Basement Day 1ish

Day 1 of the Basement is complete. I guess this is technically day 2 buuuut the first day it was only worked on for about an hour. This was a complete DAY.

Here are some pictures of our accomplishments of the day and also things we want to tackle tomorrow...

The floor of the stink room!!! It's awesome!
Where the closet used to be. Tomorrow we are putting some drywall up.
The hole where the counter will go.
The light switch that we are replacing. ICKY!
Yet another ICKY... We are going to replace this too. With white.

One last thing... We have decided to not paint the whole basement 'Roasted Nuts'.... Since the walls are already textured ugly we are going to retexture and stain. But thats a whole other project in itself.

Ruthie is a Certified Caregiver....

I told my mom today that Ruthie (our Rat Terrier) is a certified caregiver so I was leaving Amir home with her today. That is not the truth.

Anyway, the reason for posting this blog today is to inform you of what our plans are for the weekend....

Tomorrow we are going to put some other type of flooring into the stink room downstairs. Not before knocking out the closet and some space underneath the stairs. Thats where our washer and dryer will go. I'm really excited to get started.

After everything is knocked out and floor intact we are going to install the granite counter top. Thats right... We got a granite counter top! I ♥ ksl!

I will post pictures up as soon as everything is all finished! And if it takes a long time I will give updates as we go!

Mad House

We started another project today. That's right, ANOTHER. Remodeling the bathroom was not enough for us! We have moved on to the basement! Today with the help of Mason and Caden, we moved everything out of the stink room and ripped up the carpet and knocked a partial hole in the wall. So far the plan is to make it into a little "bar" type thing.

For those of you who don't know what the stink room is I will explain... The stink room is the spare bedroom in the basement that has (or had) carpet. It was stinky because Jasper used that as his potty before we got the doggy door and before he was potty trained. He's still not fully potty trained so we lock both dogs in the basement while we are gone/at night. From the basement they can get to the doggy door. In a nutshell: The room reeked of dog.

Anyway, the plan for the basement is this: Knock out the closet and the wall and make it into more living space in the basement.. We have more plans for the basement but for now, that is all we are taking on. But we also have to put tile down in the room where we tore up the carpet. That's right, I talked Rich into doing full tile! I'm really excited.

Funny side story: Like I said we had Mason and Caden (Rich's nephews) over and they helped us pull the carpet up and knock out the wall. There were some injuries along the way. First, Mason wanted to punch a hole in the wall. We let him and eventually he cut his hand open. Then he wanted to jump kick the wall, again we let him and instead of jump kicking it he jumped straight up and hit his head on the ceiling and landed on the ground. Then, Caden was pulling up the little peices of wood that have the nails in it to hold the carpet in place... One flew up and hit him right under the eye. THEN, Mason was hammering a nail and somehow got his finger caught between the nail and the hammer. It cut it open and blood sprayed out. I have to restock my bandaids!

This project is going to take a lot longer than the bathroom. But I think its going to turn out really awesome! Here are some pictures so far of the progress:

After pulling up the carpet.

Wall, before.

Closet

Wall, after. Looking out into the living area.

Wall, after. Looking into the stink room.

The three paint colors... Macchiato, Elephant Skin, Roasted Nuts. We cant decide which we like best for the walls. I think we will probably go with Roasted Nuts..

Why?!

Reasons why we bathe Amir in the evening:

Reason 1: He's still in diapers and after a full night and day in dirty diapers he stinks.

Reason 2: Our dogs are gross and lick him throughout the day.

Reason 3: He sleeps better.

Reason 4: We play outside most of the day and this is what happens every time:

..... Just to name a few.

Jump!

Amir's new thing is to jump off of anything and everything. He runs outside and turns to make sure I'm watching and then jumps and face plants it. Then just turns around to look at me again and laughs.

He is almost 22 months! I cant believe how time flies! He used to be such a little guy! Now he tells me when to change his diaper, when he wants to take a nap and if he doesn't like something he does not hesitate to express his feelings. I don't think there is ever a quiet moment in our house when he is home and awake. He is constantly talking. I cant understand everything he says but we are constantly conversing.

He's got a little bit of a temper.... I'm pretty sure he got that from me. Unfortunately. I guess I could always blame that on Katherine.....Right?

