Happy 3rd Birthday Xander

I know in most of the world, this little red car is known as Lightning McQueen, but in our house, he's known as Chow. You know, as in "Ka Chow". Xander LOVES anything Chow. He can watch the movie over and over and will quote it as it goes along. So of course, what did he want for his birthday, but Chow.
Notice the wrapping paper his mother used...yep, CHOW!
Xander, opening a card from his Mom.
Opening Sherrif....from the same movie!
Blowing out the candle. Xander was sufficiently spoiled and another year has passed. Matt and Denae tried to pull an old trick on him. They kept sticking different things into the same box and would have him open it. Even an old shoe. Xander caught on pretty fast and told them they were "tarded". Not sure if that is politically correct, but I think they got the message he didn't think it was funny any more.

Where a Kid can be a Kid.....

Chuck E. Cheese' is NOT my favorite place to go eat. But the joy it brings to the grandkids is hard to deny. Just look at these faces. Jim and I were watching the girls the night before they were to leave for Arizona for a while, so we decided to take all the kids there for a send off "party" of sorts.

Here's Xander meeting the Mouse himself.
Xander was brave enough to go up into the climbing tunnels and LOVED IT! Sorry about the scary looking eyes. LOL
The girls would hardly hold still long enough for me to get a picture.

Isn't this the face of joy? He was lovin' life.
And here is Laira, (in the car) Xander (in the car) and Bailey, (on top of the car) with a little boy in a Ninja Turtle costume. Where else can you wear something like that in June and be COOL?
Bailey getting her picture taken and having a lot of fun. Now why would she hold still for THIS picture, but not MY pictures? Huh?

Needless to say we all went home tired and content, even if the food isn't that great. That's NOT why we go there...now is it?

Where have I been???

Well, if you are my Facebook "friend" then you know, if not...then here's the explanation. All of my spare time has been spent going from this.........

Looking into the Family Room. Notice the dropped ceiling, and the clutter on the counters.

Looking into the dinning room. Stuff on top of the fridge...no place for anything.

The new window in the old layout. Notice how the cabinet partially covers the window. We didn't know it was going to be FIVE years before we could get to the kitchen remodel. LOL
And last, our lovely wall...insulation where we had removed a window during the family room addition. This is what we looked at for five years. Nice, don't you think?

To this....
Removing the soffit above the cabinets, we found the electrical had run THROUGH the soffit...so we had to move it to the wall.I HATE rockwool insulation, but we managed to keep some up there.
I thought we were IMPROVING this place....it looks WORSE! But there IS new drywall up. Looking towards the dinning room.
Where a lot of stuff got stashed during the remodel. Believe it or not....there is a kitchen table under there SOMEWHERE!
The new paint color....do you like it? Okay, not really....It was April 1st when we were painting and Denae said I should post this and ask your opinion....but it was already late and I was TIRED. This was actually the primer...tinted to half the color.
LOOK! CABINETS! And they are STUNNING! Chris Thomas built them and they are the most AWESOME cabinets. I NEVER thought I would have a kitchen this nice.
And finally....the countertop! YAY! The kitchen is back together and is more than I ever dreamed. We aren't done yet, but we can cook and clean now.
The kitchen sink.....complete with dirty dishes. Who knew a new kitchen would come with those!
Close up of the countertop. It changes in different light. It's granite and we love it. We are planning to do a tile backsplash and refinish the floor, but the kitchen is basically done. Now we just need to strip the wallpaper off in the dinning room, move the ceiling fan about 8 inches, patch a couple of holes, and paint the dinning room and then it will be done. But after the kitchen, I have taken several days to relax. But it's time to get back to it. :D

Late Spring Snow.....Beauty

Although I am sick of winter and all things associated with it. Again, I just LOVE the looks of fresh fallen snow! Here are some final (I HOPE) pictures from this past (fingers crossed) winter.








