The Good With The Bad

This started as a facebook status, but then it was too long and still didn't really give the stories justice!  So I thought this was better.  Our Sundays are really hecktic with church being at 1.  It's usually naptime for both of my boys, Trae isn't old enough for nursery (but does better than most 18 month olds), and both Derrick and I have callings where we teach.  It can get really stressful.

And granted, it still had it's usual stress (I have officially given up completely of even attempting going to Sunday School... Trae escapes and runs back to cry at the nursery door as often as he can), we had some pretty funny moments.

Before church, Aaron saw me in a dress and kept saying "Mommy princess. Mommy princess."  TOTALLY made my morning!  I don't even really know where he learned about princesses, but it was super cute to hear from him.

Then we were late for church.  Aaron was lagging behind as usual walking into the church.  We turned right to sit in the back.  When Aaron walked in, the turned left and started heading up to where we usually sit.  He looked at each row trying to find us, all the while I am trying to get his attention from the back.  He walked to nearly the front when another family coming in passed him.  He decided to just follow and sit with them!  He just blended in with their kids and took a seat in the middle of their bench.  It was so hard to not laugh (as the meeting had already started) as I walked from the most back seat all the way to the second row from the front to pick him up, as the mom in the family was looking around wondering what had happened.  It was pretty funny.

Later Aaron was playing with two cars.  Trae has been learning how to be aggressive and actually take things from Aaron.  (Up until maybe a week or two ago, it's always been the other way around.)  Aaron put his car down for a whopping second and Trae immediately picked it up super fast and then booked it running towards the front of the chapel.  It took me a second or two to even process what exactly happened because it was so out of the blue and fast!  Trae even made it to the front by the time Derrick got up and chased him down.

I think it is safe to say that my boys entertained a few families today.  And sadly, I still couldn't tell you what either of the speakers' messages were.  Gotta love being a parent.  You can sit through an entire hour and not hear a thing.

Lots of Wedding Bells

I don't know how many of you know my family but I have 4 siblings, making 5 of us kids total.  We are all really close in age and therefore I thought pretty much everyone would be in the same phase of life always.  Well... I was wrong.  Apparently I missed the memo and jumped on the marriage and parent wagon much sooner than everyone else. (Which I didn't think would happen as I was 21 when I got married and thought both of my sisters would marry younger...)  But the rest of the siblings passed the memo among themselves and 3 siblings got married in less than 3 months apart from each other!

The first was my youngest sister McKenzie.  She got married December 14 to Mr. Casey Neville.  Funny thing about Casey is the rest of the siblings (except Tyson) previously knew Casey from high school.  So now looking at how we each have our stories of knowing him, he is the new brother-in-law.  They got married in the Brigham City Temple, had a lovely luncheon at Ruby River in Riverdale, and their reception at the same church Derrick and I actually had ours.  It was a lovely day except for the fact my two little ones were very sick, tired, and insanely cranky.  We didn't get one single happy picture of Aaron.  And Derrick ended up taking them home early as Aaron screaming and crying almost the whole time was sure putting a damper on the reception.  But it was a lovely and exciting day!

The next was my other younger sister Candice.  She met and fell in love with First Lieutenant John Steger in New York and married him in the Draper Temple on January 2.  We didn't get to see these two near long enough (as they live so far away), but they are an adorable couple that just mush really well together.  Since they got married on short notice (Army life is hard to get time away from) they did a luncheon that day at the golf course nearby and are planning a reception for October.  Their luncheon was GORGEOUS and it was fun to meet John's family.  I loved all of the roses. :)

The third of these weddings was my older brother Tyson.  He's has been dating his girl the longest (dating longer than any of the above even knew their significant other) and definitely knows she is the best for him.  Shelli Barney is just the cutest redhead you will ever meet and I am so excited to have her as a sister.  They also got married in the Draper Temple on March 2.  The luncheon in Layton afterwards was really fun as family members shared funny stories of the happy couple (sounds like these two have always had similar personalities). Their reception was at Chantilly Mansion and was just beautiful.  I am so excited for you Tyson!!  He is so happy and just moved closer to home!  Yeah!

