Nightstands

I just finished making the first nightstand.  It turned out so well!  It still needs to be stained and finished, but my part is done.  Bill will do that.  Now I just have to make a second one so Bill and I can both have one. :)

2 Tables

I'm currently sitting in my in-law's living room wrapped up in a blanket. It is freezing here today! Well, freezing in Henderson terms. We went to a friend's wedding reception last night and I wished I had a jacket. It was so windy and cold. I just checked and it is 63 degrees outside. That's insane! It was 95 degrees just three days ago. I'm definitely not complaining. I do think you get used to the heat really fast though. 95 really doesn't feel too bad these days. We'll see how it goes at 20 degrees hotter than that.

Bill finished two of our three living room tables last night. I built both of them, and did most of the staining part, but he finished it off. He has taken over the staining and polyurethaning of our furniture building for the summer. I build it, he finishes it. It works pretty well. :) Here are the two tables we built, one coffee table and one end table. I love them! Bill is going to do the other end table all himself, so that will be finished sometime later in the summer.

Next on my list are four chairs and two night stands for our bedroom. Bill's parents are letting us take an old kitchen table they have. It's really good quality, but not the color we want, so it's going to get stripped and refinished too this summer. Should be awesome! I think that's going to be the end of the building for now. I'd really love to build a storage bed, but I don't want to transport it back to Utah at the end of the summer and even though it's way cheaper than buying one, the wood will still probably cost around $200. We have other things to spend that money on these days. I'll have to find something else to fill my time after I'm done building those. I'm sure it won't be that hard. :)

Building and Camping

The last few days I spent my afternoons cutting, drilling, gluing, and putting together the new side table and coffee table. Bill and I went camping and hiking Friday night, and when we got back, he got in on the party and helped cut out the boards for the second side table and started putting it together.


This one I did only needs a couple coats of polyurethane on it and some putty to fill the screw holes and it will be done. I think it turned out well. I'm not sold on the ebony stain quite yet, but I'm reserving my judgment until it's completely finished. I thought I would love it, but it's a bit darker than I expected. I think it will turn out well, but we shall see. It is so fun to build! I could really use a table, as our saw sits on the ground to cut when we need it and my back is feeling the effects of that, but it's been really fun all around to make this furniture. I'm excited to keep going.

Bill and I headed out Friday night to go on a little camping/hiking trip to Keyhole Canyon. It's only about half an hour from our house and such a cool place! This was car camping at it's best. We made ourselves some tinfoil dinners and got wood from his parents' house and we were off with our gear. We hit a bit of a snag when we didn't have tinder and kindling that lit as well as we thought it would. The canyon has quite a wind coming out of it, so I started to get worried we weren't going to get the fire lit. Then we came up with a genius idea to light Bill's little denatured alcohol soda can stove and set up the wood on top of it. Worked like a charm! It burned long enough to get the wood started and we were able to get a fire hot enough to cook our dinners on the coals. They were pretty much the best tinfoil dinners I've had. It was so fun. We did some exploring Saturday morning and scrambled up and down a bunch of rock falls. It was quite fun. Definitely a great weekend.

And the building begins

When Bill and I got married, we moved into a furnished apartment. Rather than spending all of our wedding money on furniture, we instead got bedding and nice kitchen things and couch covers and that kind of thing. Well in August when we move back to Provo, we will most likely move into a normal, unfurnished apartment, so I have been thinking a lot about what I'm going to do to furnish our place. I've already mentioned that I'm going to be building some tables and things this summer, and last night was the start of it all. I've been busily browsing for tools and building plans and other such interesting things over the last couple weeks, and we went to Lowe's to buy our supplies last night and then today I picked up a couple tools at Sears that we decided to purchase. It feels like Christmas or getting married again or something like that!

My living room is currently home to all the building supplies. The wood is for two end tables and a coffee table. I'm so excited to start them today! Bill can only help me in the evenings, but since I got started so late today, he gets to be there when he gets home from work tonight. Woot!

We purchased a miter saw so that I can cut all the wood I need to, both straight and angled cuts. Also a sander and various random other tools. We already own a drill, so with those three we'll be well on our way to awesome DIY furniture. I will most definitely be posting pictures of our projects.

We also randomly did not own a vacuum until about 1PM this afternoon. Our apartment had one, albeit a very poor quality one. I never thought I'd get so excited to buy bring something home like a vacuum. Apparently I haven't owned enough things in my life, because all this acquiring of necessary things really gets me excited. :)

Trip To Roseville

My nephew Ethan got baptized on Saturday, and since I don't really have a job yet, I had plenty of time to drive up and celebrate with him. Bill had only been to four days of work when I left, so it didn't work out for him to take two days off. I can't imagine that would have gone over very well if he had asked. :) That was a bummer, but I really enjoyed seeing my brother and his family and my parents, who drove over from Utah.

