Not a 2nd grader anymore!

Here is a quick picture of Faith and her teacher, Mrs. Page. Faith loved 2nd grade! "I liked Miss Page because she did fun things with us and doesn't just tell us what to do and she just does movements with whatever we do in math," says Faith.

We have been SO blessed to have great teachers at Chubbuck Elementary and Mrs. Page is no exception. I loved Mrs. Page because she was so patient with the kids (it was a hard group) and really taught them well. Faith has had quite a year in her class and growing up into a beautiful young lady.

As she walked in the door, she exclaimed, "I made it! (sigh) I'm not a 2nd grader anymore!"

The Ultimate Graduation Answers!

Dawson's answers from preschool graduation:

Q - What do you want to be when you grow up?
A - A superhero!

Q - What was your favorite part of preschool?
A - Snack time and play time.

Q - Why do you love your mom?
A - Because she lets me play nickjr.com!

I have to say that he is just such a funny kid. We definitely want to keep him around. Here is a picture of him; he is dressed up for 'Dancing with the Stars'!

Surgery #4

Wednesday marked the day of Kate's 4th surgery. This time we went with a different doctor and a different surgery center, though still in Salt Lake City, UT.

Tuesday night, we loaded up Faith and Dawson to go to Grandma's house. We headed down to Salt Lake and arrived around 9:30 pm. Kate had slept the whole way down, so she didn't fall asleep until midnight.

Wednesday morning we brought her to the LDS Avenues Surgical Center, filled out paperwork, and disagreed about giving her Versed (a medicine that helps them relax before surgery and helps them forget.) We wanted to go ahead without, but the anesthesiologist basically insisted. She was so loosey-goosey, couldn't hold her head up, etc. I still don't know if I liked that medicine.

Surgery actually went 1 hour and 15 minutes. The doctor told us 45 minutes and the surgery center told us an hour, so either way it was longer than anticipated. They cleaned out all of her sinuses, widened one area of her sinuses on each side, replaced the tubes and put a skin patch on the right ear, and removed the adnoid tissue that grown back.

Yesterday, her eyes started to swell up, so she has been put on an antibotic. This was as wide as her eyes would open yesterday.
All in all, we hope that this is the surgery that turns things around for her!

Graduation day!

Dawson did it! He finally graduated from preschool. We are so excited about him going to kindergarten in the fall. Here are a few pictures of the special day!

Here he is not wanting to wear his graduation cap!

Getting ready to sing:
The butterfly song:
Here's a flower for you mom! Thanks for helping teach me.
Graduation certificate:
All of the moms and their children that graduated for our neighborhood preschool. Starting from left to right: Heidi with Ameilia, Sara and Myah, Megan and Rhiannon, me and Dawson, Vauna and Daniel, Jodi and Cadie, and Andrea and Cara.

The finished project

An easy, step by step guide of how to remodel a bathroom!!! Eight easy steps are listed below:

First step - painting the subflooring with waterproof paint stuff:
Second step - putting down the durock flooring:
Step three - put in the tub, and the sheetrock for bathrooms:


Step four - decide to recess your vanity only to find out that the downstairs vent goes through that area and there is no way to re-route the pipe:

Step five, six, seven, and eight: Of course, after that, you need to re-texture three times, flood the downstairs, re-tile twice, and pick out four different cabinets.

After that, you can enjoy the bathroom! A big thank you to my parents - without you we would still be working on it. They helped do the tiling, the plumbing, and welding (did I mention that we tried to burn down the house during that process?) Also, to my brother in law, Brian, for helping us get tile and looking at it the first time to tell us how to do it the second time.

The cabinet that we decided on and ended up having to put together:

The sink:

The light and vanity: We ended up turning the fixture upside down so that it would fit:

The whole look:

The toilet:

The tub:

The decorative tile that Brandon died finding out the price per 12 inch square:

The corner piece and a look of the tile:

The floor that was tiled diagonally:

The molding around the door:

The fun part is still to do. Buy the towel racks, new shower curtain, etc. But at least we have a functioning bathroom. I hope that you enjoyed watching the transformation. Today marks 8 weeks since we started the project!

The joys of remodeling

I thought that I would write a few of our adventures before I posted the pictures.

I believe that most of you know the first incident was the baseboard heater in the dining room. When we removed it to access plumbing, it broke. No big lost since it was probably original to the house (31 years old).

Next, the stamp room flood from the loose nut on the main water valve shut off. The carpet was dried out and is going to make it (unfortunately).

After that we had to cut a hole in the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom to reach more plumbing.

We re textured the walls three times, re tiled the bathroom floor twice, went through four bathroom cabinets, and have spent the last 7 1/2 weeks working on this. I also postponed potty training (I will post on this soon.)

But, for all of this hard work, it will be worth it. We will enjoy a bathroom and not have to worry what we are breathing in every time we bathe.

The Demo

I believe that all guys love to demo!!! Brandon is no exception. Starting with the moldy corner:
Other side of the shower:
Maybe if he jumps up and down, it will go faster:
As you can see here, there was a layer of black stuff, insulation, and then thin plastic over the insulation. Hence why the insulation is black/gray. The stuff already in the tub was worse, but we didn't want to get more stuff in the air by that point:
Getting the tub out of the bathroom:
To get to the plumbing, we had to rip off our baseboard heater. Who needs to remove wallpaper? Let's just paint over it - at least that's what past owners did.
The plumbing from view of dining room. See all of the rotting sheetrock:
The view of where the sink cabinet was:
Pipe to the bathtub. They just set the drain of the tub over this pipe, nothing attaching it:

Sink pipe that fell out of the wall during fixing (ewww), but I figured that this would be better to add for demo pictures:
The part that stayed in the wall. Pretty isn't it?
And, to go along with the wallpaper, who needs to rip up floor if you can just put more flooring on top of it? This MUST be orignial:
And, finally, this is my favorite picture I think. We had a great laugh about painting around the toilet, but I guess that it's normal. We saw at least 3 different colors.

Why remodel, you ask?

Need I say more???

Say cheese puppy!

I was flipping through my camera to find some pictures the other day, and all of a sudden I came across these pictures. I thought, "What?" in my head and then figured out what the picture was. My children are going to be professional photographers one day. They all love the camera and 'saying cheese'. I'm sure that this is what puppy is doing here!