December Big and Little Things

December started off with a couple of "snow days", even though this is really all the snow we got. The kids still went sledding and wanted to build snowmen and drink hot chocolate. And seeing how last year, we only got that one snow very similar to this one, I decided we had better take advantage of any snow we get. 

Aliza didn't really want anything to do with going outside in the cold. I can't blame her. It's not my favorite thing either. But the others played for hours and the neighbor kids even came over to play too. 

Here we are starting to get in the Christmas spirit. 

 Dallin's class invited parents to come make gingerbread houses with them. This was such a fun activity to do just one on one with him. 

You can hardly make out the house under all that frosting and candy!

Carmen had another band concert. And this year she got to play in two groups. She played with he 7th grade concert band, and then in an early morning jazz group that met before school. Both groups sounds really great. 

Carmen with her good friend Jasmine.

Charlotte's class did an amazing rendition of Scrooge. I was impressed at their little play!

Carmen's friends got together and made gingerbread houses before their friend Lucy moved to England for the next 6 months. 

These girls are each so great and fun to be around. 

Every Christmas season we try to make it up to Afton to see this live Bethlehem Village. I really love,  David tolerates it and the kids could really do without it. But I still make everyone go. And we somehow never seem to spend enough time there to truly see everything and take in the message of Christmas, but we try. 

 Those are real camels that they have there and you get to pet them!

 This was everyone's favorite place to visit because they taught about making bread and then you could sample it. And it was really good! We ended up buying some at their little store. 

In the midst of everything Christmas, we got to go to the airpot to welcome home one of our favorite babysitters, Anna, from her mission in Russia. 

And I took this picture as proof that David really does have a soft spot for Koda...sometimes. 

Wow, I didn't realize how many gingerbread houses we made this year, but here are some more. Oma and Poppy always come over to decorate houses and sugar cookies with us. Oma brings all the supplies, so I love this even more! This year everyone got their own house to decorate.

 I love that my mom makes it a priority to create traditions with her grandkids. And I love that we live close enough to make it happen. 

All dressed for Christmas Sunday. 

And a big group of us got together to go caroling to the Bishops house. We wanted to give them a good send off before moving to England. But it sort of snowballed into caroling at a lot of different families in the ward. This particular family wasn't home, so we snapped this picture of us all on their front porch and said "wish you were here!". They got a good laugh out of that.

Sugar cookie decorating with Dad. They were making a plate for Santa. 

  And Christmas morning arrived bright and early for us. I think the kids were up at 3am. We were definitely done with presents before the sun was even up. 

 Charlotte finally got her much anticipated Hatchimal!!  

And the big family gift was this air hockey table, that is really fun to play! Aliza pretty much beats everyone. She's the campion in our house. 

We celebrated Christmas with my side of the family at my cousin Jenny's house. This is always a fun time, seeing the family that lives close. 

The kids always act out the nativity and it this year Charlotte got to be Mary and Aliza was the angel. Carmen, I think was the star, but forgot to go out when it was her part, and Dallin never wants to participate.... 

And that's a wrap for 2017! It was a long year full of fun and challenges. Yet, we feel blessed and are so grateful for the memories that have been made this year. We are happy to be moving onto 2018. 

Fixer Upper

This post spans over what became a very long 3 month period. And now that I type that, I still had to count to make sure it was only 3 months, because it felt like a whole year... I learned a lot doing a home update. I mostly learned that I hate making decisions for my own home, but it's totally easy for someone else home. And I learned that I should become a contractor! 

This whole project started when we kept getting leaks throughout the house. We discovered our master tub was sitting on a lot of molded and disintegrating wood.  We decided that we should gut the master bathroom and just redo the whole thing. It was pretty outdated anyways. But once we discovered other leaks in other places in the house, we decided the whole house needed new plumbing.... in the meantime, we had already decided to upgrade our kitchen and got the ball rolling on that, but decided we also wanted to refinish all the wood floors. This home project just kept snow balling! 

I started by moving us out completely from the main floor of the house. Carmen was a big helper with some of the bigger furniture. David unfortunately was traveling during the majority of this time. We did a lot of Facetime trying to pick colors and hardware together, but he mostly just left it up to me to decide. 

We couldn't be at the house for a week, or so we were told. So we moved into an Air BnB down the street to stay close to schools. It worked out really great actually and sort of felt like a vacation, but we still had to do all our normal stuff. Soccer, school projects, piano, pack lunches, cook meals, take care of the dog. Here we are at our gorgeous home away from home. Little did we know, we would end up spending another week away from home. In total it ended up being 2 weeks out of the house. Once our Air BnB renal was up, we spent the weekend in the basement, but just about all died of fumes from the stain. Our kind neighbor is the manager at a large hotel here in town and got us a dog friendly room for another few days at Boars Head Inn.

Then I had to pick a color for the floor!!!  Talk about a hard decision! It's such a big choice and I just kept hoping I was making the right one because we were spending a lot of money on this. I consulted with many friends and family and even conducted a Facebook poll. 

I believe in this picture below we picked #3, but in the end we ended up altering that a more. The color ended up being something like 75% Jacobean and 25% Classic Grey. The color swatches are the kitchen cabinet colors. In hindsight, I wish we had done the cabinets first to better match the floor, but it still turned out beautifully.

Once we were able to get back into the house, we could start on the rest of our projects. The kitchen wound up being the next one that really got rolling quickly. I poured over counter top choices and cabinet colors. I researched sinks and faucets and cook tops and even bar stools. Our kitchen was in this condition for several weeks. 

  

The FINAL decisions for the bathroom were made in the meantime. This was such a process! 

 Goodbye old ugly white sink that I could never get clean...

Once cabinets were done, we waited a few more weeks for counter tops.This was hard because we couldn't set anything down anywhere! 

Then those beauties finally arrived! But they cut the hole for the cooktop too large....so another two weeks passed before they were able to deliver a new slab of quartz for the island.  But poppy could in the pendant lights over the island, while we waited for that. And that was just the right touch!! I love those things. 

And as a reminder, here is a before and after picture. I was too impatient to wait for the cooktop to be installed (or for it to be day light) to get the picture. I love the floors, I love the countertops, I love my new sink, I love the pendant lights, I love the cabinets painted lighter. I never did get my new barstools though. The above picture has daylight and the cooktop!

While this was all wrapping up, the bathroom was just getting started. Here are some before pictures: 

 I hated this accent tile from the very time I ever looked at this house. It was finally disappearing! 

Day 1 of demolition really made an impact!

And AFTER! It's beautiful and so spa like and I'm in love with everything about it. I honestly can't pick my favorite thing. The tub? The floors? The counter tops? The square under mount sinks? The barn door gliding shower doors? The spa like color? The mirrors? The silent exhaust fan? I just don't know, I love it all!!!!

And after months of having men in and out of my house ALL DAY LONG, and water cut off for days,  and no kitchen to cook in, and no toilets and having to move out, and SO MUCH DUST, and waiting and waiting, and doing things over again, and lots of phone calls and tons for money - it's all over and I'm so happy with it all. It really has given such a different feel to our home. It's light, airy, modern yet very neutral.