July!

It’s already July and I can’t believe it. I have a lot of kind of random pictures from the last few weeks.

First of all, my bestie best friend just moved to Connecticut :( Brian got a job out there for just a year so luckily they will be back soon. But I will definitely miss Shell-Bell, Brian and Thaddy. Shell is the bestest friend a girl could ask for. We have been friends since I was in 7th grade! We played volleyball together in high school, lived together in college, we were bridesmaids at each other’s weddings and a whole lot more! She has been there for me through so many happy and sad times and I give her a ton of credit for my testimony and a lot of the good decisions I made in my life came because of her amazing influence. She is such a good person and it’s been so neat to watch her as a mother. I look to her for advice and she never lets me down! I will miss her so much, but I know we will still talk all the time and we’re planning on going to visit in the spring. We have stayed close through so much over the past 10 years so I know we will through this too! Connecticut is nothing compared to Russia or the Netherlands :) I love you Shell!

They had a BBQ at a park before they left and it was really fun. I bawled a lot when I said goodbye but I just love her and will miss her and her great husband and baby boy.

The boys had too much fun on the tire swing. Brian, Dan, Todd and Ben all managed to fit on the swing at once! Thaddy pants was obsessed with the bark in the playground! He kept picking it up and putting it in piles all over the place! He is so stinkin’ cute! We had some family over for dinner on Sunday and it was really fun. I have said this before, but I absolutely LOVE when people come to our house and eat and have fun! I only took a few pics and they were all of my cutey cute nephew Everett!

Our fire pit is done! I can’t believe how fast it came together, but Dan’s brothers came and helped him and they pounded it all out in one day! Amazing. But we love love it and here are a few pics.

Before: imagine this pit full of 3 foot tall weeds, grass clippings from the past year, an old Christmas tree and herds of mice and rats. No joke. It was frightening. The boys working in the super hot sun. And now here it is! I would say it’s about 75%-80% done. We are going to build some benches to put in there and then next summer we will dig out a little more grass around the entire thing and plant flowers and plants. But it’s getting there! We had an inaugural (can I use that term for a fire pit?) fire last night just to make sure nothing blew up and it went perfectly. We busted out our camp chairs and cooked up some delightful tinfoil dinners. Then we had s’mores and invited our neighbors over. It was a glorious summer evening and we absolutely loved it. I can’t wait to do more! We’re having Dan’s family over on Saturday and I’m so excited! Dan did the vast majority of the work and planning for the pit and he works so hard in our yard and it looks amazing. I couldn’t be luckier to have such a funny and hard working guy as my husband! He is my best friend and I just love hanging out with him! Even though we have done so much in the yard and to the house and I love it, I still have tons of plans and ideas and other things I want to do! I have about a billion ideas in my head and written down and a few projects I’m in the middle of that I need to finish! But I really want to paint the front and back doors and I’m trying to decide what I want.

Here is what it looks like now: I thought I wanted a red door, but now I’m wondering if I should just go with a classic black door. I also really want some wooden shutters and a window flower box. So I photo-shopped some pictures to get an idea of what it might look like. I’m pretty impressed with my skills haha. I also added the rocking chair because I want one on the porch!

So what do you guys think? What color looks best? Is there another suggestion you have? Of course the red isn’t the exact red I would use, but you get the idea. I also need to re-stain the back steps and back door, but I don’t know if I should do the back door a color or just white or what?? Give me ideas people! I love having color so I’m not opposed to a colored door (I’d have to convince Dan though!), but I don’t want it to look weird…let me know what I should do!

Here is our back porch right now: Let me know what you guys think I should do! I also finally bought the rest of the supplies to completely finish the laundry room so I just need to get the cabinets painted and installed! Yay!

hello gorgeous

Summer has finally arrived and I have already forgotten what snow looks like and what it was like to be cold :). Not quite, but I wanted to show off some pictures of our yard because I’m so proud of it and of Dan for all his hard work!

When we bought the house, the yard was a big mess. We honestly considered taking out the entire yard and re-sodding it. Luckily we didn’t and we have been able to salvage the yard! There are still weeds to get rid of and some bare patches to fill in, but I’m amazed and how thick and green the yard has gotten! All the grass was brown and looked dead. There were huge weeds all over and the only flower bed (on the left) was all weedy. We added new flower beds on the right side of the porch and all the way around the whole house. We also added flower beds in the backyard. I still want to add hanging flowers and stuff on the porch, but that will come later! Luckily the sprinklers work really well and with Dan’s hard work perfecting them, they work great! On the left side of the house there was a huge bare spot with dirt and weeds. We (Dan) cleared it out and we put down a gravel parking strip. Thanks to Dan’s huge family, we pounded out the gravel in about an hour! Here is a closer look at the parking strip. Dan daydreams about it being the home of a future boat! The fire pit in the backyard is in the work and will hopefully be finished in the next few weeks! We ordered all the stone for the retaining wall and fire pit and are having it delivered on Monday. We will put gravel on the floor and have steps going down into the fire pit area. I want to build a few benches for that area as well. It will be so fun for the summer and fall!

