Home Repairs

The very first week after we moved into our house, Nick decided to take out the fireplace in our upstairs family room. Unfortunately that was the extent of his home makeover. For the last 6 years we have had a hole in our wall and floor, a patch of flooring with no carpet, and an unpainted wall. We placed our couch  over it so it wasn't a complete eye sore this entire time, but we finally got around to having someone come in and fix it. Hallelujah!

Now to get someone to come in and fix the carpet.... That will probably be another six years out.

The New Play Area

Our house has this strange little nook above our stairs that when we first moved in we decided to use as our office space. We wanted our spare bedroom to function as a guest room and the space was too small to put a desk and computer in so the little nook housed that stuff. Unfortunately, since Nick and I both use laptops and next to never use our desktop, the office space was just a catch-all for all things paper and don't-want-to-deal-with-this crap. And our guest room was pretty much the same story. We hardly ever have guests stay with us so for the other 355 days of the year the guest room was just a catch-all for storage and other things I didn't want to deal with.

So we decided to get rid of our guest bed and turn our guest room into the office slash extra storage slash air mattress guest room for the occasional visitor. And the nook that housed the office stuff we turned into a play area for the girls.

It's pretty much my favorite area of the house! I love it! It's so fun to watch the girls play together in their kitchen. Sometimes we play store, sometimes restaurant, sometimes tea party, and sometimes we play house and have dinner and do the dishes.

And sometimes, if only for a moment, the girls get along and have fun playing together. Sometimes.

Swim Party at Grandma's

Grandma Raylene hosted a swim party for all the grandkids. We came for lunch and spent all afternoon playing in the water. Shasta loved it! Shelby took some warming up, but then she had fun. As long as she didn't have to go near the water she was happy. Goofy even. I love it when she's in one of her goofy moods!

I'm trying to be better at documenting all the grandkids and not just my own when we get together for fun activities, but even still I missed some. There were a couple that didn't play in the water for very long before retiring inside. And even then, the pictures I did get aren't the best. I tried. That's all that matters right?

Fourth of July

We had a pretty uneventful Fourth of July weekend. Cache Valley does their big fireworks show on the third and Nick had to work part of the evening so we passed on going anywhere to watch the show. Usually Nick's parents come to Logan and we watch the fireworks from the softball fields at our church, but they decided they didn't want to come this year. Once Nick got home we set up camp chairs outside of our garage and watched the stadium fireworks from the comfort of our own home. It was nice because in Utah the fireworks show starts incredibly late because day light savings makes it so it isn't dark until way past bedtime so by staying home we were able to put Shelby to bed and not have to deal with her grumpiness in public!

Nick made us some s'mores over the stove and Shasta got to stay up late enjoying the fireworks. And apparently the s'mores made her hyper or she was slap happy from being tired, but she was being silly all night; saying goofy things and being extra chatty. I sure love her!

On the actual Fourth we went to a parade in another little town (the name has slipped my mind) here in Cache Valley. It was a pretty low key, small town parade, but it was nice to get to participate in some sort of celebration. Then we went and got ice cream on Saturday and watched the Cruise In which is apparently a tradition since we did it last year too. And that pretty much sums up our 4th of July celebration. Like I said, it was pretty uneventful this year. Hopefully next year we'll get to spend it with family!