a birthday bookshelf

remember my birthday wishlist? devin is making it come true!

i love that man. shortly after i made my gift ideas known, he started sketching a bookshelf. soon after, he was asking for trips to Home Depot, and came home with huge stacks of lumber.

we built the bookshelf together in about 2 hours - it was pretty easy! (he has also built this, this and this for our house)

and the next day, we headed back to Home Depot to pick out a paint color. He kept picking colors that I thought were too blue, and he didn't like how green my choices were (we were going for teal. we apparently have very different opinion on what color that is!). we sanded and painted on saturday night, and after a threw on a second coat this morning, it's all finished! it's exactly what i wanted. i originally thought the color ended up being more blue (which it is), but it has darkened as it has dried, and i love it. all the other furniture he's built, and all the furniture in our home, is either black or other neutrals, so a bright colored piece was a little intimidating - but i love it! and now, i want to repaint everything bright colors.

i remember when i was younger, and seeing my dad built shelves and coat racks for our house and thinking whoa, you made that?! and now my husband is doing the exact same thing. the man can build practically anything! we saved so much money, and had the choice to customize. i don't think i could have ever found this bookshelf in a store. i love it!

short stories

i had a SCREW in my TIRE. it had to have been there for at least 3 months. Probably closer to 4.

the first time i noticed that certain tire being low was on Devin's birthday. I remember because I was getting ready to drive up to Salt Lake to pick up his birthday cake, and didn't want to drive on the freeway before putting air in my tires.

ever since then, i've noticed it get low every once in awhile and i would just put air in it, and it'd be fine for another little while, and then it would get low again. this happened for a good 2... 2 1/2 months.

today, i went out to my car, and it was REALLY low. so i carefully drove to holiday to fill the tire and when i did, i noticed the tire wasn't filling. it almost looked like it was LOSING air.

so i called discount tire and took it in and the guy spotted the big screw right away (when i had been checking every time i put air in and saw nothing!) and patched it for free. thank goodness!

i love discount tire. they're awesome. they're nice and fast and they deal with my stupid questions and they do all kinds of free services. i will be a loyal customer for a long time.

***

Dev and I have a frequent problem of accidentally dressing really similar. Like last night, for example. We both wore our grey and white striped shirts with dark jeans. We never do it on purpose! But it happens pretty often! And sometimes, we don't notice until someone else points it out. But even if we do notice before then, someone always points it out anyway... oops!

***

The construction is slowly creeping into our house. Plumbers and electricians this week. I'm excited for the addition upstairs. It's going to be awesome. I'm just not so crazy about the disaster that is currently my living room.

***

For about a year, I've been getting phone calls, from multiple people, asking for Summer. Apparently, Summer gave EVERYONE the wrong number. I've had interview call-backs, visiting teaching reminder calls, and several others for her. Weird.

***

Devin has been so busy with photography! I would probably complain about this, because it takes a lot of his time, and he's already working AND going to school, but it's been a huge blessing to have the extra income with me having been out of a job and all. Devin is taking our family pictures on Saturday, and using a timer for the big group ones (haha) and then he'll probably end up doing Senior pictures for Kayla and some cool football shots for Kyle. I'm glad that he's so versatile! He photographs it all, and so well! www.capturedbydash.com hopefully, he'll be updating his website this week, because he's done so many shoots recently that haven't been added! Probably my fault-- we're always so busy.

catastrophe #2

it took me forever to fall asleep last night.

i've been so, so hot at night lately, and it makes me too uncomfortable to fall asleep

not to mention the thunder and lightning keeping me awake...

at 1:30 a.m., I woke up to Devin telling me the ceiling was leaking.

needless to say, he was pretty ticked.

Water was dripping right onto his face!

I got up and turned my lamp on in a bit of a frenzy and we noticed it was coming from the heat register.

I started to panic a little and went and checked all the other vents in the house.

The new computer Devin just built was sitting right under the vent in the office.

Luckily, the only other vent leaking was the one in the bathroom, and it was dripping right into the sink.

We put a towel under the leak, and it soaked through really fast,

so we got a huge bucket/bowl and went upstairs to see what was going on.

Grandma and Grandpa were out of town.

It's freaking 1:30 in the morning.

We go up to the sewing room, which is directly above our room, and noticed spots on the floor were wet,

and the walls were leaking.. THE WALLS.

water was coming in from under the window sills all along the back side of the house

which is flush with the construction site.

this week, they've been framing the main level part of the addition, and have put one of the tresses up.

they've also taken the siding off the part of the house, so the plywood is exposed.

plywood doesn't hold back water.

and it doesn't help that the rain gutters were taken off, too.

so the water was leaking in through the seams between the different pieces of plywood,

and it was seeping into the floor as well.

we had no idea what to do!

i tried calling the grandparents, but their phone was turned off,

but i'm no fool.

i know that when in doubt, i need to call me dad!

dad said to call the builders and have them come out. because it's techincally their mistake, not taking the right measures to prevent the rain damage.

