Martha Stewart I'm Not...

But I found out that she is having a blogging contest. I thought, "What the heck?" and entered. Blogging is one the funnest things I do, after all! If anyone out there would like more information about the contest or how to enter, just click on the title to this post. Good luck, and happy blogging!

And the next project is...

This is a shot of our garage floor, complete with new-found hole. Since we've lived here, during the winter if we park the cars in the garage with snow on them, the snow melts and leaks around the stairs down into the storage room below the garage. This also happens if we drive in a rainstorm and park the wet car in the garage. Last winter I could no longer park in the garage, which was a BIG pain!

Jeff tried fixing this problem before...sealing the cracks with silicone. No luck. Why? Because silicone does not bind to concrete! (Would've been nice to know that first, huh?) Then, we had old towels around the stairs to soak up water, and buckets in the storage room below to catch what got through. This is how we lived until last winter, when DH declared that we were not going to park in the garage. GRRR!!!!! (I don't enjoy scraping snow off an entire Suburban before I can drive anyone to school!)

Saturday Jeff started poking around and getting ready to fix the problem. He was tapping around with a hammer, and this section of the floor in the picture had bad cement: it just crumbled. Jeff said to me, "We may have a bigger problem than we thought!" I just rolled my eyes and thought of this house and all its little quirks. Gotta love it! :)

Luckily, this seems to be the only area where the cement was bad, so that's GOOD. The plan is to grind out the cracks in the floor and around the stairs, then fill them with a special polyurethane that binds to concrete. Then hopefully we will have No. More. Leaks. And I will have No. More. Scraping.

Cute girls!

Thanks to our neighbor who took this picture of me and the girls at our ward's 40th birthday party a couple of weeks ago. It turned out cute!

A Dog's Life

Yeah, that's Molly having a typically lazy morning. I'm having a lazy morning too! Yesterday was our Primary Program, and I'm the chorister, so I'm sort of front and center (or back and center haha) for much of the program. It went great! I'm so proud of all the children. They all sang their little hearts out!! So after the stress of that, I'm being lazy today. I don't have anything I absolutely HAVE to do, other than get some milk at Costco. Fun stuff!

My Problem, and I Do Have One

Actually, I have more than one, but that's for another post. :)

So the last couple of days, when I would get on the blog, none of my pictures were showing up. I couldn't figure out what the deal was. Finally this morning, I turned off my safety filter, and WAH LAH! There they were! Along with lots of other pictures (like Nicole's Senior pictures) that I thought hadn't loaded, when they really had!

So,...my apologies to all of you who could see all my pictures (in some cases, doubles and triples) and who probably wondered what the heck was wrong with ME. Well, I now know that if I just shut off that darn filter for the blog, then everything will be as it should! :)

Eight Merit Badges and a Tenderfoot!

Last night was a Scout Court of Honor; the first for Jared! He has earned his Tenderfoot rank, as well as the Cycling merit badge. Yay, Jared! Way to go!!

Jacob earned 8 merit badges: Cycling, Fishing, Cooking, Law, Weather, Camping, Motorboating, and Family Life. Way to go, Jake!! Bud Campbell, our Scout Committee Chair and esteemed neighbor, later joked with the audience that he was revoking Jacob's Family Life because Jacob's mom had told him that Jacob hadn't made his bed this morning. Everyone laughed, and I thought to myself, "When does he EVER make his bed?!" LOL

A note on the Cycling merit badge both boys earned: Jeff actually earned it right along with them, and it certainly wasn't easy! In between work, the kitchen, scoutmastering and bishopric-ing (I am making it a word) he took the boys on the required bike rides and rode with them, he didn't follow behind them in the car. The required rides were: two 10-mile rides, two 15-mile rides, two 25-mile rides, and the big finish? One 50-mile ride!! I'm so proud of all of them, especially Jared, who did it and didn't use his diabetes as an excuse not to!!!

New "Before" and "After"

In an earlier post, I did a before and after, only the after didn't have the floor or backsplash yet....so it's time to do this again, now that we can really see the difference. I still can't believe sometimes that we've actually done it! The summer went by so fast as we were doing this! (Except for those 3 loooong weeks without a sink!)

I can't believe how much lighter and brighter the new kitchen looks compared to the old one in these pictures! Those old "Brady Bunch" cabinets really sucked up a lot of light. I say Brady Bunch, because about 10 days or so ago, I was watching it with the kids, and I realized that the Brady's upscale 70's cabinets were just like my old ones!! LOL And okay, I now look at my red paint in the old kitchen and wonder what I was thinking...

New Kitchen, just in time for Fall!

