Home Improvements

As some of you know, Steve and I have been trying to sell our house for a while now. And after having it on the market for nine months, we thought our prayers were answered when we had a lady put down an offer on it. The offer was perfect, it was only $1,000 less than our asking price and she said she was able to put down a 30% downpayment. We were so excited! But as time got closer, things got a little fishy, she didn't ever get an inspection, and she never had it appraised...But her agent said she was still 100% sure she wanted to house so we kept moving on with the sale. We sold our couches and started packing up some stuff, getting ready to move out so by the time she closed we could get out as fast as we could. Then after about two days after we ha sold our couches, we got news that her agent was a little weary about the whole deal and didn't know if she really had the money to pay for it. So we stopped packing and just waited. Well, the day came for her to close on the house and she did. She signed the papers and everything, except wire the money. Still, we waited, and waited. finally,by the end of the week, her agent finally told us that the deal was off. We were so upset about the whole thing that, after a lot of thinking and praying, we decided to take it off the market and stay in the house. So...Now our plan is to make some changes to it, to make it a little more roomier and easier to live in. First we are starting with the bathroom. We are going to knock out the chimney that isn't being used anymore and make some more room. These are some pictures of the demolition. I will be posting pictures as we progress.

This is before...as you can see our bathroom is tiny.

Steve after all the demolition. Doesn't he look attractive? ha ha

Steve's 25 birthday party

For Steve's birthday this year, I wanted to do someting fun, since usually I just take him out to dinner and a movie. So I planned a surprise party for him at Boondocks. It was fun trying to keep it a secret from him. I love surprises!

This was my favorite part of Steve's birthday. My cousin's husband, Jake is going to Culinary arts school and has a real talent for baking and decorating. I've seen him do cakes for his own kids and family, so I asked him if he would make a cake for Steve. When I asked him to do an xbox cake, I had no idea it would be so creative and totally awesome! Needless to say, Steve LOVED it! And, not to mention, it was a carrot cake, and I don't like carrot cakes, but this was so good I had to have two pieces.

Christmas 2010

Christmas was so much fun this year. My boys are at the age where they are just starting to understand about presents and santa.

We had fun meeting Santa at our ward Christmas party.

This is the boys' first reaction to all the presents on Christmas morning. At first they weren't sure why there were all these gifts under the tree, but once we told them they were from Santa, they they got really excited.

Temple Lights

Lincol loved the Christmas lights this year. He thought they were so cool. He would point out all the colors and tell me that they looked "shiny and new". We thought that they would like to go to Temple Square to see the lights. We were right, they liked it for a little bit, but then they just like running around and makin me nervous that they would get lost. Thank goodness we had my parents and siblings there to help keep track of the two monsters.

This picture makes me laugh cause thats literally what he was doing all night, running.

Trick or Treat Please!

Lincoln and Mason loved Halloween this past fall. It was the coolest thing in the world for them to go door to door and get candy. I think that is what might have started Mason on his "canny" fix. Ever since Halloween, he has been a candy fanatic. Anyway, we decided to go with a star wars theme this year, so we had Lincoln dress up as Yoda and Mason as Darth Vader. I have to say they were the two cutest kids out there...or maybe I'm just biased, I don't know. ha ha

This is Steve's brother Odell and his wife, Nina, and son Josh. I thought their costumes were so clever!


Amongst our trick-or-treating group we had a few more Star Wars characters. This is Steve's sister, Brenda holding baby Darth.

This is our big group of Steve's siblings and their kids. They all had really cute costumes and we had so much fun trick-or-treating with them.




After the boys were done, we went and visited Grandpa Sanders. Of course Lincoln had to eat some candy before we even got home.

Discovering the Park

This past fall, the boys have found a new love...for the park. I would take them there and we could literally stay for hours and the boys wouldn't get sick of it. They loved going up and down the slides. But most of all they loved the swings. Even now, in the middle of winter, every now and then Lincoln will ask me if I will take him to the park to play on the swings.

My two Firemen

One day Steve came home from work and said that the fire station was having an "open house" where anyone could come and look at their equipment. So we packed up the boys and walked down the street to the Kaysville fire station. They had a helicopter parked out front and were letting kids climb inside and look around. They also had their fire trucks out so the kids could see inside them too. My boys had so much fun. If any of you know my boys, they are obsessed with any truck or train of any kind.