Basement is coming along!

The last flower left from a Valentines Day bouquet Bill brought me. So beautiful. 

Parley’s Canyon was stunning on Thursday. 

We did the bathroom floor tile Friday night! And they’ll come to measure for the carpet tomorrow. So close to done! 

We took Grandma out to Red Robin yesterday. So fun. It was a really good time. 

 

A good week

Another great art project by Chloe. 

We bought Genevieve and Aaron a new bed and the bunkbed is gone! This was a good bed for a few years but I’ve been ready for a long time to be done with bunkbeds. Spencer and Aaron have one too and the bottom bunk has curtains across them, which they love. We picked four poster beds so they could put curtains on them. We’ll see if we actually do it, but the kids love them so far. 

Genevieve helped disassemble it! And I nearly dropped the whole thing on her by accident, whoops. I took out all the bolts and there was a wire holding and when I undid one of the bolts holding the wire, the whole thing literally fell down to the center, right where she was! Thankfully she scrambled out before it fell  it went from me about to post pictures to sell it, to scrap wood. It definitely cracked in places when in fell and I didn’t want to sell something in that condition. 

This is the new bed. 

I hung doors in the basement yesterday! Huzzah! Tomorrow I’ll paint and do trim. 

Bill finished this outlet and patched the hole that ended up just a bit too big for the outlet. 

And this hole around the light he added in the Harry Potter closet. I’ll work on spackling and painting tomorrow. 

I installed the new stairwell light. 

We’re getting close! I love how it’s looking. I can’t wait for the 20 little things left to actually be done. 

Yesterday afternoon Bill and I spent a ton of time organizing our garage. It may not nook organized in this picture, because there’s trim and basement furniture, and such floating around, but we got our weight rack setup for the first time in a year, got my tools and stuff on our storage shelves arranged in good spots, cleaned off the workbench that had been piled high for a few weeks. The building chaos gets a little less bothersome when you can bring a little order back. 

I went to my first escape room last night with some of my girl friends. It was so fun! It was Harry Potter themed and really a good time. 

 

 

Funeral and other things

We had the opportunity to travel to Las Vegas last weekend to attend Bill’s grandpa’s funeral. He passed away at 93, and we have had so many years of wonderful times with him. It’s sad to say goodbye, but it was a wonderful time with so much family we only see occasionally. I’m so glad we have the proximity and the financial ability to be at these events. We loved our time in the South and Washington, but really appreciate living closer to both of our parents and some grandparents too. And I for one am so grateful Bill still has grandparents alive. All but one of mine have been gone for many years and years and he’s had more around until a little more recently. It’s so precious to have them around. 

Just a fun picture of Spencer and Genevieve. Genevieve is a full blown Swiftie now. 😍

And here’s a late night photo I snapped to show just how close she is to my height. This is the year she’s going to pass me and probably Spencer too!  

Spencer and Bill went hunting again Saturday morning. And got skunked again. Wah wah! 

While they were hunting I headed out on a super fun mountain run. There’s a trail conservation group that hosts a loop run at Yellow Fork Canyon every year. It’s a seven-mile loop over one of the summits up that canyon and back down. I got to use my yak trax for the first time. We had a great time. I’m so sore this morning after running the seven miles on snowy trails. I had to work really hard not to fall on the really uneven snow. That’s my kind of a good time. 😂 It was so flipping cold at the summit. We all look like goofs in this picture because the snow was blowing so hard! 

The views were breathtaking. 

 

More painting

I got some work swag this week. That’s always fun. 

How is one supposed to work when your feline companion insists on perching behind your head?

I finally figured out a new l-shaped desk setup! Got a bigger desktop from ikea and attached it to my standing desk frame. Got a writing desk to make the L. I love it so much. I’m not working remote as much and I still need to get my office work desk optimized. 

Bc

this is the writing desk. It’s one of those finds at ikea where it’s a lot higher quality than some of their other offerings. 