Some close ups of the flowers in the front yard. We had no idea what we were doing so we just bought a bunch of flowers and we learned a lot! Almost everything has survived, but I’ll probably add more to fill it in and we will definitely be adding to it and tweaking it next year. Dan made this awesome drip/spray system so that is the tubing you see. With more plants and flowers, it will be hidden a little better but it works really well! In the picture above on the top right you can see two dark green stripes. Those are from March when Dan had the fertilizer sprayer on the wrong setting and it came out too fast! We have two awesome stripes around our whole front yard and they haven’t faded at all! I love it. Backyard shots. I am still planning on re-staining the back steps and painting the back door this summer. The grass looks so so so much better than a few months ago and I can’t believe it! Dan has worked so hard and I love him for it! We both go and pick weeds and spray the lawn together and I really love doing it together. There is still a lot to do (isn’t there always?), but we’re loving the house and definitely staying busy!

the big race.

Well the Wasatch Back has come and gone and I can’t believe how fast it went! It was such an amazing and unforgettable experience. Our team did AWESOME and we had such a good time.

We got about 3 hours of sleep (more than our other van got) and we were definitely beat after the race, but it was worth it!                              Here is Alan and Brandie doing their first exchange.

Here is my first run (5.2 miles). I ran through Paradise and started running up the canyon to Avon pass. I got a nice sunburn and the heat definitely made it harder.

This is Dan’s first leg and he ran down the canyon into Ogden Valley. He did amazing and it was so fun to drive up ahead and wait for him to come running by. I gave him water and made sure he was okay (we all did that for each other).                                     Lookin’ good!

  

Here is van 2 in the red suburban. We didn’t decorate our cars but we will next time for sure!

           Another exchange from Alan to Brandie. Alan was a beast and ran the furthest on the whole team (over 22 miles total!). He did great and helped us get way ahead of our projected time.              This is Dan giving me water on my second leg as I ran into Mountain Green. It was a great temperature in the evening and it was so beautiful! During all my runs, I tried to take notice of the beautiful surroundings. When I was struggling I tried to remember how lucky I was to have the health to run and I tried to enjoy what was around me. That and my good music helped keep me going!
           Here are the members of van 1 (minus Brett who was trekking up the canyon at this point). Brandie, Erik (who came all the way from California and did great despite the huge change in altitude!), Alan, me and Dan. We all got along great and actually had a a really good time together!         The gorgeous view of Jordanelle right after sunrise. I got to run almost 4 miles straight downhill into Heber Valley from here. There were hot air balloons and it was so pretty!                                      Finishing my last run! It was such a relief! Dan ended up running about 18.1 miles and I ran about 13.5 miles total. The race was 190 miles from Logan to Park City over a lot of mountain passes.                                          Dan modeling our sweet team shirts. The logo was for Kings Row Boards, which is a skateboarding (and other types of boards) company Dan’s uncle and cousin started. They also ran with us.             Marty (my father in law) battling his last run in the heat of the day! He was amazing and did so well. I couldn’t believe his strength!

Dan and I resting on the grass with Erik in the background.

This is Tyson starting up the hill on his last leg. This was 3.5 miles straight up the canyon and it was brutal. Tyson was amazing and did so well on all his legs, but by the end of his last leg, he was about ready to die!                                                                    Mike had the hardest leg, known as the “Ragnar Hill”. It was unreal how steep and hard it was. We were done at that point and just driving up the hill in the truck was crazy! I can’t believe how well he did considering how hard that was and how hot it was! He ended at 9000 feet! (This pic was obviously before he started that leg….)                       

This is me running along Mike for a bit to give him some water.

The view of Heber Valley when we were almost to the top of the hill.

The finish line! We made it to Park City and we all got to run the last hundred yards together. It was very exciting and fun!

  

The Honey Buckets became good friends and a familiar site along the way. I have a freaky phobia of porta potties as well as campground toilets so I wasn’t too stoked about using these. But I survived! Dan used these puppies at least once every. single. stop. He grew to love them and had a hard time adjusting to a real clean bathroom when we got home.

                One good thing about the Honey Buckets was that I loved the smell of the hand sanitizer they had! It was awesome.             Here are the runner’s from van 1: Brett, Brandie, Alan, Erik, me, and Dan.         Here is our entire team (plus Wellyn) at the finish line: Dan, Curt, Becky, Mike, Erik, me, Brandie, Brett, Marty, Jon, Alan, and Tyson. Our team finished in 30 hours and 36 minutes which is pretty amazing!

I’m so proud of everyone on our team! The race was something we will definitely never forget. It was so cool to cheer each other one and to be cheered on by your teammates. Everyone there was having a good time and the feeling was unexplainable. It is a great feeling of accomplishment to be able to do something like this. I’m so glad we had the opportunity to do it and I loved doing it with Dan! Now we might do the race in Las Vegas in October, but we’ll have to recover first and then we’ll decide!