Wednesday, September 17, 2014

August 2014

I wasn't quick enough taking a picture of Olivia before this one but she was using the snorkel as a walking cane and was hunched over walking around with it. A couple of days earlier we had watched Up and I think she learned it from the old guy using his walking stick. It was so funny to watch.

August 4, 2014

Ashton figured out how to scale door frames. If you can't tell we watch American Ninja Warrior at our house. The boys love it.

August 5, 2014

I love that the boys will still pull out all of the train stuff and spend hours building different tracks. Olivia even had fun putting the trains on the track and controlling them.

August 13, 2014

More progress pictures of the cabin! The sub-floors had all been patched and sanded thanks to my uncle and we even have kitchen cabinets in, all but one anyways. This picture was taken sometime in the middle of the night because Friday the 15th we stayed up almost all night to get everything ready for flooring to be installed. My uncle came Saturday morning the 16th so we had to get certain things done before then. I wasn't planning on staying all night but it took that long so luckily my mom who was at home with the kids took them to soccer games in the morning. We also felt horrible because we didn't think anyone was at the cabins next to us and we kept all the windows and doors closed but one of the neighbors heard us all night banging and making noise. I felt horrible and told them I was so sorry that we usually don't work that late it was just this one time but we wouldn't have done it if we knew they were there and could hear us. We were able to sneak a little sleep in from 6:30am to 8:30am and then we were back at it again.

August 16, 2014

This is looking into the full bath. (You can see stuff painted heading down the stairs, the squatters painted random things going down the stairs and on the cyder block walls in the basement too.)


Behind that door is a small 1/2 bathroom.



I'm never in any pictures with the kids so I'm trying to make sure I take some even if they are cheap cell phone quality. :) I know I'll be glad I did it. And Olivia loves to give hugs and cuddles and pats your back when she does it.

August 19/26, 2014

Another school year has started! Kaleb is in 5th grade and Ashton is in 1st grade and they both ride their bikes to school. They were both so excited to start school this year. Ashton because of school lunch and Kaleb because he just loves school. Ashton needed a new backpack since his broke and Kaleb has had the same backpack since 1st grade (I bed he's glad we didn't let him get a character backpack back then :)) so we let them pick out new backpacks this year. Ashton couldn't decided and ended up wanting the same one Kaleb picked out. I'm waiting for the day they take each others backpack to class but it hasn't happened yet.

August 21, 2014

Kaleb has Mrs. Patterson and I'm thankful she doesn't give a lot of homework. Last year Kaleb had so much homework every night so it's a nice change.


Ashton has Mrs. Ewell and she's so organized and you know exactly what they're doing every day. Definitely a big help for the parents.


I wanted a picture with all 3 of them but Olivia can't hold still as you can see. Here are the 6 I took. She kept looking over at Kaleb's friend who rides with them to school.

Matt and I drove to the school to help Ashton find where to line up. We passed them on our way.


Here's Ashton with his 2 good friends from school, Braxtin and Cyrus and they're all in the same class. (Braxtin's family also has a cabin in Aspen Acres too.)


Matt took some pictures of Olivia playing outside at Sunday dinner. My aunt has a bike for her to ride on and she just loves being outside. Kayden even tried to play catch with her.

August 24, 2014
As we were leaving dinner my uncle gave Olivia this toy dog that she cuddled on the way home.


Olivia and I ended up catching some sort of cold that next week that was miserable. She couldn't wait for nap time and fell asleep watching cartoons.

August 27, 2014

Friday night the 29th we went to the Ogden temple open house. Olivia hated the booties they put on her feet. She was crying and trying to kick them off and was mad that they wouldn't come off. Eventually she calmed down and realized they weren't going anywhere. It was so pretty inside the temple. The light fixtures and glass work were amazing. I'm glad we were able to go inside and a thank you to my sister-in-law for getting the tickets for us.

August 29, 2014

I'm actually caught up to the month we're in, September! Hopefully I'll do a better job at keeping up with the blog.

July 2014

I wasn't very good about taking pictures in July. We were trying to get as much done at the cabin as we could.

For the Fourth of July we went to the Murray parade, then had breakfast at CJ's, a BBQ at my aunt and uncles for dinner and then finished with fireworks at my parents house. And sadly this is the only picture I have to show for all of it. The boys ended up lighting that dirt/dead grass pile behind them on fire during the main firework show. Boys love burning anything. And Olivia HATED the big fireworks. She was inside the house and still screaming and crying because she was so scared. It was sad to see how scared she was. Side note but she also hates changing tables in public restrooms. As soon as you walk into a public restroom with her she starts crying and has since before she could walk. Not sure where that come from but just today I had to take her in one and she still hates them.

July 4, 2014
  

Here are a couple of "during" pictures. We changed the bricks under the wood burning stove so they would all be the same and then after taking out the carpet and floor it was on laid down another layer of sub-floor.