I spent the ten hour drive talking to my family and friends, trying to take random pictures of cool things I saw without actually looking at the camera while I took it, since I was driving, and generally just enjoying the beautiful areas I drove through. I took some pretty crazy back roads on the way up. I have Google Maps to thank for that. I recommend asking people who know the roads better instead of relying on Google, but I did get to see the east side of Yosemite and some other really pretty places on the way up and it was a fast drive. Well, fast in terms of 9 1/2 hours instead of over 10. :)
This is a really cool dark red hill I passed. No idea what they were mining to get it that dark, but it was pretty.
I passed by this lake on the way up. It was huge and had all this white stuff all around it. I imagine it is salt, but I'm not sure.
The baptism was great. We celebrated Ethan's birthday beforehand. This is him enjoying his present from Bill and I. I his words, "I'm rich!"
These are two of my nieces, Loressa and Ella. Ella is a spitting image of me when I was five. It's like my old pictures stepped off the albums and I see her in real life. A guy actually mistook me for her mom at church on Mother's Day. Aside from it being totally possible, I thought it was awesome because she's so stinking cute. Hopefully Bill and I will have kids as cute as her, though maybe with blonde, curly hair.

It was a fantastic weekend. The trip back had a few bumps in it as my check engine light popped on right after Lake Tahoe with 400 miles left to drive. It turned out to be a minor issue that I can fix now that I'm home, but it had me a little worried for awhile. In order to get it checked out, I went a slightly different route as a nice guy from the auto shop directed me, and that's when I discovered just how crazy out of the way my trip up had been. It was fun to drive a different route home.

Disneyland!

Three days after we got to Henderson, we headed down to southern California to go to Disneyland with Bill's parents, two sisters, and one friend. This was my first time there and I loved it! I think we went on every ride there and at California Adventure. It was the best two days I've had in a long time.


Here's a few pictures from the trip.
On our way to the park. So fun!
My cute in-laws who treated us all to this amazing trip. They're the best!
A rather blurry picture of our splash mountain adventure. It was my first "roller coaster" in a long time. I was all nervous and scared, but it was so fun and I ended up riding so many more over the next couple days over on the California Adventure side of the park.

A couple shots I got off Bill, Suzanne, Miriam, Hillary, and Patricia on the teacups. I know better than to ride those. :) They would have made me so sick.

The girls waiting for Autopia and me riding it. Fastest car ride I've ever been on. Or not. Always fun though.
Waiting for Captain EO I think. Or maybe one of the other shows. I don't remember.
Waiting for one of the 3D movies. We actually didn't have to wait in very many lines, but we found ways to amuse ourselves when we did.
Califonia Screamin'. The best roller coaster in the park.

Catchup

I've been meaning to blog for weeks now but I kept forgetting and then my pictures wouldn't load and we didn't have internet set up in our house until this weekend so I just haven't gotten to it. Bill and I arrived safe to Henderson a couple weeks ago and it's been so fun the last couple weeks setting up our little house. Bill's parents are letting us live in their little rental house for the summer, and it is fantastic! We are going to be so spoiled when we move back to a small apartment in Provo. A few days after we got here we headed down to Disneyland for a family vacation. I have another post coming especially about the trip.

Now we're back in Henderson and Bill has started his summer internship. I'm still working on what I'm going to do this summer. I will try to do an internship of sorts with Henderson City, and I just applied for a parks and rec position too. I don't know if that will pan out, but it would be way fun if it did.

Here's some pictures of our cute house.The outside isn't super exciting, but hopefully by the end of the summer we will have brought the grass back to life and made the yard a little nicer.This is the living room. The three couches came with the house so we won't be taking any of those back to Utah.
This is the dining room or really our second living room. The love sac is super fun. When we got here it smelled not so great, but we washed the cover and left it outside for a few days and then worked the magic of Febreeze and now it's fantastic! We do plan to get some real kitchen chairs. That might actually be one of the things I build this summer.
This is our incredible kitchen. I've never seen so much cabinet space in my life. I actually have an empty cupboard or two. It's amazing. I'm really going to miss this when we go back to Utah.
This is our office/random storage space for things we don't have shelves for since we left those in Utah. :) It works. Thanks to the in-laws for letting us borrow the table for a desk this summer.
This just might be the coolest room in the house. I was out of town this weekend and Bill set up our projector and speaker system. The speakers on the foot of the bed are slightly problematic for Bill since he's tall enough to actually hit them, but it's pretty fantastic to have a big screen and a comfy bed to lounge on while watching our movies with surround sound. I promise we'll move the speakers if anyone comes down to visit and needs a place to sleep. :)
And of course our bedroom. I think the best part of this room is that it has a ceiling fan. The previous owners put one in every room save the kitchen and I love it! It's been in the 80's and 90's here most of the time and I haven't had to turn on the AC yet because of those wonderful fans.

