I finally have a moment!

The past couple of weeks with work have been a little bit time consuming. I was on call last week and with all the call and overtime, I put in about 70 hours of work in one week! Needless to say, I did not even want to LOOK at a computer for awhile. Now that things have calmed down, I just wanted to post about a couple of things. First of all, HAPPY BELATED FATHER'S DAY! We were able to spend Saturday with my Dad and Sunday with Brian's dad. It was so nice to spend time with the family. I wasn't feeling very picture happy-so sorry, no pictures. However, I would like to mention that Bob and I beat Brian and his brother THREE times at horse shoes! I won the third game with a ringer, and I would also like to mention, the bets were on! I have been "laundry free" for the past two days and it has been fabulous. Thanks honey, for holding up your end of the bet!

Now going backwards in time-the previous weekend, Brian and I spent the entire time working on our little remodeling project. WHAT. A. JOB. It has been a lot of work, and there is still a lot of work to be done! Brian spent an entire day installing this:I am so proud of him! When we took the range that was above the stove down we unfortunately found out that our home builders were corner cutters-in other words...LAZY! The power source to the range did not have an outlet. It was wired directly into the wall! It was the weirdest looking thing. Brian did some heavy duty, impressive electrical work and installed an outlet in the cupboard above the new microwave. I don't know how he even knew what to do, but I was very impressed. I love our new microwave. It makes such a difference!

While Brian was doing the microwave I worked on painting the ceilings. Let me tell you, I have a lot of respect for people that do that every day! It was so exhausting! We finally got it done and installed the light fixtures. I think it turned out pretty good, don't you?
The flooring is coming next. We decided to go with a "berkshire cherry" wood flooring. We decided to have it labored out. I don't think my back can handle another project. I will post pictures when it is finished. I don't think we will do the cupboards for now, but we will just have to see how they look with the flooring.

With all the remodeling going on in the house, you know I had to spend some time outdoors as well. I finally got to go rock climbing for the first time in two years! It was a blast. I went with my long lost friend, Sarah. It was so good to see her, and so good to get out and climb again (even though I was a little bit of a scardy cat).This was a really pretty waterfall up Big Cottonwood Canyon. It was so gorgeous up there. There is one good thing to say about all this rain, the Canyon is beautiful this year. Speaking of rain, for some strange reason we decided to go riding in it. Your welcome Ryan. My brother really wanted to go riding and it just so happened that it was very stormy that day. I don't know what it is about puddles and mud, but it does make it a fun ride even though we froze our hineys off. Here is a picture at the top of Butterfield Canyon. We don't look cold at all huh?
Well that is a brief update for now. I hope everyones' summer is going as good as ours! Hopefully I will have a new floor by the next time I post!

Little Sahara Trip

This past weekend Brian and I finally got to get away. It was such a blast to head south and spend a couple days at the Dunes. The weather was supposed to be bad, but it was absolutely perfect. Not too hot, but not cold either. We convinced Brian's Aunt Debbie and Uncle Chuck, and his cousin, James, his wife, Bree, and their two girls to go with us. It was so fun to spend some time with them. Here the boys are racing up Sand Mountain.
This is such a big dune! You probably can't tell, but those two dots at the top are Brian and James. Brian let me ride his quad this year and I rode all the way to the top of this by myself! I was so proud.
Here I am on my quad. I look pretty awesome, I have to admit.
This is Brian doing a wheelie up one of the dunes.
And this is Brian shortly after...
Don't worry, the sand made a soft landing and he was ok. He just got a good scolding from me, "Safety First!"
Speaking of "Safety First", I wouldn't recommend this at the Dunes, but hey at least it wasn't my husband. James was so CRAZY! He rode up the entire dune backwards! What a nut. It was pretty cool to see though.
Here we are on the side of the highway gathering firewood. We were on our way to Eureka to buy more firewood, when we noticed the vast amounts of dead trees on the side of the road. We did our part cleaning up the highway. Look how strong I am, I uprooted an entire tree!

Man I love weekends!

Lesson Learned

So here is a riddle for you all. What do you get when you mix a sleep deprived woman-that has worked way too many hours, a nice Sunday morning thought to cook her sleeping husband breakfast, and a pan of hot cooking grease?A NEW KITCHEN!

Ha ha, who would have thought that my stupidity would lead to some remodeling? I guess I have to tell the story, now...Its good to laugh at your mistakes right? Well anyway, Sunday morning I was on call and my first call woke me up at 6 am. Every time that I tried to go to sleep after that, I would get another call... Finally I gave up and decided to go to the store and get some stuff to make breakfast. Brian was still fast asleep so I was going to beckon him awake with my cooking. Little did I know how ironic that statement was at the time. I wanted to go outside the box of my normal waffle and eggs breakfast. I decided to make scones and a quiche. One problem...I had never made scones before... I had seen my mom do it a million times growing up.

Couldn't be that hard right?

Oh how naive I was! I called my mom to ask for a direction with cooking the oil. I had never cooked with it before and I was a little nervous. Well my dad answered the phone and told me just to put some in the pan and heat it up. Now here comes the stupidity. I was expecting the oil to boil so that I would know it was hot enough.

Um, HELLO! Oil does not Boil you Nim Wit!

Anyway, we will let that slide because I had never cooked with oil before... All of the sudden I noticed the house was getting really smokey. I opened the back door to air it out a little bit and I ran over to the stove. I noticed that the oil was rather smokey and most likely the perpetrator of all the smoke in the house. I went to turn the burner off, but it was too late. The entire Pan Burst into flames. I held my cool at first. I grabbed the box of Baking Soda and tossed it on the pan. "Mom would be so proud," I thought. Well darn-now I have to start all over with the grease cooking. I put the pot in the sink and decided that it would be a BRILLIANT idea to spray out the pan. Just as I did this The grease EXPLODED into flames up to the ceiling and grease EXPLODED all over me and the floor-not to mention catching the floor on fire! I started screaming because of the pain but also because MY FREAKING KITCHEN WAS ON FIRE! Soon enough the smoke alarm went off and Brian (my knight in shining undies) ran downstairs. He found me holding the flaming pot with the oven mit on fire. I think I was in shock because I didn't realize I was just standing there. He yelled at me to put the pot in the sink and by some miracle he got the fire out. I was hysterical to say the least. All I could think of was that my house was ruined and I was going to need plastic surgery. (I was being a little dramatic, the burns aren't that bad) After several sobbing minutes, I finally calmed down enough to inspect the damage. There was grease EVERYWHERE! It was on the walls, the fridge, the ceiling- I am still finding the grime that we missed. I don't know how I didn't burn the house down, but it wasn't without effort. The damage isn't too bad, but we will need to replace the floor and paint the ceiling. The light fixtures are going to have to be replaced also. I think if we go through the effort, we might as well do the entire kitchen to make it look nice right? We are needing some ideas though. We have light light brown cabinets and we are thinking of sanding them and antiquing them. We also want to do tile and maybe some new appliances. Any thoughts?