I am alive

 

Since my last post I have:

1. Had a baby! Nellie was born April 9th.

2. Painted the master bathroom ( technically Michael did but I picked the color,)

3. Planted a garden and ate food from my garden.

4. Started exercising three mornings a week at the new Provo Rec center.

5. Got a flat tire and had some friendly firemen fix it for me.

G. Rowed a boat on Payson Lakes.

5 1/2. Made a delicious chocolate, nutella, strawberry cake for Father’s Day.

Q. Went camping at Payson Lakes.

6. Went to Yellowstone with the Crevistons.

7. Went camping at Warm River Campground in Idaho with the Thompsons.

8. Fell in a river and bashed up my leg.

9. Read a bunch of books and went to a few book clubs.

10. Visited most of the parks in Provo with my kids.

11. Found the perfect healthy muffin recipe. Whole wheat chocolate zuchinni.

12. Had my first pedicure ever. I think I will do it again.

13. Got to have my good friend Kristin, who I hadn’t seen in four years, stay at my house for a night.

14. Worked on a secret sewing project with Darcy and helped her learn how to sew.

15. Taken 5 kids to 7 peaks.

16. Gotten several really annoying swollen taste bugs.

17. Bought a Maya baby sling and decided I like it much better than the Moby baby wrap.

18. Used up all my homemade laundry soap. I need to make some more before I can do laundry again.

19. This morning a pulled weeds in the flower bed in front of my house.

And now we are back up to date. I feel like I am getting back in my groove after having Nellie so I may post more often. Here are a few pictures of the last few months.

My kitchen

I am finally getting around to posting before and after pictures of my kitchen. Back in August my carpenter brother-in-law Chris started redoing our kitchen. I think we finished everything in September. We did, new cabinet doors, crown molding, he repainted everything and put on new hinges. He also added a new shelf. He replaced the counter tops and helped us put up a tile back splash. A few weeks after we finished it the kitchen let fell off the ceiling, probably in protest of being left out of the remodel so we replaced it too.  Last week Michael finally got around to putting the sealer on the grout. With out further ado, the before pictures.

The people who fixed up our house before we bought did the paint bomb approach to everything they painted. They painted over hinges, spiders or what ever was in the way. The kitchen was the worst. It had some really big drips they just let dry that way.

The countertops were very blue and had a nice bare burned spot you can see at the end by the phone.

They also didn’t use paint that was meant for kitchens, so the cupboards got dirty fast and didn’t wipe clean very easily. I thought about sanding everything down, painting and replacing hardware myself. I’m glad I didn’t. It would have been a lot of work and not turned out nearly as nice as Chris did it. Here are the after pictures.

After saying I was going to make curtains for several months I finally gave in and bought some. It was hard to find some that matched. You can see the extra shelves Chris added at the end of the counter. It is nice to have a spot for a pencil basket and a few decorations.

Here is a close up of the tile back splash and counter tops. I love how they match so well. I almost didn’t use the smaller mosaic tiles because they were more expensive. I am glad I did because it turned out so good.

Here is the backsplash behind our stove. Michael and Chris did the backsplash on a Saturday while Emily was working and I watched the kids.

A closer view of the cabinets. Chris did a dry brush finish, which I love. It is a little more rustic looking, which I know not everyone likes, but I think it looks great here. The crown molding finishes everything off nicely and makes it look a bit fancier.

It is a little embarrassing to admit how long it took me to remember to take after pictures when my kitchen was actually clean enough for me to be willing to show pictures of it to other people. So that’s my new kitchen. Sometimes I I just sit at my dining room table and admire how nice it looks now. Updating the kitchen has been on my list since we moved in but has always been delayed by things like a new roof or water heater. It was fun to work on a project that was just to make something prettier not to fix a serious problem.

Our spring projects are going to be redoing the kitchen floor and putting shelving in all the kids closets, hopefully before there is another newborn in the house. We will see if that happens. I’m so glad I have a handy carpenter brother-in-law. Thanks Chris for my new kitchen!

Crazy January

January is shaping up to be even busier than December was. I am blaming in on all my boys having a birthday this month. Yesterday was the last birthday so I thought it would calm down but it doesn’t seem like it will. Tonight I have a meeting for the family history committee , Wednesday Michael has to spend the evening at the Church, Thursday I am hosting a book club, Friday some good friends are coming over for a game night and Saturday we are taking the kids to a monster truck show. I also have something going on in the day everyday this week that either requires me to babysit someone's kids or someone to babysit my kids.

All the things that are keeping me busy are good things, but it sure wears me out. I always feel a little guilty when I go to bed an hour before Michael and he gets up an hour before me. Remembering that he sits at a desk 8 a hours a day instead of chasing kids around helps ease the guilt a little bit. Theoretically things should calm down in February after Stephen gets baptized.

I had a few ideas about some things I could blog about on my blog, all of which I forgot as soon as I sat down to write. So I guess this is it for now.