Stay Classy San Diego!

3 Days of this are in our near future (meaning the next three days)



They'll be followed by three days of this in St. George



See you all Wednesday!!

...and then life happened

I always have all sorts of ambitious plans for my weekends, and then they come and go and only a fraction of what I've planned gets completed. But that's okay - at least some of it gets done.


This weekend was a busy one. We had lots to do to clean up our house since our kitchen is DONE!! (okay except for the cabinet doors - but who needs those) That's right folks, we officially have a kitchen back!! (I'll put pictures up soon)


Then there were two birthday get togethers Friday night and of course HALLOWEEN Saturday!


Sunday we had the blessings of these two adorable little ladies, and another birthday party!







Thank goodness I had Monday off or I would have gone crazy trying to get ready for my class that started last night. It will be M-Th. for the next 5 weeks. from 5-10pm
meaning I'll be gone from 7am - 10:30pm every day. FUN! Okay, not really, but looking at the bright side: it's only 5 weeks.

Life Changing Events

Everyone has events in their lives that stand out above the day to day and change the way they see the world. Milestone birthday's, graduation, getting married...

and seeing U2 live.

(look closely and all the little lights are cell phones)

the babies

We had another visitor this past weekend - my baby niece June!

She's the first of three nieces born this year and she now lives in Utah so this was the first time the three of them have been together - so of course we got them together (as well as the other nieces and nephews) to get some pictures!

I have pretty much the cutest nieces and nephews ever.

The three new babies of the year. Mikah, June & Aubrey

Mikah is brand new and oh so tiny (and sleepy)

Aubrey was born in August and was making the most hilarious faces.

Little miss June is 9 months old and getting so big

I was lucky to catch these boys while they were being nice :)

Maesyn, the oldest, who was the best model. She posed this herself, it was one of her many ideas.

All together, and all smiling (almost)

**A little bit of the right side of the images is getting cut off because of the layout, I am too lazy to fix it right now - so try to pretend there aren't portions of arms or legs missing :)

Scoliodentosaurophobia

Do you have a fear that is absurd, bizarre, and completely unreasonable? Do you realize that this fear is absolutely ridiculous but the fear remains nonetheless?


I do.


When I was little I spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s house. It was my favorite place to be. Most weekends I would end up spending the night in the play room at the back of the house. The play room had a TV, and the TV had cable – something I didn’t have at home. I would spend many of those nights parked in the old recliner, in front of the TV watching ‘Nick at Night’. I love Lucy, Pete and Pete, The Wonder Years and Bewitched were some favorites… then came Are You Afraid of the Dark.


I wasn’t exceptionally courageous as a kid (in fact, I was pretty much a scaredy cat) and I usually changed the channel as soon as it came on. I don’t know what got into me, but a few times, I sunk down in my chair, wrapped up tight in a blanket and decided to brave my way through it – I’ve been paying for it ever since.


(At this point you may think I am being dramatic, sadly, it’s all true)


You see, on one of these nights that I decided to test my nerves, the episode happened to be “The Tale of the Chameleons” (cue creepy music) Lucky for me, and this story, I was able to find the description of this episode online:


“Invasion of the Body Snatchers-esque story of a reckless girl who doesn't heed the warning of getting bitten by a chameleon and gets turned into one by a chameleon who disguises herself as a human as part of a plan to unleash her species on the world.”



Terrifying, right? Well it was to me when I was six and ever since then I have been terrified of lizards. Big, small, skinny, fat, nice, mean, green, brown, lizards that walk or lizards that swim (sick!) they all freak me out like no other.


Benson thinks it’s funny.


It doesn’t help that Benson’s brother (Tanner) LOVES lizards (big lizards) and not only has them as pets, but brings them to family functions. It also doesn’t help that we have geckos that live in the outer walls of our house.


(Typing that makes me cringe)


I could tell a large handful of stories right now about horrifying run-ins I have had with these disgusting creatures (finding one crawling around inside my parent’s house, stepping on a dead one, finding three {THREE} dead ones in an antique jug I bought {WHY?!} and having Tanner’s lizard charge me causing me to fall out of a chair in fear and just about break my wrist) but for now I’ll stick to the most recent one, which has been haunting my thoughts for the last 14 hours.


