Jerry and the Bear

It's been a while since we had anything funny on our blog . . . my dad found this one in his video archives - beware, it's pretty intense!

Master Bath Redo

One of our projects last month was to paint our bathroom. It was probably the ugliest room in the house before. I hated the tile because it didn't go with any of the other colors in the house, and the walls were a boring white - but we love the way it turned out! We took down all of the vanity mirrors and replaced them with smaller, framed ones. The mirrors were a little too tall, so Jerry had to move the lights up and install a third one - which, as you can see, we are still waiting for in the mail. I painted and then put a tea stain over everything to add a little more visual texture. Oh, and we also added another towel rack above the bathtub. We are almost done painting our house - just the nursery and a bathroom to repaint!

Happy New Year!

This was one of our best Christmas breaks ever! Darren and Claire got to stay with my parents for five days before Christmas, which gave me just enough time to finish painting my bathroom, steam clean all of the carpets, clean the house, and finish shopping. This was probably the best gift I could get. Jerry was able to build a really cute barbie dollhouse for Claire and hooked up an LCD TV and BlueRay player for our media room.

My mom, dad, and brothers brought Darren and Claire back on Christmas Eve and stayed with us for several days. We had a fun time playing games and hanging out with them. But for some reason, we didn't take hardly any pictures!

After they left, my sister Christy, Jon, and their little boys,Tommy and Joey, stayed with us for a couple days. We had fun with them, too, especially decorating sugar cookies. Tommy calls me "Michal Man." I'm glad no one thought of that when I was in elementary school!

To wrap it all up, we went to a really fun New Year's party. The kids all slept upstairs while the grownups stayed up late playing games. What a great idea!

We're Having a Girl !!!

What's Making Me Laugh:

the box that Darren fell asleep in one night,

the $2000 check that Darren made out to himself,

the doll that somehow got stuck all the way up here,

And this conversation:

Me: On Wednesday the doctor is going to take a picture of the baby inside my tummy so we can know if it's a boy or a girl.

Claire: I know, if the baby's shirt has a flower on it it's a girl!

(Then Darren and Claire laughed and laughed and laughed when I told them that the baby was naked inside of me.)

Thanksgiving in Utah

Finally, here are a few pictures from our trip. The drive went surprisingly well. We had lots of snacks, movies, and surprise activities. One of the activities was to make tin foil crowns and jewelry. For some reason, the boys got into it more than the girls.

Can you believe that Grandma Jan put Miles to work as soon as he got there?!

We went to a dinasour museum and a really neat canyon that reminded us of a smaller version of the Grand Canyon. At the bottom of the canyon were some really cool paintings done by Indians hundreds of years ago.

We were also able to see my sister Christy, and her family, and my brother Ellis in Provo. We forgot the camera that day.

At Thanksgiving, we were especially grateful to have such a wonderful family!

Soccer

This was Darren's first season to play soccer. He liked it better than T-Ball. There was a boy on Darren's team named Diego. Every time we cheered for him, I kept thinking of the song, "Go, Diego, Go! Go, Diego, Go,!" from the Diego and Dora the Explorer shows. Although Darren was self-appointed goalie much of the time, he was able to get in a few kicks. We're looking forward to next year.