When we got here we bought some new plants and I had so much fun potting them and moving my other plants around. It's the closest I get at the moment to the garden I will have as soon as I have a place to put it. I'm going to start building some furniture from this absolutely amazing blog I discovered a few months back called knockoff wood. These are what I'm planning for the moment:

http://www.knock-offwood.com/2009/11/plans-simplest-nightstand-retail-299_9836.html

http://www.knock-offwood.com/2010/01/plan-hyde-side-table.html

http://www.knock-offwood.com/2010/01/plan-hyde-console-table-pottery-barn.html

http://www.knock-offwood.com/2009/12/plans-little-farmhouse-table-for.html

I need a few tools and a bunch of wood and then I'm going to get started! You should seriously go check out this site if you have any interest in do it yourself kinds of things. Bill is going to help too, but I have way more time at the moment so I may do a lot of the work at first. I'm so excited!

The semester that would never end has...ended

Today was our last day in the singles ward bishopric. As I was walking out the door after church to go home it hit me that this semester really is over, that though I have 5 finals ahead in the next 3 days, we really are moving on Saturday. We will be in Henderson Saturday night and going to a new ward Sunday where we will actually be living for the next four months. This has been the semester to end all semesters when it comes to how long it felt. It was up and down and all over the place. Hard classes, stress trying to get good grades so people will give us money next year and then looking for summer internships. It felt like it was never going to end, but at the same time I was really worried about what would happen after it ended since everything wasn't in place until just recently. It feels amazing to be nearly done, moving on, and doing something exciting for the summer. The apartment is mostly packed, with half our stuff in my sister's basement and the rest in boxes filling the living room. I'll miss the singles ward and our married ward, but am also so excited for the next adventure. Let's move!

Great Weekend and Only 1.5 Weeks Left!

We had such a fantastic weekend. We attempted to go rock climbing Friday night and took my SIL Hillary along. It took longer than expected to hike to where we were climbing in Rock Canyon, so it got dark and we had to come down, but it was still tons of fun. Then we headed over to Arctic Circle for sweet potato fries, burgers, and corn dogs. I guess it's there 60th anniversary, so we got major discounts. Woot!

Saturday we went to the adult session of stake conference in the morning, then headed out shooting with one of Bill's work friends and his wife. We showed him the super secret awesome shooting site we found a year or two ago. It was tons of fun! Then we headed to CLAS Ropes for a ward activity. What a great day.

Even though it looks like we're shooting over a road, I promise we were safe. :) We're so far out on the mountain, nobody was around.


Sunday was stake conference, so we only had church from 12-2PM. Bill is usually at church from 10-6PM, so it was the best to have so much of the day free! We walked to church in the absolutely beautiful weather and then home after. We spent most of the afternoon packing some of the stuff we are leaving in my sister's basement for the summer. I can't wait to head down to Las Vegas now! Hillary came over and hung out with us all evening. So fun. We ate these lime bars I made and died green and ate far too many of them, and it was just great.

And guess what? There is only a week and a half left of school. I can't wait! I'm ready to get done and have a break. Tomorrow is the last day of classes. I've almost made it!

Las Vegas, Here We Come!

I was having a bit of a meltdown Monday afternoon as I realized we were in the month of April and neither Bill nor I had a summer internship yet and things weren't looking promising. Right about that time I got a phone call for a job interview at UVU in their athletic compliance office. I had totally forgotten about it and was so excited to get the call! I'm not joking maybe five minutes later I got a text from Bill to check my email. What do I find? An internship offer for him to work at Southwest Gas in Las Vegas this summer! Woohoo! It couldn't get much better. We decided a couple months ago that we really wanted to go to Las Vegas for our internships this summer, but then the internship Bill thought he had fell through and Las Vegas has a super high unemployment rate, so things didn't look good. So we widened our search and sent applications to places in Colorado, Idaho, California, and Utah. Then a couple weeks ago he got a call from someone at SW Gas asking to interview him. He had sent an email inquiring about internships a while before that and apparently his resume got passed around and picked up by someone else. He interviewed over the phone and two weeks later they offered him the job. Yay for Bill!

