What we do to pass time......

So last week hubby was at the store pricing shingles for the roof. We didn't need to replace the roof yet. We were told we had about 2-3 years when we had the house inspected before buying it, before we needed to replace the roof. But in 2-3 years we will have a child prepping for college and a toddler getting ready for pre-school, and possibly another newborn. So we figured while we had the money and time, we would go ahead and do it. Well hubby found some great ones at the big orange box on sale. 30 years, architectural design, slate in color. Gorgeous!

He had them delivered (roof top of course, cause it was free, and having to lug these heavy shingles up ourselves would just have been silly), got a couple of his brothers and a member of our church to come help and 3 days later, they were done! Well, the first day, his brother Joe came for 4-5 hours, the second day it was just Jacob, and the third day is when Joe came again, John came and the member from our church came. Seriously, the help was soooo appreciated. And I love LOVE how it looks now. As Tammy commented, our house actually looks newer, just by reshingling the roof. :D Next project for the outside of the house, repainting. :D

Above: Before (taken May 5, 2010)

And now, for the big reveal (that is, if you aren't on my Facebook and haven't already seen it)

The after (taken June 25, 2010)

We also bought a new dishwasher. The old one was leaking so we decided to buy a new one. We spent a little more than I would have liked, but we opted to get the one we would want when we redo our kitchen next year. Figured it would save money rather than having to get a new one now for a couple hundred and then spend more later to get what we actually want. Plus, it was on sale so we're happy.

Today is July 1st. I never thought July would come. July is the month Baby Emily is due. It seems surreal honestly. We have waited so long for this, and now it is almost here. We have had a couple of baby showers for family. My mom did one for her side, Jacob's sister-in-law did one for Jacob's side of the family and there is still 1 more before the baby comes. Our birth mom K and my stepmom, are throwing us one next week. My friend Annette offered to throw us one after the baby comes. She is in the middle of a move right now so when we talked, we decided after Emily comes would be better. We will probably do an open house as well but we haven't decided that yet. Since we are also doing an open house when the adoption is finalized and we are able to bless her and go to the temple, we may wait on that.

Later today we have a dr. appt. that we are going to. Hubby is coming with so that he can hear Emily's heartbeat in person for the first time. This is also the appt. where they do the tests to make sure all is good for a regular delivery, and I think they will start checking K as well to see if she is starting to dialate. K is 36 weeks today which means we have 28 days left till her due date. 4 weeks (give or take depending on if the baby comes early or late of course). Or as my friend Brittany would say, 4 Saturday's (it always seems less when you count in Saturday's). YAY!!!

Bye Bye Deck! A.K.A. what Jacob has been doing on Spring Break.

When we moved into our house the one thing we really had reservations about was the size of our back yard. The side yards, and the front yard are really a good size. But the back yard is small. Like from the house to the fence is around 14 feet or so. Tiny! Ecspecially considering what we're used to. Our backyard in New Mexico was massive! It was bigger then our house which was 2,000 sq feet. We miss that yard. So does our dog! But I digress.

We set out to find a way to make our back yard more user friendly. After all, when we bought this house we felt it was the one for us. And now that we live here, we know it is. If you recall from previous pictures, our back yard looked like this before we moved in (this is from the listing photos before we bought the house):

Incidentally, the green astroturf carpeting is no longer on the cement. Now it is just a nice cement patio. But as you can see, the deck takes up most of the back yard, making it really small, and really chopped up, and really, not user friendly, and definately not kid friendly. So, this week is spring break for Jacob and he has spent his time working on projects, this being one of them:
Good bye deck! It opens up the backyard soooo much! We are working on getting this all cleaned up and we will get some grass growing here instead of the deck. So by the time our little one is old enough to be playing back here, it will be nice and ready for her. :D We are also going to get rid of all the Ivy you see growing on the fence. It is actually from the neighbors yard and is overgrown into our yard. They want it gone too so we are all going to get rid of it. And that will open up this area even more!
In other news, "K" is 22 weeks along. Only 18 more weeks to go! She has an appt. on the 6th that I am going up for. I can't wait! We started a blog for her. We wanted to anyway, so that after the baby is born we can post pictures and updates for her to see. Yes, she will be very involved in the baby's life, but she does live 2 hours away, so she won't be able to see the baby every day. So inbetween visits, she will get to see lots and lots of pictures. The blog is private so only she can see. We started it early so "K" could see all the preparations that we are making for Baby Girl.

Birthday Celebration and Surprise!

Monday was hubby's birthday but he had school until 1:30 and then had to work that evening, so instead, we celebrated on Sunday. Tammy wanted to make him dinner. She said, "I don't have any money to get him a gift, so this is my gift to him." Trust me babe, that dinner meant more to him than any store bought gift could have. And it was YUMMY!!! She made steak with roasted veggies (potatoes, carrots, and asapargus) on the side.

Tammy making the yummy steak! It was a flank steak with red pepper, swiss cheese and spinach all rolled together. Sooo good!

And the yummy yeggies!

The steak she did on the George Foreman grill that we got Jacob for Christmas, and the veggies were roasted in the oven.

I asked Jacob what kind of a cake he wanted, he wanted an ice cream cake, so I went to Baskin Robbins and got one.

Cake from Baskin Robbins.

Silly man!

