Ladybugs...

I love ladybugs! Growing up, they were one of two bugs you didn't have to be afraid of (the other one is lightning bugs), but rather feel lucky if you got to hold one in your hand. Well, I guess they are good for the garden too because you can buy them in packages like this at nursery's in Utah. Tanner's Nana bought a bag and let Tanner help her spread them around the yard. It was so fun to see Tanner laugh and squeal as they were crawling all over his fingers and clothes. How fun, I hope Nana plans on doing this for years to come. It was quite the event in Tanner's eyes.




Helping Nana spread ladybugs all over the bushes in her backyard. Can you see the ladybugs crawling on his shirt and collar? Also, check out the face we drew on his hand. We had a 2-hour church meeting and we resorted to drawing on our child to keep him quiet for the last 10 minutes. Hey, it worked!


Tanner would get the biggest kick when the ladybugs would start crawling on him. He loved how they would "tickle" his fingers.


"Look mom, they are all over!"

New Template...

I was feeling like my old template was a little squishy, so I decided to change to a new look. Holly, I wasn't purposely trying to copy your blog, this was the only format I liked that would spread everything out evenly. I even copied your comment idea, but you already gave me the okay on that. =) What can I say, you have good taste.

All in a Day's Work...

Here is Matt and Tanner checking out to see if the corner wall in our dining room is a bearing wall. We are so glad it isn't. By removing that wall it will really open up our entry way. While we were checking it out, we thought we would give Tanner the opportunity to bang a hammer on the walls as well. Hopefully this got it all out of his system and he won't want to bang holes in the wall down the road.

I love Kate in these pictures, she's trying to sleep and here the boys are banging on the walls and being quite noisy. What's a girl to do?



I think this is so cute! He could barely hold the hammer b/c it was so heavy, but he wanted to bang on the walls just like daddy did.



Here goes Matt...

















After finishing over at our house, we went back to Nana's where there was some wood shavings that needed to be swept up in the backyard. They were all in a nice pile, then Tanner decided to "help." He was so proud of himself that you couldn't help but laugh, take a picture, then clean it up again.


Kate and Tanner are all tuckered out after such a busy day!!

Our New Home!!!

Yeah, we finally closed on our home! We have been waiting FOREVER (at least it seems like it anyway) to buy a home in Utah. Weve been looking for over a year and nothing ever quite felt like the right home. Matt's grandparent's lived in the home next door to Matt's parents in Orem, UT, and we've always thought it would be a dream to buy that house. It's a cute little rambler with a big wrap around porch in the front. For us, it is in the perfect location, a quiet culdesac, within biking and jogging distance to the trail that takes you up Provo Canyon. It's near family and dear friends, and in a ward we absolutely love. It is so close to everything. We have been truly blessed, more than we could ever imagine. It is a dream for us to be able to buy this house. We are so excited and we just keep pinching ourselves hoping this is real!

This post is mostly for my parents in Texas who haven't been able to see the inside of the house, so bear with me as I explain our plans for each room.


The family room is HUGE!! With nice big windows that let a lot of sunlight in. We are mostly doing cosmetic stuff in this room...paint, carpet, new window treatments, light fixtures, etc. We are replacing the fireplace. it is a wood burning right now, so we'll change it to a nice gas fireplace. We have plans to redo the mantel as well.


This is our entry way. Mostly cosmetic stuff here. Paint, refinsh the wood floors, etc. We have to get a new banister b/c this one has openings too big--a child could stick there head through the opening, not good.


The living room will be changing quite a bit. From the debri, you can see where we were banging holes in the wall to see if the corner wall was a bearing wall. Thank goodness it wasn't. We are going to take that out completely. We are also knocking out the wall that you see in the photo. That wall is shared by the kitchen. We are only knocking out half of the wall so I don't loose all my kitchen counter space. It will look really nice, I am most excited about this. From this architecture rendering, you can kind of see what I am talking about. The half wall on the right is the one that is shared by the living room. We are going to put some kind of decorative post on the end so it doesn't just stop.

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Here is the current layout of the kitchen. From this rendering, you can see what our plans are. The only differences are that I am going to keep the stove-top where the oven is now rather than put it in the island, we'll keep about a 14 inch backsplash above the cabinets where we ripped out the half-wall (this rendering only shows cabinets, but there will be a small bit of wall beind it), put a nice decorative post in, and change the corner cabinet a little bit.




See how big it is mom? No need to have another dining area, there's plenty of room in here! =) We are going to take out the drop down ceiling too.


Mostly cosmetic stuff in here. This is the laundry/mud room. We'd like to build in a bench and some coat hangers and cubby holes so the kids can kind of have their own locker to put stuff in. Matt had that growing up and he really liked it. I think it is a great idea too, so we'll see what we can do. We are also going to take some of the exsisting cabinets from the kitchen and put them above the washer and dryer for more storage space.