The title says it all...here are the first pictures of the complete kitchen. You can see my new red pendant light over the sink. Love it! We used to have a cabinet over the window in the old kitchen, and when we got into the old cabinet to take it down, we discovered a live 500-volt electrical wire just hanging out in there! There was also a live 500-volt electrical wire hanging out in the bottom of the old peninsula as well....just laying on the floor with tape wrapped around the end of it! Can you say, "FIRE?!" Well, these things were like a fire waiting to happen, so it was a good thing that we tore everything out and discovered them! We think that the wire coming out of the ceiling and hanging out in the old cabinet above the window was probably intended for a light fixture to be put in over the window, and it just never got done. The other wire we couldn't figure out what in the world it was for. It came up out of the floor next to the wire that ran to the dishwasher, and then just stopped, and was taped up on the end like I said. We ended up relocating it into the new peninsula, and putting in an electrical outlet on the outside of the peninsula. So that will be handy. That may have been the intent before, and it was just never done. I tell you, some of the quirks we have found in this house have been CRAZY.

Well, let's try this again!

Here it is, the colossal chocolate birthday cake we had, complete with the reversed ages. This was just like those triple-layer death-by-chocolate cakes you get in a fancy restaurant: dense, fudgey, chocolatey, and rich! YUM!

Happy Birthday Jake!

Happy Birthday Jacob!!

Jacob realized that our new ages are reversed. I'm 41, he's 14. Then, we figured out that every 11 years, they will be reversed again. So when I'm 52, he'll be 25. And so on. Pretty cool, eh?!

Here's To Houston (Or, Take a Hike, Ike!!)

During my kindergarten year, we lived in Houston. Granted, we only lived there a year and came back to the mountains of Utah as soon as we could, but we had a hurricane (actually it came in as a tropical storm) hit while we were there. Even as "just" a tropical storm, I remember how hard the wind blew and how the rain came down in sheets at about a 45-degree angle! I have an aunt and uncle who live a little further down the coast from Houston, but still in the path of Ike, so I'm thinking of them and all the people in that area who are in the path of the storm. Let's keep them in our prayers that the damage will be minimized and the people will be kept safe somehow!

My Birthday Buddy

Here's my buddy and me enjoying some lunch. All morning long, she kept saying to me, "I'm going to take you out to lunch!" As if she can drive me and pay for it! So after several times of her saying this, I said, "Where are you going to take me?" Libby said, "Wendy's!! And I'm going to get a kid's meal with nuggets and a frosty!" So there you have it....Little Miss Opportunity (we've called her that since she was tiny) taking the opportunity to snag some Wendy's for herself. LOL She was so cute about it, how could I resist?!

The 41st Anniversary of the Day I Was Born

Here is what I found next to my side of the bed when I woke up! DH leaves before 6am, and didn't want to wake me, so he left me some surprises. The inside of the card reads, "Somewhere between younger than springtime and older than dirt!" So there you have it. I must be blooming like all those pretty flowers on the card, right?

Happy Birthday to Me!! (in one hour and 56 minutes)

In less than two hours, I will be known as "40-something." I'm not sure what I think about that....40 was kinda fun, but 40-something seems suddenly old. I know, it sounds crazy maybe. But it is what it is!

And in memory of that infamous 9/11/2001: that year I turned 34. It's a day we should NEVER forget.

Here it is, the finished floor!

So here's shot of the tile floor, completely finished. (And you can see the toe kick on the cabinets which was finished a few weeks ago). I spent yesterday on my hands and knees grouting what was left of the dining room and the back hallway. Ever hear the phrase, "OH MY ACHING BACK?" Well, you just heard it again! :)

Make that the Top ELEVEN Things About Being Married to Jeff!

He buys me flowers!

Twenty Years, or Exactly Half My Life

That's how much time has slipped by since the great day when this picture was taken: September 8, 1988. It's only been the best 20 years of my life!

Top Ten Things About Being Married to Jeff:

10. There's never a dull moment, because...
9. He likes to hunt and watch football!
8. He never leaves the cap off the toothpaste. :)
7. He almost always gets his dirty socks in the hamper.
6. He works really hard at EVERYTHING he does. Doesn't matter if he likes it or not, he still puts in 110%.
5. He always eats what I make, even if it isn't his favorite. (Except for Lima Beans)
4. Whatever breaks, he can fix it!
3. Whatever I wanna do, he lets me. (Well, within reason. But do I ever want to do ANYTHING unreasonable?)
2. He's an AWESOME hands-on Dad to our kids!
1. He loves me in spite of my faults. :)

The fruits of Labor Day

Not only was it (a little) labor to put this back splash together, it was A LOT of labor just to get this picture to upload!! I am not kidding, it took over a dozen tries before it worked. I have no idea what the deal is, but it's frustrating. :)

Anyway, here's the back splash! It's amazingly easy to put up...the mastic (glue) comes premixed, and you pretty much just butter the wall with it--really it's just like buttering toast--then you scratch it with the notched edge of a trowel, and stick the tiles up. The stuff sets up really fast, and the tiles stay there once you adhere them to the wall. It's pretty darn fun. :)