These were all taken in my parking lot at work the morning of April 16th, 2009

Winter's Beauty

I know that many people do not enjoy, or even LIKE Winter. I don't especially enjoy the cold, but I DO find lots of beauty in Winter. I am fortunate to have a very small camera that I carry around in my purse, so whenever I saw something I liked, I would pull it out and take a picture. These are just pictures I found interesting or beautiful, so I hope you enjoy them.

These first ones are of my car...I thought they were interesting in how the ice formed...
And this was AFTER driving from Center Street Provo, to 1600 North in Orem.
Stopped at Costco and found these little bits of ice on the little nubs on my fairly new tires.
Beautiful ice crystals across the top of my car.
A VIBRANT sunset one evening as I was leaving the house.
Our tree in the back yard....I LOVE it when it looks like this!
Another shot of the tree...
Icicles just outside the kitchen window....they were LONG!
Work parking lot when it was REALLY snowing hard.
With winter...comes the fog. This is on my way to work one morning. Can you tell this is Center Street just before the freeway (heading east.)
More fog....it's like the world isn't in focus...and the picture is a little blurry...but it's fog!
And every afternoon when I would get home, I would look across the snow and see all the sparkling diamonds in the snow. I didn't capture that very well, but you can see a few.
And my ABSOLUTE favorite winter picture....and I didn't even take it. I STOLE it (borrowed....without permission...) off of a friends blog, but I absolutely LOVE IT!

This is Customer Service???

So the day we had been waiting for finally arrives....the stove/oven will be delivered TODAY! We had a delivery window of 3:30pm - 5:30pm, well at 3pm they showed up. I was JUST leaving work. I get a phone call from the kids saying..."They are asking questions that I don't know the answers to!" I speak to the delivery guy and tell him to LEAVE the power cord from the OLD STOVE and WE will hook it up. He asks me if we want it in or out of the box, I say OUT.

About 15 minutes later, Matt calls me and tells me we don't have a power cord for the Stove. Aaarrrgggg! They were supposed to LEAVE the OLD ONE! Go get it! But they had already left. I call Sears. They tell me they will get the delivery team to come back and give us back the power cord. And for our troubles, they will send us a $30.00 gift card. Well, after two hours of waiting, we have heard NOTHING! I call them back. The first person I speak with tells me, "You just need to wait." WHAT??? How long do they expect me to wait??? It's been two hours. So she finally passes me on to a higher level of help and this person sees that there was a response from the delivery team stating that "The customer needs to contact an electrician." *SIGH* NO! I just need the power cord and WE can take care of this! OH! And why didn't anyone call ME and let ME know they weren't coming? By now, the lady says our old stove is probably at the dump.
It may not seem like a big deal, but they didn't do ANYTHING that they were told to do, AND they didn't come when THEY said they would. And that cord costs $20.00. The second lady could see I'd had it. I was NOT amused with any of this, and now...before I could cook dinner, I needed to run and buy a power cord. So in trying to make amends, she offered me a $40.00 gift card. So all in all, I will get $70.00 in gift cards, so I guess that is something. The stove is installed now and working great. But as for customer service....wow....where was that? All they had to do was show up within the "delivery window" that they told us, and everything would have been fine.

WOW! What a difference the New Year Brings....

I have been SADLY slacking in my blogging....but come on...it WAS only two weeks and it WAS full of holidays....amongst some "other" events. So where to begin....