This is the kids bathroom, it's right off the kitchen, across from the laundry room. It opens up to the kids bedroom as you can see. Mostly just cosmetic stuff, but we do need to replace the tub and toilet b/c of some mold problems. We'd like to redo the sink area as well, we'll see what our budget can afford.


Here's where Tanner and Kate will sleep. There are only two bedrooms upstairs, and I can't stand the thought of my babies sleeping down in the basement, so we'll do this for now and figure out what we'll do for more bedroom space upstairs when the 3rd comes. This room is pretty much just carpet and paint and new lighting fixtures.


The Master bedroom is HUGE!!! I don't know what we are going to do with all this space. This is the first room we've had since being married that makes our King size bed look small. We are jsut doing carpet and paint and new light fixtures in here for now. Maybe a few years down the road we'll be able to furnish it, make a nice sitting area, etc.


There's a lot we'd like to do in the master bath. Again, we'll see what our budget will allow. We'd like a new sink area and we'd like to put double sinks in. We'd also like to tear the sheetrock down by the toilet, switch the shower head to the other side, make the shower wall by the toilet a half-wall, put glass on that side and close in the shower with nice glass. I think this will open it up quite a bit. We'll see it that will work-that is a big project.


Finally, space and storage. I'm really excited about the master closet!!

For now we are doing nothing with the basement. The basement is a huge 2800 square feet, so we are just going to leave it as is and make it our little project down the road. (Way down the road) But I have ideas...


This room will become a movie theater type room with lots of seating and a nice big projection screen. Or maybe this will become a game room if we use the other big area for other things.


This room is gigantic, so we might make another bedroom down on the end and then make a fun playroom for the kids down here. Or maybe make it a game room with pool tables, ping-pong tables, that kind of thing. (That's what Matt would love). If I end up teaching Kindermusik on my own, part of this may become my studio. The door you see on the left about half-way down is another entrance from the garage. We could close that in and have that be my studio area. We'll see, there is plenty of space to work with.


We'll just make this into a guest bedroom where my parents can come and stay when they come to visit grandkids. Anyone else is welcome too!


Another guest bedroom down the road. Matt's grandparents built these shelves in here which are very cool! So for now it will probably be our storage room for Matt's climbing gear and holiday stuff.


Update and redo shower area, more mold problems in this bathroom.


This is a dream room! It is a cold storage room where we can put our year supply of food. There is a whole other side for water barrels too. We'll be all prepared in case of an emergency.


Here's our backyard, I love the views. We have a lot of ideas for back here too. But I think I've already beat the record for the longest post ever, so I'll leave that for another time.

Life can be so tough!

Poor little one. Having someone wait on you hand and foot, provide you with all your meals, and make sure you're clean and happy can sure be exhausting. Maybe I'm just jealous b/c I would love to be in her shoes, kicking my feet up and taking it easy. At least one of us is getting some rest.


I love how her foot is up and her hand is over her little head. We didn't stage this, this was all her. She knows what's comfy! Too cute!

Utah here we come...

We are all so excited to be going to Utah tomorrow! Tanner can't wait to ride in an airplane, Matt can't wait to go climbing, Kate can't wait to meet all her friends, and I can't wait to close on our house!! We close on Monday! Yipee!!!

Sweet Tanner...

Tanner was so sweet with Kate today, that I had Matt take some pictures, just in case it never happens again.




Sweet kisses for a sweet girl!

Silly Tanner...

So Tanner discovered that Kate's carseat is much like a Banana Chair, and if he sits in it, he can lounge and rock back and forth. He discovered that a few weeks ago, and many times I will come out into the family room and he'll just be chillin' watching Clifford in Kate's carseat. He also has decided that he likes plating with Kate's binkies. He never used them when he was a baby, but now he thinks its so funny and has even designated one of them as "Tanner's."


Playing peek-a-boo with the sun shade.


This picture is so funny. He had just gotten out of Kate's carseat and walked over to her as if it was now his turn to try the swing. You can see him just thinking about how he is going to get her out so he can get in.

Time for a bigger bed?

Matt and I have been waiting to move Tanner to a "big-boy" bed until we move into our house. We thought it would be a good transition with having his own room and all. We also didn't want to make too many changes when Kate was born. But I think we are going to have to do it sooner.


Check out the leg reach here. He is also running out of room in his bed because of all the friends he has to have in bed with him. That and his pillow takes up a third of his porta crib. His crib would have worked much better, but it was too big to bring down here to AZ.

American Idol 2023...

He's getting ready. He even sings. So cute!

Fun in the Morning.

My favorite part of the day is the morning when Matt, Tanner, Kate and I can just hang out in bed. We obviously can't do it every morning because of other responsibilities, but when we can, we end up staying in bed laughing and playing until like 9:00 a.m. I love Kate's face in this picture, she's like, "Come on, I look silly!"