Hooray For Carpet!

This morning we had carpet installed! I am so excited about it, finally this space is going to be able to be used.

Anyway, a few quick pictures.

The stairway (the trim should be up next week and then it will be all finished)

The family roomThe small hallway from the family room to Lily's room and the bathroom/laundry room

And finally, Lily's room (again, we didn't get trim up, but that should be done next week)

And then I'll just leave you with a short video of Lily discovering the new space. She loves it already and I really think that she will adjust well.

Change of Plans

Remember how in my last blog post I said that we were going to be ordering carpet soon...well, last Thursday, the day that we had planned to go place our order, we had an incident. I loaded the dishwasher and got ready to leave for a doctor appointment. I turned the dishwasher on and then left the kitchen to go get my things together and go. As I was leaving (which requires me to go through the kitchen) I noticed that the entire kitchen floor was flooded. I freaked out, Tyson and I dried it up with towels and turned the dishwasher off, and then I got up to go, now running late of course. Well, as I was opening the back door I happened to look downstairs and I saw a steady stream of water raining through the ceiling onto the basement floor. I called for Tyson and we checked it out. Needless to say I was very late for that doctor appointment.

So, instead of ordering carpet last Thursday we cut a large hole out of our family room ceiling and went to work on drying it out. We were not happy about it. Here we were so close to getting things done and now we were taking steps backwards. I am happy to report that everything is all dried out now and Tyson will be patching the ceiling tomorrow or Friday and we will be ordering carpet this weekend.

There are still other tasks that have to be completed first though. Probably my favorite, the stairway. It was awful when we moved here, they had stone on the walls and it made the basement feel like a dungeon. Tyson tore the stone out about a year ago and leveled the surface, but had not yet decided what to do instead. We finally settled on some bead board since we thought that the look would be nice and after some real trial and error about attaching it to the concrete wall it is almost done. Hopefully the trim will all be put up this weekend and then we will paint it an off-white (the same color as all of the other trim, ceilings, and doors in our house).

Before:

Kind of after (I'll post a better picture once it is all done):
Tyson and my brother-in-law Chaz got the trim all up in Lily's new room and it really helps to break up the melon color on the wall. Ignore the funky green around the frames, that will be painted over soon.

And if you want a preview of what the bedding and curtains that I made for her look like, you can get a bit of an idea from the bow board that I put up the other day.

Finishing the Basement

We are finally getting around to finishing up our basement. We've been working on it a bit a time since we bought the house nearly 3 years ago, but it kept getting pushed to the bottom of the to do list. Well, it finally hit the top of the list, mostly because Lily is going to need to vacate the room that she is currently in to make room for Charlotte. These last couple of days we finally got it all cleaned out (it had pretty much all been a very unorganized storage space) and prepped. Tyson and my brother Ricky finished patching up the drywall in Lily's new room and today Tyson painted.

This is a little preview, it isn't quite done, the ceiling and doors still need to be painted and the new floor boards need to be put in, but it is great not to see holes in the wall or bare drywall anymore. The color that I chose is called melon and I love it. I know that it seems really bright, but just wait, once the trims and everything are up and the bedding and curtains are in there it will work well.

Also downstairs we have a family room. I have been really wanting to be able to use this room for the last few months. Lily's things have taken over my living room and it is hard for Tyson to do his homework and study when Lily is in the same room with her noisy toys so we are very excited to be having this family room available for her to play in and the living room will once again be an adult space. This is probably one of the tamest, if not the tamest, wall color in the entire house.

We have a few more finishing touches, including the stairway, to get done this next week and then we will schedule a date to get the carpet installed! The end is in sight and I am so excited!

Starting a New Year

Our new year started off very simply. Lily spent the day in a very silly mood so we had a lot of laughs. She had a lot of fun playing with her new toys and playing with Oscar.

One thing that we decided to start with the new year was potty training. I know that it is a little early, but Lily is so bright and loves to be independent so we figure that it is worth trying. We are taking it easy, just taking her every hour or so and giving her the chance to go. She is hilarious though. Instead of just going up to her potty and sitting down, she bends down and backs up to it. I got a little video of her doing it after her bath last night. Tyson and I just laugh about it.

We have plans to have our basement finished by the end of the month. It seems unreal that we might actually finish that project, it has been half done for almost 2 years now. But it has to be finished soon. Lily needs to move to her new room (and her toys need to move to the family room) so that we have somewhere to put Charlotte. Only 8-1/2 weeks to go!

Christmas 2010

We are finally home and settled from all of our Christmas adventures so I finally have some time to give a little summery.

On Christmas Eve we packed up the car and headed south the Utah. The drive was going great until we were about 5 miles out of Brigham City and the car died. We managed to get off the freeway. Around 2-3 minutes after the car died a nice young family stopped to see what was going on. These very kind people ran home and picked up jumper cables and a tow strap. They also came back with a snack for Lily. While Tyson and this very nice guy (we never got his name) looked over the car Lily had fun playing in the driver's seat.

It became clear that we were not going to get the car going so this kind man and his wife, with their young child towed us the 5 miles into town and took us to the auto parts store. We tried to give them some money for their troubles, but he wouldn't take it. It was great to be reminded that there are so many good people in the world who are happy to help, even on Christmas Eve.

We had our battery and alternator tested and it turned out that our battery had a short in it and that caused it to kill our alternator. Tyson's brother and his fiancee headed north from Sandy to come and help us out and while we waited for them I took Lily across the street to Burger King to get her a snack and let her play for a bit.

Once Stew got there in only the guys about 20 minutes to change out the alternator, Tyson had already replaced the battery, and then we were on our way again. We made it to Sandy around 7:00 pm and we had a nice relaxing evening with family.

Christmas morning was a lot of fun. It is so different with a little child around. Last year we of course had Lily, but she was too young to open gifts herself or understand what was going on. This year she seemed to figure it all out and she had a great time. I was a slacker and forgot to pull out my camera, so I pulled a few pictures off of my sister-in-law Brandi's blog.

Lily figured out how to unwrap her gifts, but she liked to do it a little at a time so it could take a while.

She went from person to person having them help her open her gifts and then she would sit with them and play with her new toys. This is her with her grandpa playing with her new see n' say.

She found some fun things at her grandma and grandpa's house. This lift flap book was her favorite, she must have gone through it 50 time or more.

She also LOVED the slide and spend hours going up and down it. She even helped some of her toys go down the slide. Every time she got to the top of the slide she would say "go" and wait for everyone to watch before she would slide down.

To our surprise Lily really opened up this last week. She had been so quiet and clingy to me and this last week she played with everyone and let all of her aunts and uncles hold her and play with her. She also started talking a lot more. I still don't understand a lot of it, but I am picking out more and more new words all the time.

On Tuesday we headed home, and thankfully made it back home without incident. My entire family was in town so we spent the next several days with them. Mostly we just hung out at my parents house, but on Thursday we all went bowling. Lily got to play for the first time and she had fun. The ball return was her favorite thing though. Tyson go the high score of course, but my brother Jack (2 years-old) managed to score 100 (with bumpers) and came in 4th. We are not bowlers, but we had a good time anyway.

On Friday we headed north about an hour and an half and went snowmobiling and sledding. It was so cold when we got there, around -8 degrees, but it warmed up to about 10 degrees by the afternoon. The area was beautiful and it was great to be with family. The kids loved sledding! All in all we had a great time, but it was cold, so we headed home after a few hours.

It was a great week, but it seriously wore me out. I'm grateful that we have an uneventful week ahead of us so that we can recover a bit and get back into the swing of things.