Christmas

The Jolly Ole Elf found us again this year and we were all sufficiently spoiled. It was fun to watch everyone open their gifts. When we were about 3 quarters of the way through the piles of presents...the phone rang. I can't remember who said it, but someone said..."Now WHO would call on Christmas morning?" We all just looked at each other, buried by our gifts, then we all hollered out together, "BRYCE!" And there was a mad scramble for the phone. LOL Everyone had their chance to visit with Bryce, then it was Mom and Dad's turn to talk. It was wonderful to hear his voice! But my son was EMPTY! It broke my heart to hear him so sad and depressed. When we hung up, Jim and I just shook our heads as we felt so helpless and didn't know quite what we could to do help him. Slowly we resumed our opening of gifts. Then we just played, ate and lazed around.Bailey, Laira, and Xander excited to open gifts.Jim, Xander, and Ashley amongst the Christmas Chaos.
New Years Day

Jim got a call from our Stake President, telling us there was going to be a "phone interview" the next day with him, the Mission President and Bryce. AND that we might also be included and he wanted to know if we would be available. Yes, we would be available. The next day, we DID get a call and Bryce was telling us he wanted to come home. There was much discussion and it was decided that WAS the best thing. That night, Bryce was really having a hard time as the Mission President and all the Elders were trying to convince him to stay. Bryce finally asked President for a blessing. And President said, "You KNOW what I'm going to say." And Bryce said, "I just need a blessing." In the blessing he said, "Heavenly Father is behind your decision and the way will be made for your family and friends with understanding." Well, how can you argue with that. He was miserable, depressed and wasn't effective anymore...and it seemed that Heavenly Father knew his time was done. Two hours later, we get the phone call that he has his ticket and we need to pick him up the next evening at 8:04 PM.

The AIRPORT

Since we went over to pick Matthew up, I'd never had the experience of waiting there in Baggage Claim for them to come down the escalator. I was watching for him and then...there he was! Bryce looked WONDERFUL....and the tears just started to flow! When he got to the bottom, I ran up to him and just hugged him and cried. He kind of chuckled and hugged me back, then the rest of the family came to him....it was great to have everyone together again. He kept saying..."This is so weird....I just left Florida and yet, here I am."Not a very good picture, but Bryce, Matt and Jim waiting for his luggage.

Sunday Flambe'

Sunday morning, Bryce, Jim and I met with the Stake President and Bryce was released as a full time missionary. It was a nice meeting and weird to no longer have a missionary. When we got home, just like most other Sunday's, I prepared a roast and placed it in the oven to cook while we were in church. Well, the oven had a different idea. Instead of keeping the temperature steady at 300 degrees, it just kept on going. After a few hours and all the liquid had disappeared, it started to smoke, then BURN. Luckily Denae, who had worked the night before was home and woke up coughing from the smoke, ran upstairs, pulled the food out and threw it outside. She said the smoke filled the top half of the rooms. As she carried it outside, she said flames were coming out from under the foil. She tried to turn the oven off, but it wouldn't shut off. They finally flipped the breaker to stop it. By the time I got home, the smoke was pretty much cleared out, but the house smelled of SMOKE....BAD!!! Matt and Denae worked together to come up with a microwave dinner that was enough for all. As we were seated for dinner I thought...."Of course the oven 'fritzed'....my missionary was released!" LOL

Repair or Replace

When ever something breaks there is the question...do we fix it or just replace it. Cost is usually a big factor in this. We called a few people to get an idea on how much it would cost to repair the existing stove, and the repairman asked "How old is the stove?" Well, that was a good question. I can remember that we bought it at Sears, BEFORE the Provo Town Centre Mall opened....so when was that??? I finally found out that the Mall opened in 1998, so that makes the Stove 10 old MINIMUM....more likely 11 or 12 years old. Then we found out the repair would be around $380.00 Wow, that HALF the cost of a new one! So, we decided with the existing stoves age, and the cost of the repair....to REPLACE it. Kind of fun to pick out a new one....but I didn't get the one I REALLY wanted....but it's a nice stove/oven. Matt had to come along since he has his new found interest in cooking. Should be fun to play with it's new bells and whistles.

All in All

Bryce is doing well, and is starting school right away and looking for a job. The new stove/oven will be here tomorrow (Thursday) and the house still smells like smoke. Anyone have any remedies for THAT? But for a rather eventful two weeks, we are all well and doing fine now. I'm just looking forward to a HOT dinner that didn't come out of the microwave. ; )