You all know about our re-model. The lacquer we’re using to re-finish the cabinets has a very strong chemical smell that has filled our house this past weekend. Luckily the weather has been nice lately and we were able to open our windows up to air the house out and enjoy the pleasant breeze at the same time. Saturday evening when we were getting ready for bed and as I glanced out our open window the following things hit me all at once:


1. Its night time
2. Geckos come out at night time.
3. The aforementioned geckos like to park it on our bedroom window at night.
4. Our bedroom window is open
5. Our bedroom window does not have a screen
6. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!


I kept myself from screaming out loud (Benson hates screaming) and managed to semi-calmly tell Benson that we should close the windows IMMEDIATELY so the geckos don’t attack me in my sleep. He laughed of course and told me to not worry about it because a) since it’s gotten cooler the geckos aren’t coming out and b) if we close the windows the fumes from the lacquer will probably kill us. It took a little “self talk” but I believed him, calmed down, forgot about the geckos, went to bed and haven’t thought about it since. That was until about midnight last night when I woke up to go to the bathroom.


Groggily, half asleep and with my eyes partly shut I made my way in the dark over to the bathroom. As I walked into the bathroom I happened to glance over to the window (why? why did I do that?!) and sitting happily on the bathroom window (the outside - thank goodness!!) was one of the home stealer geckos. I did a double take… “No!” I thought “It’s too cold for the geckos, it can’t be a gecko!” I looked again (why did I look again?!) Yes, all the windows were closed that night but, that means that they’re still coming out of their little hideaways at night and that they’re crawling all over MY windows with their disgusting little feet.


WHAT IF ONE GOT IN MY HOUSE ON SATURDAY?! What if it’s hiding out under my bed (or IN my bed) and comes out at night to crawl all over ME?! What if it LAYS EGGS in our house before it shrivels up and dies?! Oh.my.gosh. What do I do? Part of me wants to look for it, while the other part of me doesn’t even want to know if it’s there or not. I have been thinking about this since last night. I couldn’t sleep, every movement or sound made me think one of those little devils was crawling around my room. Each time I dosed off into sleep I imagined millions of its teeny little babies hatching in my house and taking over.


I don’t want to go home.


I think I have to move.


Help me.


Disclaimer: I am aware that I am clinically insane for feeling this way about lizards. I do realize that probably 90% of lizards are completely harmless and those that aren’t live nowhere near my house. I know that I have serious issues.


Please tell me you have some strange fear too.
Share it. You can even make one up. Just make me feel less like a mental case – please!

Remodel part 3 - Unexpected Delay #1

The water.

When we started the project one of the first things we did as far as prep work was to remove the old countertops and sink. When Benson took the sink off, he noticed the pipe was dripping, so he went out to the front yard to turn the water to our house off until he could fix it.

Well, when he turned the knob, it broke off in his hand. We then had two leaks, one in the kitchen and one in the front yard.

We ended up having to shut off the city water lines to our house and live without water for a couple of days (that was fun) but it's all better now!

Remodel part 2

You may think that I am just behind in posting pictures and that we are currently enjoying our new beautiful kitchen. If so, you are wrong.
As with any project it has ended up taking far more time than we had planned.

Currently, our house looks like this:

yes those are dishes being stored on a bed

and our Kitchenaid in the livingroom

and a saw in the kitchen. You can see the cabinet doors are off and we've started taping them off for the paint

Benson also used all this stuff...to patch the holes in the cabinet doors from the old knobs

Things are a little further along than this, but it's been slow moving since Benson has had at least one (if not two or three) exams every week since we started the project. That kinda puts a damper on things...

The other project

Like one wasnt enough.

We're also working on our yard!
When we first moved in it was all desert landscape.

We hate desert landscape.

Since we moved in we've been wanting to get rid of all the palm trees, cacti and rock and replace them with shade trees, grass, and flowers.

A few months ago we decided to post pretty much our whole yard on craigs list for free, and guess what?

It worked!

We had most of the rock shoveled out of our yard by people who needed it and we even had a company remove one of our palm trees for us (for free!)

The next step is to remove the rest of the palm trees which Benson and his dad did between conference sessions last Saturday.

Can't wait till it's all done!