Chloe is so funny. She’s always creating funny ways to sit. She is super into listening to audio books right now. 

Another amazing Chloe setup. She was sitting on a heating pad too, so it was that much better. 

I finished all the painting in the main room and the hallway! The stairwell has one coat and the Harry Potter Closet had half of one coat. I still have to do both coats in the bathroom, but there’s no weird diagonal, two-story walls in there like in the stairwell. I got a tad bit of paint in my hair. 😂 I’m so stinking excited about this project. We have a couch picked out to buy as soon as we have a place to put it. It finally feels like we’re moving forward and that it’s going to be done and usable. This I had been a goal of mine since we bought this townhome a few years ago. It took a bit longer than expected, but wow, I’m happy about it now. 

We’ve become Swifties at our house this last little while. Genevieve keeps asking me when we can go to one of her international concerts. Wish I could take her! But she made this Eras tour poster with our cat Freya in each picture. I’m so amused and impressed by her creativity. 

 

Basement finish and hunting

Spencer has gotten into hunting in the last few months. He got a duck and goose call and this lanyard to hold them for Christmas and his birthday. Yesterday morning he and Bill finally found some time to go out for the first time! 

This is his face when they realized the spot they went was not going to work at all because the water was so far away. Whoops! 

But they did get to explore a lot and they found a new place to go in a couple weeks, so they’re good! 

We’ve made so much progress on the basement! This was a selfie I took after Bill and I spent Friday night cleaning up the basement after the drywall and mud/tape/texture was finished. So much dust we swept and vacuumed up! 

And this is where we’re at now! First coat is nearly done for the whole basement. Bill has wired just about all the plugs and switches. 

Just need to do the corners the roller couldn’t reach. As soon as I get the second coat on the ceiling, Bill can clip in all the can lights and we’ll have light! It is way more work than I ever expected to get this basement done. But we are coming right along and I’m so excited for the progress and that I see the end in sight. 

 

Happy birthday!

 This has been absolutely the craziest week. The weather in Dallas was crazy intensely cold while we were there, and it even snowed just a tiny bit. This Utah girl thought it was absurd and ridiculous that this much snow shut everything down, but indeed it did. 

Our flight home Monday was canceled and rescheduled for Tuesday afternoon. We really didn’t have any faith that flight would still be there, we needed to get back to our kids and work, I didn’t have my laptop, so we made the crazy decision to cancel our return flight and drive home! We had also started to get sick and that didn’t sound very fun to be sick traveling. So we rented a car and rice the 18 HOURS home. We totally pulled an all nighter doing it, just switching off napping. Bill drove almost the whole way, 14 hours. I picked up the last chunk early in the morning when he finally got too sleepy. We got home at 6:15am Tuesday. 😂😳

Before we left, we did a few more fun things. We went to Meow Wolf. That was one of the more weird things I’ve ever done  I hear it helps if you’re drunk, lololol. We had a great time. It’s pretty amazing even sober. 🤣

We stopped by Buc-ees twice while we were there. Ha! Priorities. 

Once we got home Tuesday morning we still had stuff to do! Bill was totally out for the count. He hasn’t been that sick since Covid in 2020, I don’t think. He was barely functional until Thursday afternoon. It was crazy. But our basement drywall was scheduled to be done this week. They showed up Tuesday evening and got it nearly done that evening. We had to put the tub surround in before they finished. We bought it in November and never got around to installing it. 🤦🏻‍♀️ So late that night while I was also sick, I went to install it. It was tweaky of course, like all DIY projects are. I got two of the three panels in finally only to discover the third one was cracked! 

So I had to take it all out and Bill stumbled his way through the next day and managed to buy a new one. Our drywall guy was so nice and installed it for us when he came Wednesday. But he left the same third panel because it needed holes cut in it, and Wednesday night I was up late AGAIN finishing the installation. That again was so tweaky! I finally did get it in and the drywall screwed over the top that had been cut and left for me to finish. The mud/tape/texture guys came on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and it’s nearly done now! 

