We love when family comes to town

We were excited to have my brother Eric, and his family come to town and spend their vacation in good ole Utah the past 2 weeks. Ever since my sister Krista moved from Provo to Oregon this past June, I've been left as the only one in my family still in Utah, with my family officially scattered all over the country/world. Yes, I know my parents do own a house in Utah County, but will they ever live in it?? We'll see...

So with them here on vacation, Emmett and I got to enjoy a little 'staycation' ourselves.

We went to the Discovery Gateway Museum

Lillie and Emmett

Emmett is currently obsessed with scooters and lawn mowers. He found both free at the same time and couldn't decide which to do. So he scooted around, while mowing at the same time.

Then he found a more manly lawn mower and gave up the pink one.

This pic is for you, Grandpa Winterton. (Might need to zoom in.)

We also enjoyed the Children's Exhibit "I Am a Child of God" going on at the Church History Museum.

They have a hospital/nursery scenario set up where the kids can dress, weigh, rock, change their babies in the nursery. It was so cute!

Eric and cute baby Henry

Lillie checking Henry's heart

They also had a bunch of other fun things for kids to do. Puzzles, coloring, dress ups, blocks, ect. all church oriented.

This is the best picture I could get of Emmett and Lillie together dressed up at the Nativity display.

Emmett holdin tight to the Iron Rod.

The kids had so much fun here (as much as the Gateway museum) and I highly recommend it for FREE fun with the kids if you're in town!

Then we went to the Zoo:

This picture of Emmett makes me laugh. He loves his sunglasses and his shirt goes perfectly with it.

I won't post all my zoo animal pictures, but I want to at least include the baby elephant. She was so cute!

We had a great time!

Its a Girl!

We are so excited!

The Lazy Days of Summer

Is it really August already? I like to treasure every teeny tiny bit of my summers but for some reason I'm already getting anxious and excited for fall.

So here's my summer recap.

-After Mike finished installing our new kitchen I think he hit burnout, and hasn't touched it since. We are still lacking all the finishing details that were needed a month ago. And I can't say that I blame him for not wanting to pull out all the tools again.

-We went to Star Valley for the 4th of July and enjoyed watching the local ranch rodeo, camping, eating cinnamon rolls, and watching fireworks lit off from the driveway. I must say it was the COLDEST 4th of July I think I've ever had. Less than 60 degrees for the 4th is just wrong!

-At the beginning of July my parents arrived in town from Korea and immediately ventured away to their cabin in Island Park. I went along with them for a couple days but due to Emmett being probably the sickest I've ever seen him, it wasn't exactly our funnest trip. But it was still nice to get away. After that we had a nice couple of weeks with them staying at their new house in Saratoga Springs and watching lots of movies on their big screen and hanging out.

-Emmett is 21 months old now and I see him learning new things every day. He jabbers constantly and I can only understand a small smidgen of it. But I love when he's got something really important he wants to tell me and how the sound effects and hand motions make it so much more effective. :) He hates nursery (well, pretty much all church in general). And its a tad bit frustrating to see brand new little 18 month olds basically walk away from their moms and dads with a smile and walk right into nursery, and my 21 month old makes me stay there for 2 hours or everyone pays the consequences. Anytime during the week if you ask him "Emmett, do you want to go to nursery?" He is quick to respond "nooo".

-Emmett copies everything we do now. Words we say (or something like them), sounds we make, body language ect. Today I was resting my palm on my chin as I was leaning over the kitchen counter. Emmett was in his high chair and attempted to copy me by putting his palm on his chin, (his looking slightly more awkward though) and giving me a big smile.

-My pregnancy is going great. I was a lot sicker this time around than I was with Emmett. My appetite increase was also insane during the first trimester. And it just so happened to be at its worst during the demolition of our kitchen so all I had to eat was junk, processed foods, and more junk that came from the microwave or KFC. Some people might enjoy a never ending appetite, but it drove me nuts to never feel satisfied. I also started feeling the baby move at 12 weeks. And I swear I'm as big now as I was with Emmett at 20 weeks. I'm a little bit scared that this baby is going to be bigger than he was (which was already too big)!

Here's a couple pictures of Emmett just for viewing pleasure. He's growing up so fast!

This is what you get when you tell Emmett to "smile big!"

This picture was at lunch, he picked up his plate and started pretending it was a phone. He was saying "herro? dadda?"