(the drywall was getting ruined!!!)

and might as well save them for paying for any more damage, right?

devin texted his brother-in-law, Jason, who works for the company that's buildling.

it wasn't until we went back downstairs to check on our own house, after stuffing towels in every leaking crevasse upstairs, and tried to go outside through our own door, but were prevented by the 2+ inches of water gathering outside, that we finally just called him.

maybe this doesn't show very well, but this is right outside our front door (which is a basement entrance) about 2 inches of water! and that drain? wasn't draining. obviously.

jason said to find a push broom and a tarp.

so we did.

we used the broom to sweep as much water as we could off the plywood floor of the addition (which was a  lot)

and finally just found some nails and nailed the tarp to the house to catch the water and run it in a different direction.

we were out on the addition, (which is totally exposed), in the rain, getting wet, trying not to laugh because we're so mad, trying to be quiet, because we don't want to wake the neighbors... oh man.

this is the addition right now. the arrow is pointing to the dark green tarp we nailed up to the house to catch the water. 2a.m. is not the ideal time to do this! 

the leaking stopped.

by there is ruined drywall on parts of the house, and the vent above our bed that dripped right on devin's face (he later told me he thought the roof was caving in!)

we were back in our room by maybe 3:00a.m. and wide awake.

we watched the office to fall asleep.

i think grandma would call this "catastrophe number 2"... (#1 being the incident with the window and the pipe)

i couldn't help but laugh at the irony of that situation.

thank goodness it was a saturday that this happened, so we could catch up on the missed sleep.

thank goodness it wasn't raining any harder.

thank goodness that leak hit devin right in the face, or else we never would've known.

thank goodness my husband has so much sense or else we would've been totally lost!

he told me that this is the kind of stuff that homeowners get to deal with

...i think i can wait on the whole getting a house thing....

hahahaha

construction zone and little ones

this is what my backyard looks like right now. on the far right of the bottom 2 pictures, you can see the cement wall that goes along the stairs down to my house. that wall is being extended, and will be the new view out of our living room windows! yay!!! i'm trying to be positive. for example: it will feel like we're living in some crowded city with but 3 feet between buildings. and there won't be a wicked glare on our TV anymore, which will be nice.

the addition is coming along quicker than i thought, but there's still a lot of work to do.

the whole point is adding on to the back of the house, the bottom level of the new part will be a work room/storage room and the top will just be an extension of my grandparents' great room, so the whole family will fit in there (we've been having family parties in the garage...)

i'm excited to see what it will look like when it's done. it will be interesting.

as for the rest of this week: it's been spent with lots of little ones:

here's some glimpses of wednesday:

finger lickin' apple dippers from mcdonald's

picking movie after movie after movie...

writing letters to Devin (they love him. a lot. and were very upset to find him not at home when they came over)

thursday:

sophia ruth

ben rockin' a pink headband

claire struggles with clothes sometimes, haha

ben!

and THEN the kids made the discovery of photobooth. and the result was hilarious. almost all the kids joined in. Claire, and her friend Sage, mostly. And then Claire's brother Lincoln, and his friend Jonah, and Sophie too: (there are so many, but they're all so funny!)

oh man. those are some cute kids.

friday: after football practice, and matilda, i took the kids to their house (from mine) and we had pizza and watched soul surfer (which was surprisingly really, really good.) devin was pretty tired so he stayed home, but had to run to the store for a wedding present. (he also surprised me buy picking up a cupcake corer (yeah, it's as cool as it sounds) and some ramekins! isn't he the very best? he is.

(love the girls in this picture. so funny! claire loves to be gangster)

I love these kids! It was a crazy week, but so fun! 

Ashby FHE

Last night, Devin and I had plans to take engagement pictures for his good friend, Aaron and his fiance. The weather was looking sketchy, and we didn't want to risk getting rained on, so we just rescheduled.

How did we choose to spend the rest of our evening, you ask?

Golfing for Family Night, of course!

 

It was pretty windy, and even rained a little bit, and everyone else on the coarse was just dinking around, so we had to wait a lot... but it was so much fun! I hadn't golfed seriously in about a year, and was ready to humiliate myself, which I probably did, but after I warmed up, I was doing okay! Dev made me feel pretty good about myself, too. I had some great shots, but mostly just burned worms all night!

Devin, on the other hand... is pretty great. He went golfing on Saturday with my Dad and brother, and they played 27 holes at Wasatch. Doing anything with my dad provides him with a teaching opportunity, so Devin came home with some good tips, and helped me work on my form.

We only played 9 holes, and then we went to Coldstone for ice cream. FHE success!

plus also... I love my husband.

p.s. As we were leaving the house, Grandma and Grandpa were on their back porch with the contractors who've been helping them make decisions about adding onto the house. Devin walked out of our stairwell, and they all saw him with his clubs and made some comment about how is wife lets him golf. I was locking the door, and as I walked up the stairs he said, "No... she's coming with me!" Then they said, "she's your caddy? that's cool!" and he said "No! She's playing!"

yes. yes i am. i play golf.

and hopefully i will play golf more often!