Christmas morning...

 

 

 

Silly baby...

A new kitchen... a new house!

The combination of historically low interest rates and house prices made 2012 a great year to buy a

home if you could. Realizing this, we spent the first half of the year, trying to figure out a way to sell our townhouse and “trade-up” to a single family home. By June, we realized it simply wasn’t going to work ; we

couldn’t get enough of our equity out of a sale to use for a down payment on a new place. 

Accepting this was made easier by the fact that, after a year of searching, we had never found a single family home whose features and location we preferred to our present home. In the end, we are happy to be stuck with our townhouse.

But there was one thing in our home that we had always wanted to change: the kitchen. The same conditions that made it a good year to buy also made it a good year to remodel, so by July we set out to do a major kitchen remodeling. By “major” I mean (beside replacing the old kitchen) tearing down a weight-bearing wall, engineering new support to take its place, changing the location of doors and closets, re-routing the plumbing and electricity and installing hardwood floors throughout the entire main level.

I packed up the kitchen and most of the main level in mid-September anticipating a 4-week project. Demolition

began on time on October 8th and we turned our living room into a makeshift kitchen with the fridge, a microwave, a digital pressure cooker (a gift from heaven!) and our dining table (which didn’t leave room for anything else).

President Gordon B. Hinckley, talking about construction projects, said it always costs more and takes longer than they said it would. So true.

After an impressive start during the first week, when the kitchen and dining room had been gutted out and
stripped down to the cinderblocks and our crew had successful figured out a way to support the top floor with the wall, the reconstruction hit a snag right after the county inspector came for the first time. 

Our project manager had submitted his own drawings of our kitchen, which had been approved and stamped by the county prior to the inspection. He had not anticipated that the county would start a new trend and require new architectural blueprints to be made of our entire main floor, which delayed the work for 2 full weeks and took a toll on our plans to have our main floor put back together before we left for our Thanksgiving vacation (see page 6). Living without a kitchen got old fast, especially washing the dishes by hand in the half bath! Most of the remodeling was done but since we had already learned that our supervision was key to getting the results we expected, so everything was put on hold again for our trip.
The workers came back upon our return and finished our project the first week of December once I had painted the hallway. The Christmas season was already well under way when we finally started our preparations for it so we had to scale down our lights and decorations for a simplified holiday season. But we LOVE our new kitchen!.

It is starting to feel like Christmas!

 

First recital...

 

Thanksgiving...

We traveled to Utah and Idaho this year to celebrate Thanksgiving with Karen and her family and to welcome Jeremy home from his mission. We took advantage of our trip to visit old friends and distant family, some of them we had not seen in 6 years...

Even though most of our visits were rather short, we enjoyed them immensely. (We were so consumed by living in the moment that we did not even think about taking pictures...) Our thanks go to all those who let us into their homes, shared a meal, or traveled to see us. We love our friends!

On our way to Idaho, we stopped by the new Brigham City temple, whose temple president is President Checketts, my beloved mission president!

We asked some members entering the temple to talk to the frontdesk (we were not dressed to go inside the temple) and see if we could say hi to President and Sister Checketts but they told that we could come in and wait in the front room... It was wonderful to visit with the Checketts!

 Thanksgiving was delicious with all our favorite foods... We had fun just being together cooking and  eating and playing... I also made a bunch of necklaces to Karen from necklaces, stones and pearls she already owned... 

We had hoped to play in some snow in Utah or Idaho, and had packed all the snow clothes we would

need, but in the end, it was not to be.  =(

Karen took the boys to the neighbors to collect eggs... we had stayed longer but it was freezing cold...

 

 

We also celebrated an early Christmas before we had to leave. To get in the spirit, we helped put up their Christmas trees and decorations, and were initiated into their pre-Christmas tradition (now probably one of ours) of watching the comedy “Elf.” We also made our family’s traditional Christmas Bratzelis... Can you guess who is enjoying them the most?!!

The boys loved their presents, including their first Legos (they received more on Christmas day) and “Despicable Me” (a new favorite that is quoted daily). And Mark received (wait for it...) Guns! Yes, real guns. A Glock pistol and an assault rifle, both with laser sights. Investing in their family business (Idaho Armory) has benefits, after all, and Karen and Tim want us to be “prepared” before the ARs get outlawed. While we are not gun nuts, Mark admits that he really, really likes his new toys.

On our way back to Utah, we stopped by Honeyville to visit the graves of Mark's mother and sister.

 

Fall Family pictures

 

 

Halloween!!

 

I love FALL!

Discovering the leaves... Victor was not sure at first but soon got to love them as much as I do!!

  

A couple of days later, we went to a different spot (since our mean neighbor had gotten rid of the leaves by her house) and found more leaves to roll into!! =)  Sooo much fun!!

  

Ready for troubles...

New look!

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that Adam was having a hard time seeing things at a distance. We tested him by holding some big titles and asking him to read the letters and we concluded that he was in much need on glasses!!

It was confirmed by the optometrist who gave him a prescription of -2.75 of both eyes... Poor Adam who has been deprived from clear vision these past few months. When he was tested at the pediatrician office in May, they said that his vision was fine. He spent a lot of time reading this Summer and the optometrist said it is not clear why his vision has changed dramatically in such a short time but it is not uncommon either.

Adam picked his everyday glasses and I picked his second pair (which he is wearing in the pictures above - the other pair has not arrived yet) and he was quite excited.

This is what he wrote to his teacher the day after he got them:

I finaly got my first pair of glasses yesterday afternon! When I went into the basment from my afternon rest, my mom wasen't there.My dad said she was getting a surprise.When my mom came dounstairs a litle case was in her hand.She told me to open it.When I opend it there was my first pair of glasses.They said I look older when I put them on.When my litle brother came dounstairs he was surprised to see me waring glasses.He said "what is that".I told him" it's my glasses".

Morning fun!!

Preschool!

 

 

 

Cox Farm... We LOVE Cox Farm!!

 For those who don't know what  Cox Farm is, it is a Fall Festival where we have been going for the last 5 years... What a fun place!

Do you think I am obsessed with my camera if I tell you that I took 900 pictures during the 5 hours we spent at Cox Farm last weekend???

Well... Here are the 150 pictures I had to keep...

 

 Let me show you how much we had... We started off by going to our traditional first stop: the Fun Tunnel:

We have spread the word about this magical place to a lot of friends over the years and it is now fun to see everyone there on the Preview Weekend.

Last year, some friends told me how much they love their apple cider and how wonderful it is that you can just taste it there... I was wondering what they were talking about as I had never seen the barn where you could taste their apple cider... I then figured out that all these years we had gone there we had only gone to the lower half of the farm and there was a whole section that we had never seen!!! 

So we planned this year to start with the parts that we still needed to discover... How fun!

Apple cider and popcorn!! What a treat!

How could we have missed this giant slide?? I don't know... but this time we had so much fun trying it out... even Victor was laughing going down on Mark's lap!

 

Then off to the Hayride where we met our friends, the Sorensons. The boys were delighted to see Neve and Dane!

Adam had been asking about the corn maze over and over so we headed over there despite the fact that it was already time to go home for naps... I was proud of myself for being so flexible and enjoying the moment instead of sticking to our daily routine...

Victor was such a trooper, having his afternoon nap skipped all together and waiting for everyone to go down slide after slide... Look at this cute smile!!

 

 

Good bye Cox Farm... See you next year!!