Posing for the camera even while he sleeps.

A mischievous camper.

Guess Whoo

Due to arrive January 22!

The Big Debut!

Before I show you the kitchen, lets take a stroll back down memory lane and see what it used to look like to refresh your memory. (It will be a part of mine for a long, long time).

I hated how the cabinets went all the way to the ceiling. If you were to open them and see what we put on the top shelf, it was pretty much nothing, or just extra storage stuff that collected a lot of dust. I could never reach it, even with a stool.

The drawers didn't have rollers. It was just wood rubbing on wood and "wood-dust" would get into all sorts of things like my measuring cups. I got really used to re-rinsing.

The grout in the pink tile was permanently stained with everything you can imagine from its past. I could never get it clean. I will run far away if I see tiled countertops in a potential house again.

Also, because we had to put child-proof locks on our bottom cabinets, it somehow caused the cabinets to never be able to fully shut. Probably something to do with the old hinges. As you can see from the photo above, all of them are ajar. But really, they never shut well anyways.

Probably my #1 least favorite thing in the kitchen was the sink. It too, never looked clean. It was an old cast iron sink and everything stained it: spaghetti sauce, juice, blueberries, anything with color, it stained it that way for weeks. It literally had to be bleached to become white again. It was also really small and shallow.

This tall cabinet space used to be a pantry cabinet I think. But the previous owners took the lower cabinets out and put the microwave and garbage can there instead. I actually kinda liked having the garbage can out of the way and able to cover it up with the curtain (especially when Emmett finally discovered it).

Free standing stove, and dishwasher. A.K.A, countertops.

Also, the cabinets you see above the dishwasher is the only space I had for pantry/canned/packaged foods. It was very small.

Anyways, enough of memory lane.

Without further ado...here she is!

2 pantry cabinets on either side of the fridge.

Mike installed undermount lighting under the cabinets.

And I got a big beautiful sink that can hold dishes for days. ;)

Mike (with the help of several family members and friends) did all of the work and I couldn't be prouder. There were only a few times I doubted him (mostly in the electrical department). But he did an AWESOME job!

So was it worth it? Definitely. It was a dirty, dirty job (to the ENTIRE HOUSE). And there were times when we asked ourselves "why did we decide to do this?" But I'm sooo glad I don't have my old kitchen anymore. You just have to suffer through a month or so of torture to get there. We still aren't completely finished yet. We still have to do baseboards, windowsills and a little bit of painting, but as far as the kitchen set up goes, its completely done!

We had a lot of help along the way. Neighbors, family, and friends offered tools, their muscles, dinner, and their time on multiple occasions and most without being asked. We appreciated it so much!

Now, who wants to come over for dinner?

A New Floor

My mom has been asking me when I'm going to post pictures of our new floor. So since Emmett is finally in bed, and my husband is gussin around in the kitchen I think I finally have a moment.

We don't think the linoleum was very old. Probably no more than 10 years. I'm guessing when the previous owners were picking out color, they probably tried to find something that would match with the pink tile countertops that used to be there, and since they didn't want to conquer this horrible project of getting rid of them, they decided to pick out linoleum color that would somewhat go together and bear with it. (Until they moved and passed it on to the next crazy owners! ha!)

You might not be able to tell very well from the camera, but it was whitish gray, and had a very slight shade of pink in it.

Yeah, I loved it about as much as I loved the pink countertops.

This was a good day:

Backer-board is laid and ready to tile:

Mike's brother Nick was in Utah for the weekend, and offered to help lay tile with him on Saturday. They worked hard for about 12 hours all day.

After its laid, it has to dry for about 24 hours, until the cement underneath is hard. Then you have to grout the lines.

On Monday morning, my sister and her husband Nate offered to come down from Saratoga Springs and help. So Nate and Mike grouted the tile for about 6 hours. Laying tile is a lot of work, but you save yourself SO much money doing it yourself.

I'm sure neither of these guys really wanted to spend their Memorial Day weekend helping Mike lay tile, but I hope they know how much it helped!!! It saved Mike hours and hours of time down on his hands and knees, had he been alone!

Here are the pictures I took Monday night after the grouting was finished.

The blank spaces in the floor are where some cabinets are going to go. And you can see we are still missing baseboards... All in due time...

It looks so good!

It still needs to be sealed, and a few other details, but for the most part its done!