the movies!
A little note to let him know how much he still means to me...
Thanks Mikenna for taking our picture!

Speaking of Mikenna, the very next day we celebrated her 9th birthday! I can't believe how fast she's growing. Kasey and I made a few stops to get some gifts and a cake to take to the campground. I literally bawled all morning but it was especially bad when we were in the check out line at Toy's R Us, buying her a 'green machine' bike... I was so upset that she is 9 and this is the halfway mark of her childhood... Who in the world even thinks like that?! Oh yeah, ME. Kasey put the bike together while I ran the last few errands before we headed to the campground for some water park fun!
 My sweet BIG girl on her new 'green machine'!
Mikenna and Adiee got new flippers from the campground gift shop. They wanted them SO bad, and Adiee got HORRIBLE blisters on the ends of her toes! It took weeks for them to heal and they bled daily for days! I took them away and now they can only wear them with water socks or shoes.
Miss Isla enjoying a capri sun! LOVE!
After a day of swimming, we all ventured over to the ball pit and rock wall.
They kicked butt!
They both reached the top!

Mikenna conquered all 4 levels of difficulty and went for a 5th time - TIMED! Made it all the way to the top in under a minute.
What. A. Stud!! That's our girl!
Happy Birthday sweet girl!!
After cake and presents, we all played a round of mini golf.
Fun, FUN, Fun!
 Then chatted it up by the fire until it was time to go home...

Then the last day of a very busy weekend, Father's Day. Adiee, Isla, and I just hung out with everyone at camp and swam and played at the park, while Kasey took Gage, Max, Sophie, and Mikenna to Lagoon for the day. Then finished off with a visit to the Pie Pantry.

It was a weekend FULL of fun, and a little overwhelming for sure, but we were so happy to have spent our time with family we don't get to see often enough!

Love them all!!

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Fun Random Moments

In March, our family went to the Clark's Planetarium in downtown Salt Lake City. We were wandering around the Gateway Mall and thought it would be fun to check it out. That was an awesome experience for all of us! We checked out all the neat stuff they had on display while we waited for our showtime...
 They were so interested in all of it!
 Daddy and his girls
 They walked on the moon...
The look on her face is too funny!

First sleepover with our best friends since we both moved into our new homes... Reunited once again!

 So this is just plain funny!
 I take a break from all the unpacking, and this is what I find... 3 bowls with spoons, a can of spaghettios, a pot and a big spoon, and a package of already almost gone crackers, and a note!
"Can we have this for dinner mom. from: ?"
How cute is that?! Haha!

We have been having tons of fun at Lagoon since we bought our season passes! The springtime is the best time to go, not everyone has purchased them yet so there's literally no crowds, it's not hot, and we can go anytime we want!



                                   
We have definitely gotten our use out of them already! And I can't wait to go during the fall to "Frightmares"

Mikenna had her first "real" school project. She did a report on Anne Frank, she made this poster, had to present it to her class, and the whole 3rd grade got together to do a "wax museum" where they hung up their posters, dressed up and posed like the person they chose while parents paraded around the gym looking at all of them.
Here she is dressed as Anne Frank, writing in her diary. So proud of her! 

 Kasey - showing off our new lawn mower... We had one but after living in Rawlins for almost 3 years it just sat in the shed since there wasn't anything to use it on besides weeds and dirt. So after trying to fire it up with brand new gas, oil, and a whole can of starter fluid - we decided to call it quits and got a new one.

My aunt Elaine sent us some tickets to the Tracy Aviary in downtown Salt Lake City she got from her preschool. So we were happy to explore another fun place we'd never been before.
Mikenna's name was drawn, so she got to go inside the flamingo enclosure to feed them. Awesome! I did however feel bad for the other two girls. They were a little bummed, but nothing a little ice cream can't fix :)

I just thought this was a sweet picture... Adiee hiding from the sun!

This was NOT a fun moment...
 I was just checking our bank account and this is what I saw... Some idiot got my debit card number from somewhere and used it for adult website memberships. I freaked out of course, called to report it, and cancelled my card. People can really suck sometimes!

 We went to see Adiee sing at school, and stayed to play a little afterward!
Sweet girls!

Corey, Toni, and Stacia came to stay with us while Toni had a class in the area. We had a ton of fun while they were here. Horse drawn carriage ride through the Gateway Mall, anyone?
 Track Day at school...

Isla and I ended up leaving right after I snapped these pictures, they had tons of inflatable obstacle courses and with limited time and wild and crazy big kids, I didn't think it was fair to Isla to just sit there so I gave them a hug and kiss and said I'd see them after school. I felt bad about leaving, but parents didn't come at all unless they were helping with the activities...
Isla showing off her new helmet... Big girl bike here we come!

Last Day of 1st and 3rd Grade!

Have you ever dropped your keys down a storm drain? This was my first time and I was already having a tough day, I'm sure it was pretty funny to all passerby's. My friend Brittney and I tried for a while before Kasey took off from work to come save me... What a good husband!

Nothing like a little park action to kick off the summertime! Ta Ta for now!