Holiday Happiness

Despite our tree falling onto our home, we had a very lovely holiday season filled with family and friends. I love my girlfriends and I don't know what I'd do without them! They are all uniquely beautiful in their own ways and I am so blessed to have them in my life.


Ollie girl went nuts over her stuff Santa brought her! She had a blast unwrapping her presents and just loved her new bed. We were kinda tired and I forgot to take pictures of us! Oops... guess we love our dog more? :)


New Years was spent at our house with a low key tone to the evening. Tea in the basement while the boys play Ping Pong. Doesn't get much better! (Except maybe a warm basement...)

Happy New Year's Everyone!!!

Love: Koa.

57 Rings

It truly is amazing how we as human beings can be capable of so much destruction and chaos and yet in the midst of destruction and chaos we can come together as one. What we are 'capable' of is what separates the humans from the animals. A few days ago our neighborhood formed a giant human-cleanup Transformer. So many wonderful selfless people came together and formed sort of a tree removal and clean up crew!
We had about 18 people and 5 chainsaws hacking down the poor poor tree in the front of the house so we could all get our power back on. 5 days was just TOO long! I had to replace all the food in our fridge because it all spoiled! :(
Oh well... having to replace the food in our fridge is better than having to replace our roof! :) Here are some pictures of the clean up. The cute young boys helping out counted the rings on the tree with me... she was 57 years old.

Windageddon Pt. 2

Took a few more pictures today while cleaning all the crap that blew all over our yard. I'm so sick a raking it's not even funny! Last weekend we filled fifteen 20 gallon bags of leaves and most of them were from this lovely tree that tipped on over.

This was the first thing I saw when looking out my front door to investigate what that rather loud noise was... oh. Just the tree horizontal, that's all.

Yeeeah. Those roots are huge! It's nuts to think they were not strong enough to hold up to that wind! We could probably make a swimming pool out of that hole in the ground.

Sun bathing on the grass... standing up.

We love and miss you tree! Your tire swing will go to a good home. :'(

WINDAGEDDON

Timberrrr!!

Nuff said. We are in mourning over our beautiful, most awesome tree on our property. The tire swing in no longer needless to say. Uh! And this picture just does it no justice to how bad and large this thing is!
I got no sleep last night, tossing and turning since 12:30 a.m. just thinking in my head "something bad is going to happen." to me, that was my 'Hippes use back door, no exceptions' sign was going to blow away or my Christmas lights are going to break. Boy was I sure in for a shock. At about 7:10 a.m. I took Olive out to go potty (who blew over mid-poop... classic) when I hear a low creaking and breaking sound then abruptly a thud. Right before the thud I hear tree branches scrape the whole length of the front of the house and siding and I hear my Christmas lights being torn down... NO!! Not the Christmas lights!! That's just taking this too far... I spent way too much time putting them up BY MYSELF to only enjoy them for 4 days.

Poor things... they never had a chance! :'( The craziest thing of it all was opening the front door and all I see is roots and my lawn vertically... I'll have to post more pictures later!

Now this is what we get to deal with. Our chimney teetering on the top of the house about ready to fall into the living room. After the tree fell it broke the brick and mortar up top. The winds putting pressure on the crack for 3 hours after is what made bricks fall and crack even more! Yikes! I just feel horrible. I loved that tree. You can replace brick, lights and a roof but it will take another 50 year to get a beautiful mature tree like that. I'm quite the tree-hugger if you haven't noticed ;)
BUT in all of this mess and devastation we have come out on top. It could have been MUCH MUCH worse! We could have had that tree in our living and dining room right now. It's kida weird how it fell between the house and our apple tree and didn't do more damage than it did. We are just so very blessed to have such good karma in times of crisis. Not to mention wonderful friends and family to support and help us, along with great neighbors that can all empathize with us.

Cherish the little moments with the things you have, because they might just be gone tomorrow. Even if it is just a tree.
Goodbye tree.
Goodbye tire swing.
Goodbye summer days lying on a blanket under abundant leaves swaying in the wind, peaking the glorious sun through your many branches. I will miss you <3

Blogger... sheesh! Part 2 of the catch up :)

Issues with blogger, don't mind me. Operator error. :) Anyway on November 21st our little Ollie girl Turned 1! Oh my how time flies! ;') They grow up so fast... don't mind the horrible picture. The good one is on my phone. :P I found her like this, she was trying to put her coat on by her self... too funny! She has done this 3 times. I don't know another dog who loves wearing clothes more than she does.

Random beautiful picture of our view of Antelope Island from our street. I just love it up here

Late November- oh the joy's of home ownership! Raking fifteen 20 gallon bag of leaves! And they hadn't all fallen yet either! SIGH! That pile in the picture took 3 bags alone... my poor tree may it rest in peace. This was my last and final beautiful picture of my favorite tree on our property... :'( It's so large I can never get the whole thing in one shot.

4 month recap

Oh man, I have been slacking! So many things to report on in these last 3 months. What a roller coaster of good and bad things that have come to pass.

First I'll start in August:

Baby Koa was born!! :D
August 24th 2011

Oh I'm just such a proud Auntie Pookie I could scream! Koa is a wonderful little bundle of joy that can be a little turd for mommy when it comes to sleep, but he gets better and better for her every week. All his little smiles and coos make it worth it! Shoot, and I'm not even his mom!









In September we had Steaksgiving with B and Pooks and of course Koa Bear. :) we were pre-gaming for Thanksgiving. It's nice to have firends with a grill and it's nice to have friends with maranading steaks that have no grill! ;) Love all the good times with our great company :D







In October we of course didn't do anything for Halloween, but I got to dress up for work! I was just so very excited for all the little kids to come over (we were warned to stock up plenty) but we ended up only having about 10 kids... needless to say we had a lot of left over candy and a big old sugar high for weeks.
...

Guess who I was for Halloween ;D

Yeah, so what if I like my dog???

Alright, so my blog has become more of a "I love my dog" blog rather than the home improvement blog like I had intended... So in preparation for Heath going back to school we have been doing a lot more projects as of late rather than photographing our puppy :)
Our most recent project that we have started and not finished is our 2nd spare bedroom, shall we call it an office? BUT lets give me some credit here... I did start and finish a project!! SAY Whaaaat? And that was refinishing our bathroom cabinets. I was so headstrong about just gutting that whole mess that I didn't even see what I could work with!!

New knob!! Looks much better :)
Yuck... that's all I have to say.

Turned out pretty good if I might say so myself. Now, just to get rid of the carpet and wallpaper...

The wood on the right is what it was what it was before and the left is it all sanded. It's going to be a beautiful 'Jacobean' dark stain after we are done! :D

Ooh ooh, and I painted my front door with some of the blue I had left over from the accent wall in our living room. Just thought I would spice up the front doors before we replaced them. (don't ask me my logic on that one...)

Blue accent wall... It took me forever to pick this. (don't mind the random decor... that is not what I'm going for in this room at all. Especially furniture placement and lack there of.) Still can't decide if I want it. I was chastised by Wilson's Paint in Kaysville for going to Home Depot and using Valspar... "what a horrible brand! How could I have done that??" I was a paint virgin, give me a break! Sheesh... I have since learned the errors of my ways because Benjamin Moore is sooo much better quality and its a little cheaper! Who would have guessed?

Fin.