I know he likes Chocolate Cake and this Peanut Butter Chocolate cake was the only one they had that was a chocolate cake that didn't have Pecans or some other nut. And since I am allergic to nuts Jacob won't eat them either. All in all it was a great evening.

For my gift to him, I redid his office. But I had to wait till this weekend since he was away for drill for the Reserves and I wanted it to be a surprise. And boy was he ever surprised! My mom and Tammy helped as well, and I was grateful! It was quite the task, but the look on his face when he saw it, it's well worth it. He loves it!

Office before. It's in the basement, so it was kind of dark and dirty looking. We all hated going down there. I wanted to make it a nice room where Jacob could relax and study.

And the after. Here you can see his desk and TV. The TV is for him to watch movies, shows, or play games while he takes a break from the stresses of studying. The picture hanging on the cabinet door directly in front of his desk is a Greg Olsen print that his mom got him for his birthday. I also hung next to it a family picture from our recent photo shoot and picture of the Provo Temple. He has his bulletin board and calender hanging right there for easy referrence. the rug he got in Afghanistan. And I had my mom make the curtains to seperate this room from the food storage room.

And here is his reading/game corner. My mom and I brought the chair, affectionately known as "Jacob's ugly orange chair" down and set it in the corner where he can relax or play video games. I put his Lord of the Rings posters up and had my mom make a throw to go over his chair.

He was thrilled when he saw it! And we are just thrilled that he is thrilled!

Happy Birthday Honey! I love you!

Our house, part 2 (more pictures!)

I finally took pictures of our completed (for now) living room. My mom recovered the chairs and loveseat in our living room. Eventually we will replace the carpet (that's why it's finished for now). I love how it turned out! I didn't realize there was so much red though. ;o) The piano is from when I was growing up.

Another view of our living room. Seriously love this room!

Here is my craft area. This picture was taken before the blinds and curtains were replaced. Love this space!
That's it for now, I will post more later!

Our house, part 1

We got our family pictures done last week. I will have the disk in a couple of weeks. I can't wait! The proofs I have seen so far are great!! So I will share those when we get them.

For now I wanted to share a little about our house. If you have been reading our blog for awhile then you know we bought our house sight unseen in August. We found it on the internet but we were living in New Mexico at the time because Jacob was still Active Duty Army. We needed a house to move into when we moved to Utah which meant buying one before we moved back. Luckily my mom was willing and able to go look at homes for us. We looked at over 60 homes on the internet, and had my mom and our realtor actually physically go to close to 20 houses. She took major notes and lots of pictures so we could feel as comfortable about our purchase as possible. (Thanks again mom!) This is definately the right home for us and we love it! It has been a labor of love so far, and we have a lot more work to do, but it's home.

Our home is located in West Valley City Utah, which if you aren't familiar with the area is a suburb of Salt Lake City. Our neighborhood is great. Very friendly and safe. Lots of neighbors with kids of all ages. We live within a 1/2 mile of 2 Elementary schools and live around the corner from the Jr. High. The High School is close as well and we have parks within walking distance. It's a great house on a corner lot. That means our backyard is smaller, but the side yards are large.

Our house is 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms. We have 2,024 sq feet which is the perfect size in my opinion. Not too small, but not too big. Here are some pictures of the inside of the house. I will post more later as we complete more projects.

This is our kitchen.

Eventually we will redo it, to give us an oven that is big enough (this one is teeny tiny, you can't even fit a Turkey in it), and also more counter space and more cabinet space. For now, we love it though. It's an eat-in kitchen. Behind me is our dining space with our table and chairs. We have been able to fit as many as 6 people around the table comfortably. Once we redo the kitchen though, we'll have space for more.

This is the nursery. I know you're probably wondering why we have a nursery all set up when we haven't been chosen. We had a bunch of baby items that we had been collecting, and we needed somewhere to put it all. We figured that we might as well put the room together. Right now the crib set, and curtains are done in a jungle theme. I want to get a couple of other sets too. The paint color is a very soft green so it will go with anything really, for either a boy or a girl. I am actually looking for some fabrics in purple and green flowers to do a crib set for is our future precious little one is a girl. My brother and his wife recently gave us a really cute crib set with ladybugs on it that will work well for if our future baby is a girl as well.

This is a reading, play, corner we have in the nursery. The bookshelf has lots of books on it. Everything from There's a Monster at the end of this book (I love that book!), to Winnie the Pooh. We will be adding more as time goes on. I want to get some adoption books. Ones that help a child understand about adoption. I have seen some that are from a birth mom's point of view and talk about how much she loves her little one, and always will. Another idea I saw was to take photos and letters from our child's birth mom and make those into a story book. We could read it to him or her every night, and they will always know that their birth mommy loves them.

This is our room. It is kiddie corner from the nursery.

This is Tammy's room. Tammy and my mom put this together as a project for the both of them to do. Tammy decided on her favorite colors. It turned out great!

This is a close-up of Tammy's bed. My mom is really talented and is fantastic at making projects. She made Tammy's bedding. Gorgeous isn't it?

I still have to take a picture of the living room. We have been redoing that and are almost done. My mom is recovering a love seat for us (I told you she was talented!) and making some pillows. As soon as we get those I will take pictures and post. I will also get some pictures of our family room. Not to mention my craft area. So more pictures to come!