We started this basement project a full year ago. I did the framing January 2023 and assumed we’d have it done in a few months. Ha! February included Bill getting laid off and 2023 was a really quirky work year. So the timeline definitely hasn’t gone as planned, but I’ve got paint samples now! I’m looking at carpet. We are so close! I love it. 

Today is birthday day! We did a friends party for Spencer yesterday. He made his own cake! I helped frost it but I showed him how to do the decorations and he did half of them. 

He just wanted to go to the rec center and play sports with his friends. So that’s what we did. Spencer and six of his friends came and we did pizza and cake and played soccer and football. It was way fun. It nearly turned into a disaster when the field was booked seemingly the whole party, but thankfully they left partway in and we were able to use it. It was fun. He’s the big 13! And today we’re celebrating both of us with family. Yay! 

15 years and 100 years

 We have had absolutely the best weekend. Bill came down to Dallas on Tuesday for work training running up to the main event of the 100-year anniversary of Haag Engineering. I got to fly down Friday as well to join him for the black tie party. It was so much fun! There was a cocktail hour first, then a five-course dinner in the most beautifully decorated ballroom I’ve ever been in. They brought  live cover band in and we danced for hours. It was just amazing all around. I’ve never been to anything so fancy. I met a ton of great people that work for Bill’s company as well. They are from all over the country and there’s even a guy up in Canada. Haag is headquartered in the Dallas area, but has the most minor of actual buildings there. They really lean into everyone working fully remote. It’s pretty cool. They’re currently expanding out westward. They’re thrilled to have Bill on for Utah and Idaho and they’re hiring on the west coast too. It’s a super vibrant company. We feel like we hit the jackpot finally on this company. It’s been such a great experience so far. 

We stayed on the 15th floor of a fancy hotel for the first night. It was right next to the Dallas Cowboys practice facility. The outside wall was a full window floor to ceiling. We got treated to a pretty awesome sunset. 

Bill went to an f3 workout while he was here, as he tries to do anytime he’s near a local group, which is actually really often, which is so cool. F3 has really expanded all over the country and it’s totally a thing for guys to visit and do a workout when they’re in town. I love the culture of that workout group so much. It’s been such an enriching part of Bill’s life all the way back since Seattle when he discovered them. He’s really helped build up the Utah chapter, so it’s very satisfying. I loved when the FiA group existed here too but we found it much harder to maintain so it’s mostly fizzled, unfortunately. My run club is awesome too, thankfully. 

We dressed to the nines for this party and everyone else did too! It was so classy. 

Such beautiful decorations. 

Dancing the night away. 😍

They had a karaoke sing thing where employees went up and sang from a set list of options, but the band played background for them while they did. It was way more fun than I would have expected. We laughed and sang along and had such a good time. 

We’re celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary this weekend too. We figured if Haag was going to fly us both down, we could celebrate here as well as anywhere else! 

 

Saturday Bill and I drove down to Waco to go to Magnolia Place. It was pretty cool! Mostly just to be a part of the movement that is Fixer Upper and all that Chip and Joanna Gaines stuff. We wandered around it for a lot less time than it took us to drive down and back, hahaha! But so fun. Honestly, it’s such a gift to just be with Bill. Our life is crazy and we see each other much less than I like. 

We got ourselves some delicious Tex Mex for dinner and then saw Wonka at a dine in theater. That’s a new one to me, but I’m here for it. 

We headed to church this morning and then tried our best to find a bookstore to sip hot chocolate and read at, but Barnes & Noble has no comfy chairs in it anymore. Sadness! We stopped by this fun donut shop instead and then went to a nearby mall. Look how creative these donuts are! 

We’ve got a couple more things today and tomorrow before we fly back. It’s bitterly cold here these two days. 15 degrees when we got up this morning, high 23. It’s way warmer in Utah this weekend! Good times though, Hahahah.