So I canceled my job interview, but they called me back a little later that day and asked me to come in anyway to interview, as they would be willing to work with me to maybe intern in the Fall/Winter if they picked me as the candidate. The interview went really well, and honestly, regardless if I get the job or not, it just feels good to have someone want to change things around to work with me. It really made me feel valued.

So anyway, we have sold our apartment contract, and we're heading south after school ends. I cannot wait! Bill's family lives in Henderson and it will be so fun to be near them for a few months. I'm not a huge fan of the crazy heat, but maybe it'll grow on me. Either way, things turned out perfectly and this is going to be a great summer. Now I just need to find an internship or job there.

Went hiking, wish I hadn't come back

(a view of the actual top of Buckley from the "summit" we got to)

Earlier this week a friend of ours invited us to go hike Mt. Timpanogas from the front side. It's called Everest Ridge and it's pretty insane. It's way out of our hiking league at the moment, but we said yes anyway. :) Thankfully, the plans fell through due to weather constraints with the sun melting the snow too much for it to be safe to climb. (keeping his ojos from getting snow blindness)

Anyway, instead Bill and I decided to hike Buckley Peak, which is just south of Y Mountain and has been on our list for months. We didn't start until about 9am and it took 6 hours. What an awesome hike! (pretty mountain view we saw on the way up)

Buckley doesn't have a trail to the top, so we planned to go up a chute on the north side. We thought we had gotten there and headed up this awesome but incredibly intense chute. It was quite the experience. The chute was full of snow, progressively more so as we got towards the top, and it got a whole lot steeper than we expected the last probably quarter of it. Bill was breaking trail at one point and the snow got super powdery. He ended up to his waist in snow nearly every step. It was super scary since we were on probably a 60 degree angle, but he was a total champ and made it through the incredibly hard part. I took up the lead after that and we made it to what we thought was the top not too long after that section. Much to our surprise we weren't really at the top! We had gone up one chute too early and were probably a thousand feet below the actual summit. It's all good though. It was such a crazy and fun ascent that we didn't even care.
(a view of the chute we went up. It's steep)

Like I said, Buckley doesn't have a trail to the top. There was no way we were heading back down that chute, so we ended up picking our way down the forested side of the mountain through deep snow all the way back down to the trail and then back out the canyon. It was tons of fun. If you've never hiked down a super steep hill in powdery snow, you've really got to try it. You sink in every step enough to feel like you can't fall down, and it is just fun. We were able to go super fast. We did kind of get stuck in a scrub oak part and had to pick our way through low branches trying not to scratch ourselves too much. Bill came away with some war wounds on his hands from hitting them in the snow a bunch on the way up, but otherwise we we got down safely.
It just felt great to be out hiking. Both Bill and I have really struggled to find time to work out this school year with all the time constraints we have with school work, and our weekends are usually pretty full so we haven't been outdoors nearly as much as we would like. I know I feel a million times better when I work out on a regular basis. There's just something about pushing my body hard makes me feel really good all around. It's great.

Taking a moment to ponder

I got a phone call this morning from my mom letting me know that my Grandma Kitty had passed away early this morning. She has been sick and in a care home since December. My siblings and I were able to go down and visit her at the end of February and spend one last time with her. I knew it was coming and that she was very near the end of her life, but it is still sad to know she is actually gone now.

At the same time, I know she's in a better place. She's with her family and loved ones. I'm so grateful for my testimony and faith that helps me to know that. It's sad to have her leave, but I know that I will see her again and be able to give her a big hug. She won't be in a bed unable to even sit up without help.

I have so many great memories of her. I spent many summers in my youth at my grandparent's house in Washington. Grandma Kitty and my grandpa were divorced, but through many miracles in my family, they became friends, so while I was at my grandpa's house, my Grandma Kitty would usually be at my aunt and uncle's house and we did many things together. We painted our nails and went shopping and just talked and had a good time.

While I was at BYU I decided to start writing to her. She loved writing letters and we used to write back and forth a couple times a month. She sent me Christmas packages of goodies and cards and letters. I have a box full of them that I treasure.

This last August Bill and I were down in San Diego and we were able to take her to a Padres game. What a fun night that was!

My mom looks so much like my grandma in this picture. Since everyone says I look a lot like my mom, I hope that I look like her here too. What a beautiful woman!

This was taken 11 years ago at a family reunion in Washington. Look how young we all look! Tori is the youngest girl on the left side and she has two kids now. Time surely does fly.

My grandma was truly a wonderful woman and I'm so grateful for all the wonderful memories I have of her! You will be missed Grandma!