July 5, 2014
  

We starting taking down the drywall to the "new" bathroom that they were building and Matt started to redo all of the electrical and plumbing. The first 4 weeks without a working toilet weren't so fun. Not so bad for boys but I either had to head into town or just wait. Whoever built the cabin had done some of the plumbing wrong and the electrical was really scary. The place should have burned down with what they did. Wrong wire for the stove, hidden junctions, it was a mess. So to be safe and know that everything was done right we had to start at square one and change everything including a new breaker panel since the other one was old and each breaker cost almost $70. We were able to buy a whole new panel for almost that price. At least with new plumbing and electrical we know where everything goes and how it's all connected but it's been a slow process.

July 5, 2014
 

I found this picture on my phone that one of the boys must have taken. It shows out the back windows where eventually we'll build a deck and where we made a fire pit. The dirt is hard clay and we had to pick ax everywhere we wanted it to be level. My dad and I also stained the outside of the cabin.

July 12, 2014
 

 The only thing the realtor said that people had mentioned to her was wrong was that there might be issues about the foundation. We knew even if there were costly repairs that it would still be a great deal so we did our research and realized there were already two piers but on one side of the foundation. Which is where they drill down until they hit rock and it has a shelf that the foundation sits on and it holds it in place so that it can't ever slide or move. The back end of the cabin you could tell sloped downhill. We found the 2 main companies in Utah that do them and had one of them come out to see what it needs. He told us the other company put in the piers (which we called them and confirmed) and that it really shouldn't go anywhere and should be fixed. We asked if we should put them on the other side to make sure and he said if it were him he would wait a couple years and see if anything happens as far as cracking between the joints and if so then do it.

At least we knew he wasn't trying to sell us something we didn't need because he suggested not doing anything if we didn't mind the water in the basement since it's all concrete down there. Also, it was to our advantage that people were probably scared off not knowing what the piers were or what the state of the foundation was. The problem is the dirt around the foundation had all been dug out years ago creating a mote around the cabin for water to come down and flow through the basement. We heard from neighbors water just flowed over the slab and out the back. We wanted to back fill the dirt and waterproof the outside so we could finish the basement eventually and we didn't want to have to move the dirt twice if we found in a couple years we should put piers on the other corner. So to be safe and know that everything is 100% fixed we had them put piers on the other corner of the foundation and also waterproof the exterior and back fill the dirt. With the piers they were able to lift the corners up that had settled and make it so that it wasn't slanted to much. The guy couldn't believe how cheap we bought the cabin for. His grandparents has a cabin about 10  miles away and he knew the area really well.

July 16, 2014

In this picture you can kind of see Ashton's serious/angry face he made while batting. Matt's parents were in town for this game too so Ashton had a large cheering section with both sets of grandparents and aunts and uncles there to watch him.

July 22, 2014
 

  

A couple of days later Matt's parents took Kaleb and Ashton with them to Colorado for grand kids week. The older grand kids had a full week with each other and they went swimming, went to Rocky Mountain National Park, to a model train museum and hiking. The boys had fun being with their cousins that they don't get to see very often.

  

I don't drink pop very often but when I do I love Barq's root beer. I was so bummed when McDonald's stopped offering root beer but I guess it keeps me from drinking it as much. So this day working on the cabin Olivia and I had to run to Home Depot in Park City to pick up some things and stopped to get a root beer. She was mad whenever I tried to share with her, she wanted it for herself.

 July 25, 2014
 

Matt's mom made this cute skirt for Olivia.

July 27, 2014

Olivia spent a good 5 minutes this night blowing on her arms. She also thinks it's funny to do the same thing to her brother's tummy's.

July 28, 2014

The boys were still gone to Colorado and I wanted to get stuff done around the house so Matt took Olivia out on a date the two of them. They tried Buffalo Wild Wings and Olivia enjoyed dipping her fries in fry sauce.

July 29, 2014

Monday, September 8, 2014

June 2014

This girl just wants to go down the slide all the time. She's almost able to get up with the rope ladder but the last step up is still too far for her legs to reach so she usually goes up the ladder on the other side.

 June 5, 2014

Ashton loved his kindergarten teacher Mrs. Kubinak. She was great with the kids and he learned so much this year.

 June 6, 2014

We went up to Silver Lake to walk around and there was still snow! The kids liked climbing on it though.

 June 6, 2014

Whenever we walk past these stumps I make Ashton take a picture because it reminds me of how much he's grown.


Grown and thinned out. He was such a big baby! Although he still has his cheeks. This is from September 2008 when he was 7 months old.


And here's one more from July 2010.



This was the only section where the snow was on the trail.


Olivia would have stayed here all night throwing rocks over the side. She was so mad when we pulled her away to keep walking.