So then there was one sibling left.  My brother Taylor is currently serving a mission in West Virginia.  So he has completely missed all of the action going on out here, but it's for a very good cause.  And he will get to have every sibling at his wedding. That will be a fun day. :)  Just one more year to go!

The Basement!! (& a bedroom)

If you are friends with me on facebook, I am sure that you have noticed an explosion of posts about redoing our basement.  It's taken up all of our free time, the rest of the house has been left in absolute shambles (as the normal cleaning doesn't even get done), and thank goodness I have church and young womens as those make me take a shower. (Gross I know, but the truth.)

It all started with a quick run to check out RC Willey.  We like to go there and just walk around, looking at ideas of decorating and furniture we like for the future.  We stopped by carpet... saw a good deal... and bought it on the spot.  (Well, ordered it.  You don't pay for it until they measure to double check how much you need.)

When we bought the house, the basement Living Room was carpet-less.  You can tell there was carpet at one point, but we know they had water issues (and should now be fixed... we haven't had any sign of leakage) so we assume they got rid of the carpet and just never replaced it.  So it's just cement, which is PERFECT flooring for painting the walls.  So when carpet was ordered, we decided that we really should get started on the Living Room as we hadn't even touched it prior.

First we had to move all of our junk out.  It kind of became a place to store things when we moved in, including other peoples furniture.  So we (mostly Derrick) cleared all that out.  I had previously been working on getting all of the wallpaper gone (what a bugger job!!) so I up'd my game on that.  Derrick pulled off all of the wood paneling.  And that was a mess.

They used glue instead of nails (WHY???) and the glue pulled off the dry wall.  And we also found some surprises behind the wood paneling, which made us think was the reason they put it up in the first place.  We found (dead) mold (thank goodness) and two large holes (did they throw someone into the wall??).

While figuring out how to patch these up, fix the dry wall, and what to do next we were called by RC Willey and apparently ran out of our "stalling" time (we were sure trying).  We already lost the original carpet we picked as it had run out, but they replaced it with a higher grade carpet for the same price.  But now they said we needed to order or they wouldn't hold the deal.  So we set a date and it gave us about two weeks left.  Yikes!

So everyday has been filled with putting dry wall mud on the walls in layers, sanding and washing in between, caulking TONS of cracks, priming, and painting.  It was an intense week and we cut out more rooms that we were hoping to do at the same time, but in the end we got it done!  We were priming/painting a layer each night after the kids went to bed and used our last weekend to finish base boards and move all of the furniture upstairs for carpet (we also bought carpet for the bedrooms upstairs).

And since we bought carpet for the bedrooms upstairs, it seemed stupid to not paint that room as well.  It didn't need NEAR as much work, but still had plenty of holes.  Our guess is the previous occupants kept a dart board in there.  We found one in the basement when we moved in and not really anything else explains that many tiny holes in bedroom walls.

Oy what a LOT of work!  But it's definitely worth it now that we can use our downstairs.  I am excited for the toys to mainly stay downstairs now instead of upstairs where every guest can see the mess.  Plus our playroom is downstairs so now our boys can fully utilize it!  I don't have to worry about them and tack strips!  It was hecktic having such a crunch timeline, but knowing us it probably would never get done without a date to be done by.  Here are the pics!

The lovely mural of wallpaper almost gone!

The random mtn dew bottle

What the lovely glue did to our walls!  This wall got hit the worst!

This is patching all of the little holes in the upstairs bedroom... That's so many holes!!

I tried to show just a close up of how many in such a small space.

The worst wall, but now with mud caked on.

And that wall when it's done! (The door covering our water temp thing isn't up yet)

Still working on decor and hiding wires (and should have taken a pic before toys came out) but definitely still an upgrade from that wallpaper mural!

Soon will be white doors, but this shows the trim and gray better.

And the upstairs bedroom!

Had major problems with taking off the tape in this room, so left the ceiling tape until we get around to fixing the paint that tore off.  (So frustrating!!  But at least it won't take long.  Will do this when we pull out the paint again for the last bedroom needing to be painted downstairs.)