Celebrating Halloween in Style

Cole's office decided to throw a Halloween party for employee's kids this afternoon and were, of course, encouraged to dress up in costumes. After bouncing around every possible idea, including dressing up like the gang from Jon and Kate plus 8, his team settled on a "Christmas" theme.

Enjoy the photos below of his clan in their ugly grandma sweaters, amid holiday decorations, ready to pass out their candy canes.

Their boss, Teddi, was out of the office today, so they dressed up the little bear to "represent"...

Snips, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails...

If you were taking the voting seriously, majority rules. Our ultrasound yesterday confirms we are having a BOY!

Ultrasounds to follow. Now to figure out this scanner...

Up on the Countertops and Dance!

Ok. No worries about that happening here, but we were really excited to see our counter tops installed this week. Our contractor worked with North Salt Lake Marble/Granite and we are really pleased with how they turned out.

See below for a few befores and afters. The plumber will follow later this week to put in our final plumbing and faucet.

Is "Baby Bump" a Boy or Girl?

It's that time folks. Today's doctor's appointment should let us know if we are expecting a boy or girl this March. If not, we have a second ultrasound scheduled in a week that should definitely clinch it.

Cole and I have affectionately taken to referring to the child as "the bump" or "the baby bump" and are both hoping that knowing the gender will make this whole experience seem a little less surreal. Plus it'll be fun to start thinking about nurseries and baby names!

Stealing an idea from a similar post by a friend, here are our personal predictions:

Maura: This mommy-to-be feels like a big slacker. I have no idea what the gender of our baby will be. However, I am a huge sucker for those flower bows the size of your baby girl's head and the idea of a big sister. Although, who wouldn't want a mini-me version of Coleman?

Cole: Lets get real. I am the second oldest in my family. The oldest is my sister Baylee. Maura as well is the second oldest and has an older sister. Maura's older sister, Nicole, just had her first child and its a girl...see a pattern? Well, I think its about time the pattern is broken. My prediction is a boy to buck the trend. Our families are due for a boy to be the first.

Our officially, not official poll is located to the right. What do you think it will be?

Work Weekends 6, 7 & 8

Despite the lack of posts on the topic, we are still very busy working on the house.

In the last couple weekends we added all new windows (separate post to follow), finished tiling and sealing the grout for the basement bathroom, installed all of our closet doors and trimmed out the entire main level. Cole has also been busy trimming trees, moving rocks and generally clearing all the little areas of stuff around the yard.

In addition to the planned efforts, we had a few surprises. Our roof has a little leak, our furnace is original to the house-not three years old, and our mortgage was sold to another lender which delayed getting some of our cash to work on the bigger projects.

That being said, we are rolling right along. We love sitting back and looking at a part of a room that is almost there. In these tired moments we get a glimpse of how worthwhile all of this will be.

Since budgets (and FHA) dictate this handrail must stay, Cole gave it a good sanding, two coats of black spray paint and a beautiful matte finish.

Please expand larger. Please ohhh, please ahhh!

As previously mentioned, in 1961 there was no such thing as "standard pre hung doors." Rather, folks used their own handy skills at cutting door holes and filling them with semi-custom doors in sizes that don't exist any more. As years went by, people continued to paint and reuse the same doors until the poor doors looked something like this.

Luckily, my dad is a genius and was able to frame out all the doors to an almost standard size, we found a door place that didn't charge an arm and leg to help us mark and cut special doors, and this weekend we hung some doors.

Snow is a good reminder

that at some point Cole and I needed get the furnace checked out.

When I was scouting out a good price for a furnace tune up this morning I came across this Utah Diva Deal.

http://www.utahdealdiva.com/2009/09/incredible-deal-on-furnace-inspections.html

$50.00=cleaning, lubricating, replacing filter, carbon check, green sticker and the peace of mind that heating our house this month won't result in burning down our new home.

The few companies I called this morning were quoting me upwards of 100 bucks, so check it out.

You just have to schedule an appointment before EOD tomorrow.