Desert Hot Springs Trip Day 3 & 4

Day 3

Not much happened on the third day. Other than I was THIS close to killing everyone.

Day 4

Beach day!

My mom, brother, sister, Amir and I decided to go to the beach. The day started out pretty rough, most days start out rough around here. (I'm sure you've noticed) We headed out the door at about 8:30am... Our goal was to be gone by 8am. I was driving and my mom was my co-pilot giving me directions. Well during the first 30 minutes of the drive my mom was dealing with the drama at the house because we didn't take my little cousin (who is 7) because we took my grandmas car. It only seats 5 so there was no extra room at all. Back to the drive, my mom told me to get on the freeway and go LEFT. Long story short we were supposed to go right on the freeway not left. I drove for about 30 minutes before I realized that we were going in the wrong direction. That set us an extra hour behind.

After we got back on track it was a 2 hour drive to Huntington Beach. This beach was awesome!!! Amir loved it. I will post pictures when we get home.

I drove 1/2 way to the beach and my brother drove the other 1/2. Then I drove the first 1/2 on the way back and my mom drove the other 1/2. I think this is the first time EVER that I have seen my mom drive outside of Utah. She is a big wussy when it comes to that kind of stuff. The fact that she came out of the 'Bubble' known as 'Utah' was huge.

The drive back from the beach was much more pleasant than the drive there. On the way there I was so angry that everything made my insides twist with anger. The drive back everyone was laughing, we went to Jack In The Box and it was YUMMY! We tried to find an In and Out but we passed two without even knowing they were there until it was too late. We hit traffic too, I will post pictures of that as well. I swear, if I was more than 6 inches from the person in front of us someone would somehow squeeze their way into my lane! Everyone thinks I would fit in well here with the driving. :)

We got back to the house about 8pm. Everyone is grumpy here. My mood from the car ride home hasn't changed. Well, that is a lie, it has changed slightly but only because I cant laugh so hard now that I might pee/snort.

Today was a good day. (mostly) But I cant wait to go home tomorrow!!

Desert Hot Springs Trip Day 2

Amir got up wayyyy too early (as mentioned in previous blog) and I only let him take a shorter than normal nap... Bad idea! My plan was that since he had been up so early and I only let him take a short-ish nap, 2 hours worth, that he would go to bed early.. Was I right? No! He just fell asleep! It is currently 10:30 PM local time (11:30 in SLC) Could this be a terrible end to a great day? NO! Sami, Gram, Eric and Gavin all went to LA for the day. I thought about going but decided not to since it was going to be a somewhat relaxing day. WRONG! Long story short, whining with the occasional freak-out.

On the bright side, we did go to Palm Springs (which is only 10 minutes away from the house) and we went to 'Yogurt On Tap'. Its a frozen yogurt shop that is self serve. SO YUMMY! They have about 7 flavors that apperantly change every once in a while. Amir and I had peanut butter frozen yogurt with sprinkles.

I'm going to bed now and hope that my child doesn't wake up so early again....

Desert Hot Springs Trip Day 1

We left for Palm Springs yesterday morning. The flight was great. It was a really short flight so of course Amir did pretty good. Although I think the reason he did good was that I had my laptop with movies (Finding Nemo) on it.

When we arrived it was about 100 degrees outside. In the Palm Springs Airport once you leave the gate you have to walk outside about 7 minutes to get to baggage claim/passenger pickup. I thought it was going to be terrible but even though it was 100 degrees it did not feel that hot. It also didn't feel as hot as it was in SLC when it was 90 degrees!! I don't think the sun feels as burney on the skin as it does in SL.

My grandma bought a house in Desert Hot Springs and that is where we are staying. Its one of those houses where the owners ended up not being able to pay the payments and so when they left they took all the appliances, cabinent knobs etc. There is only a little fridge (the kind you would see in a college dorm) and we have 6 adults, 1 teen, 1 kid and 2 toddlers... All using the tiny fridge!! We are using a cooler to keep drinks cool. So we have to go get ice atleast once a day. I forgot to pick up ice yesterday afternoon so there hasn't been ice in the cooler for a while... Oops!

Its now 6:30 am local time of day 2 of our trip. My sisters dumb dog woke Amir up at 5:30 am... Luckily there is coffee.