Olivia stole my uncles slush, sometimes she's too cute to say no to.

 June 7, 2014

After Sunday dinner we had a little photo shoot for my nephew for his birth announcements. At first he was awake but after awhile was too hungry to be happy so after a feeding he was fast asleep for more pictures.

June 8, 2014



The night before this picture we were at my parents house and Ashton had fallen asleep in the other room with Kaleb. Ashton comes walking in later that night and had just woken up and is standing there and we all start laughing. He wanted to know why we were laughing and then Kaleb walked in laughing too. He had drawn a mustache on Ashton while he was asleep. Kaleb is always up to something.

 June 10, 2014


This was on a quick mid-week hike to look at a cabin we were looking at buying. (More info. on that later)

June 11, 2014

My mom and I tagged along to the One Republic concert with my aunt, her niece and my sister. They love going to concerts and it was a really good concert. We had a fun time although it was unusually cold that night.

June 14, 2014

The Sunday before Kaleb's birthday we celebrated his 10TH birthday! I can't believe he's 10 already. He's always such a good boy and always is helping out with Olivia. He always has his nose in a book and is really smart.

June 15, 2014

Although blurry it shows his fun personality. He's always being silly and here he was dancing while we sang to him.




On his birthday he wanted to go to Leatherby's for ice cream.

 June 16, 2014



More slide time for Olivia!

June 16, 2014

Ashton played coach pitch and he did great. He hit it almost every time and only had to use the tee a couple of times all season. He has a good, hard swing and I think he's going to enjoy playing more baseball in the years to come!

June 19, 2014

Kaleb buried himself on the playground and when we went to get him after the game Olivia decided to help bury him too. But she kept putting dirt on his head and Kaleb couldn't do anything about it.


A little more info on the cabin...

I had found a foreclosure cabin in Oakley and that night we went up to look at it. We couldn't get in the gate so we hiked up the road to look at the cabin to make sure we were interested before contacting the realtor. I had been looking for the last couple of years at cabins but they usually cost more than our house so I didn't think it would ever happen. We spoke to the realtor and we knew it possibly had foundation issues and it was also pretty much gutted when it came to the kitchen and bathroom. The only thing in there was a toilet that was broken. We love projects and we were excited to take this one on. It had been listed since January but cabins don't really sell during the winter and each month they dropped the price $5-$10k. At first they said it qualified for Fannie Mae financing and after accepting our offer we learned they were wrong that since it didn't have a working kitchen and bathroom they couldn't finance it. So we scrambled and were able to come up with other financing because we knew there were other offers also still on the table. To make sure one of the other 2 bids didn't get it we raised our offer some and we ended up getting the cabin and closing June 30, 2014. Turns out one of the offers was from a friend of the guy who has a cabin next to us that bid about $5k less than we did.

It's a great gated community of cabins and it turns out one of the guys over the HOA is the guy we bought our house from. It was his parents house that he grew up in so he knew who we were when he saw the address. And another lady on the board lives right by my grandpa plus, Ashton, over labor day weekend ran into one of his friends from school that has a cabin up there. So we already are getting to know a bunch of people up there. And there's always deer and moose all over which are fun for the kids to see. I'll stop rambling but it's definitely been a big part of our summer. We've gone up there every weekend to work on it and it's finally getting close and looks completely different inside and even outside.

Another trip up to the cabin to show family the cabin and there were 2 moose right next to our cabin and a couple of deer. The lot to the corner of us has a big water trough for the animals to drink from so they're always down there.

June 21, 2014

This is what it looked like when we bought it. The drywall portion is a bathroom that they were expanding to make bigger, the kitchen would be to the right and the living room to the left with the stove. Behind the stove are stairs leading up to the loft and behind the stairs is what they were using as one of the bedrooms.


Here's a view from the front door area looking into the living room. We took out the drywall and that area is opened up except for a small 1/2 bathroom and then the kitchen starts after that making the kitchen and living room area much bigger. The bedroom on the main floor is now the main bathroom with a tub/shower in it. We were going to have washer and dryer hook-ups but ended up changing the plans and moving them to the basement. The loft has one bedroom and a loft area and the basement eventually we'll finish too. It also needs a deck built. It was build wrong (they didn't use concrete footings) and so it came down a couple of years ago from the snow. We're always so busy I forget to take pictures but we've had many tinfoil dinners and spent a lot of time this summer up here. I have a couple pictures of during shots and I'll try to get more pictures taken this weekend.


Such a happy girl all the time!

 June 25, 2014

Here's a picture of the outside of the cabin right after buying it. It's crazy to look at these pictures now because it seems like this was so long ago but it was really only 2 months ago that it still looked like this. We've since stained the outside, fixed and water proofed the foundation, back filled the dirt that had been dug out to get rid of the "plank walk" entrance and made a fire pit area behind the cabin.

June 30, 2014