Our house will be so pretty!

October

Fall is the best time of year. I was happy when I walked out of the house on the first of October and it was finally cool out!

I decorated for halloween yesterday and now my life feels complete.
Our flowers are coming back up and I am really excited to have some life in our otherwise dead front yard.
(pictures coming on that soon)

I was out there watering them the other morning and found this little guy.
I haven't seen one of these in years!

Conference Weekend

Always one of my favorites!

You can't beat relaxing all day, spending time with family, listening to the prophets speak and eating good food.

This year on the menu:

Pumpkin Waffles

Gecko Grill

Chinese Food

Cheesecake

I think I gained 10 pounds.

late, but here nonetheless

So, back in August my sister in law Tara had a birthday.

This year we decided she needed something extra fun so we threw her a surprise Nacho Libre themed party.

It was tan bueno.

Everyone dressed up and we enjoyed nachos, games about Tara and a pinata.
The costumes were definitely the best part!!

Before

Benson and I decided that 18 credit hours, a CNA class, a growing photography business, work and church callings just weren't keeping us busy enough so we decided to find something to take up all of the spare time we have*

So what did we choose?

A kitchen re-model.

Let me tell you, it needs it. Bad.

Just look... {and don't judge}

Here are th official "before" shots.

Pretty huh?**

Let me tell you... white tile floors are like the prettiest.things.ever.

Really! Want your kitchen to ALWAYS look immaculate? Get white tile floors.
{sadly those aren't going anywhere yet, and no we didn't choose them}

One of the first things that had to go when we moved in were the terrible knobs that used to be on the cabinets. I wont miss the holes they left behind anymore than I miss the twisted rope knobs.

See that wall space between the cabinets and the ceiling? I hate it. So does Benson. He came up with, what we think is, a genius plan to cover that area. Hopefully it turns out like we want it to.


ahhh... our countertops.

The guy who came to measure for the replacements said he has NEVER seen these. He's been doing countertops for something like 15 years. They are that old! The stains are probably that old too. Dealing with something messy you know is yours is one thing... dealing with the mess of people who lived there before you? A whole different ball game. I'll be very glad to see these go.

I didn't realize until too late how blurry this picture was but I had to show you that they are, quite literally, falling apart.

All white walls don't float your boat? Me neiter. That will be changing soon.

This is one small area where the kick board (the little wood trim at the bottom) is still attached.

here is another area where we just peeled off... see all that grossness behind it? yuck. good thing we didn't know that was there all along. The sides of the cabinets aren't even real wood - they're just laminate pieces.

The sink is another item marked for replacement. I forgot to get pictures of it before we tore it out. I don't have the heart to post a picture of it anyway. Just thinking of it makes me squeamish.

So what all are we doing? Well...

The cabinets are getting a GOOD clean and a coat of paint (lacquer to be exact).

They will be green. (Yes as in the color of grass, avacados and kermit). We're also replacing the trim, putting in real wood sides (it's currently laminate) and adding a moulding shelf above the cabinets.

The walls will get a fresh coat of paint - mustard yellow paint.

After that we'll slap on a new sink and some countertops and call it a day (or week, or maybe even month)

We've gotten a little further along than this so I'll post updated pictures shortly and hopefully "after" pictures soon thereafter.

Having a handy husband comes in, well... handy.

*sarcasm

**lie

Happy Birthday To Me

I'm honestly not a big birthday person, but who can resist a day of free food?

I know I sure can't.

I spent my morning signing up for various email clubs that send you free things on your birthday...

among my (free) goods are:
$30 at Benihana
Free Chocolate Fondue (for two) at the Melting Pot
1 Dozen free Krispy Kreme doughnuts
and
Free dinner at Joe's BBQ

The best part? Benson's birthday is next week - so we pretty much get double.


Hope you all have a great night - I'll probably have some funny pictures to post this weekend since I have my wisdom teeth taken out tomorrow! (ack!)

Here she is!

That new adorable niece I was telling you about!

She's such a cutie!

Aubrey Gail Acedo

Reagan is probably the cutest big brother. I was there when he saw her for the first time and he was absolutely giddy! Giggling, smiling and giving her lots of hugs and kisses.

Hope you all going back to school have a great first day!