Before and After

When Rich and I bought this house, there was a room in the basement that used to terrify me. I thought that this is the type of room someone could use as a torture chamber, or the kind of room you find an 18 year old whose parents have locked them in, never allowing them to leave or see the light of day until one day they are discovered by some nosy journalist/neighbor. YIKES! Anyway, we used it to store misc. items... but when we found out we were adding a little person into our lives, we realized that we needed to do a little remodeling so we can have room for our little lady. We plan on putting the baby upstairs in our spare bedroom and make the "rock room" our guest bedroom. Rich began working on it several months ago and this is what it looked like then.

Yikes!! Doesn't it give you the creeps?!? This is what it looks like today!

Oh, my! Rich sure made some improvements! He did everything himself (except laying the carpet). He framed the room, exposed the original beams in the ceiling, drywalled it, painted it, cut out all the wood pieces for the counter tops, and shelves. He built the cupboards and shutters for the window. He did the electric wiring and gave us some good lighting and electricity. Here are a few more pictures...



It isn't creepy at all anymore! I am SO proud of him for doing such a great job on the room. He put so many details into it that I never would have thought of. It far exceeds my expectations. I sure love that guy and appreciate what a hard worker he is!!

Anniversary

Last weekend, Rich and I celebrated our first Anniversary. I cannot believe how fast this year has gone! To celebrate, Rich had surprised me with a bunch of fun things.

First, he brought home some beautiful flowers.


On Saturday we went to our reception site, This is the Place Heritage Park. We were able to ride the train for the first time. We rented the train to take people around during our reception, but we didn't have time to ride it. It was a good time.

The train dropped us off at the Huntsman Hotel, where we ate some of the nastiest hot dogs ever.

This is the Smoot Hall, where we had our reception...

And this is the chapel where his dad performed our ring ceremony... good memories, for sure!


Oh, I love spring! We saw this little family of geese. So cute!


Then Rich surprised me by taking me to the new Jane Eyre movie I've been wanting to see. So good!

Then we drove to Park City, where we stayed in a shmancy hotel called the Stein Eriksen Lodge. We were waited on hand and foot.


This was our view from our hotel room... It was super pretty, even though it was snowy.


Our hotel room had a living room with a fireplace and a balcony with a hot tub... so nice!


For dinner, we just had to go downstairs to the restaurant, where we had a 3 course meal. It's been awhile since I've had such delicious food. Somehow the staff found out we were celebrating our anniversary and for dessert, they made this pretty little chocolate plate for us.

This year has been so much fun, and I can't wait to see what this next year has in store!

Elephant

Remember how I thought that I would have a boy? Well, I started knitting this little toy, for the boy, I was sure we were having... When I found out we were having a girl, I just finished it because I thought it was so darn cute. Hope Sophia likes elephants! :)

Camping

Ok, this post is a bit late, but last month, Rich and I drove down to Moab for his birthday weekend, and went camping. I forgot how much I love camping.... especially now that I get to stay in the nice warm bed, while Rich gets up in the cold of the morning to make the fire. :)

We went on a fun little hike. I say little because, pregnancy and hiking aren't super compatible. This hike took us about an hour, with a few breaks here and there so I could catch my breath.





I love the red rocks down there! It's so pretty... my camera doesn't do it justice. (I remember when that shirt actually fit! Haha!)

After driving around and looking at many a campsite, we finally found the one and started unpacking.


Here's our campsite. Rocco was in heaven because he could actually bury his food out in the wild. At home, he tries to bury it by spreading it all over the floor, or putting a toy over his food dish. I think he realized it wasn't as rewarding as he thought because he didn't eat any of the food after it had been covered in the dirt.

He loved camping, but came home SUPER dirty!

This was in the morning, we made some oatmeal and let me tell you, oatmeal never tastes as good as it does when you're camping. Delicious!!


And this is the reason we went camping... our "new" truck. We just put a mattress in the back and slept on that. There was no way I would be sleeping on the hard ground! Sleeping in the truck worked out really nice, and we were super toasty. Ah, I'm excited to go again!

LAS VEGAS

Last weekend Rich and I drove to Las Vegas to see one of my old roomies at her reception. It was fun seeing some of our friends there and of course, seeing the happy couple!

Megan looked beautiful! I love her dress!

Here's me, Megan, and Shannon... the old Pepertree condo roommates. Spending time with these girls in Vegas are some of my most memorable. We had the best kitchen in our condo and would all sit around the bar talking and laughing until it was waaaay past my bedtime.

My good friend (and former boss) let us stay at her house. She was so hospitable!! What other host would give up her master bedroom and put nutter butters on our pillows?? I'm sad I didn't get any pictures with her (or our friend, Dormisha, who stopped by to say hello). :(

Oh boy, do I miss the weather there!! We were able to go for a hike at Mt. Charleston. It was bright and early and still warm enough to hike with only lightweight clothes on.

We hiked up to a lookout point where you could see the Vegas strip in the distance.

Such a pretty view!

This is the gardens at the Bellagio. They are celebrating the Chinese New Year. (The year of the Rabbit).

So festive!

Its funny that when I lived in Las Vegas I thought I would never want to go there for a vacation. I thought living there would cause Vegas to lose it's appeal to me, but I love going there now more than ever before. We can eat at our favorite spots and we know how to get around. We know where to go for some good hiking, biking, swimming, and tennis. There are so many fun things to do there! I'm glad we live close enough still to have weekend getaways there.

Motherly instincts??

For those of you who don't know yet... Rich and I are expecting our first baby at the end of June!! We are SUPER excited! We both thought it is a boy, in fact, I was 99% sure I am carrying a boy. However, I had an ultrasound last week and it told us that we are, for sure, having a GIRL! So much for my motherly instincts! So, to get in the "girly" mood, I went shopping with my friend, and bought a couple outfits.




I had a hard time getting away from blue, but i fell in love with these pj's! And I think they are still girly enough.




Thanks to Carter's I'm more thrilled than EVER to be having a little girl. :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Our holidays were just full of family time and fun. We went to my mom's on Christmas Eve where we ate and spent time with her, my sister, and her kids. Then went to Rich's sister's house to eat again and spend time with them.

On Christmas day, we opened our presents, went for a Christmas walk, ate a nice big breakfast, opened more gifts, and then went to his sister's house again. It was a perfect holiday and I felt so blessed to be around such wonderful people.

(Don't mind my grumpy look in this photo... it was a practice one for our Christmas card pictures but the good ones are on his sister's camera.) Here's our house all decorated with garland. I think Rich did a great job making it look festive. :)

This is our Christmas breakfast. It was a lot of fun to make something new. We were stuffed by the time we were finished!

Here's Rich and Rocco on our Christmas walk. We went to a place nearby called Memory Grove. It's fun because, not only is it beautiful down there, but you can let your dog off the leash. I love watching how happy Rocco gets sprinting as fast as he can.

As you can tell, it wasn't a very white Christmas... or a very cold one.

Here's our loot on Christmas morning. I love seeing a bunch of wrapped presents... so exciting!

Because our house is so small, we wanted to get a tree that would fit perfectly in a spot in front of the window. We like this one because it's so tall and skinny and wouldn't take over the room. By now, all our Christmas decorations are put away until next year and I kind of already miss them. :)