We are APPROVED!!!!!!

Dear friends,

We can now start trying to be found!  : )

I was trying to put a link to our official approval letter from my google docs....  but it just wasn't working. 

And here we are the day before at the zoo lights : )

He is being a baby bird, in case you couldn't tell

                                                                             : )

Inside the bird nest...  I was the only one short enough to get in

The coolest part of the train village, the drive in movie theater with a little dvd player actually playing a movie!  We actually found several other things we liked this time.

And of course a picture of Snowy : )  Jenni was nice enough to come visit her while we were gone for Thanksgiving.

October

Some pictures we took this last month. Way easier to upload them onto Picassa than onto blogger : )

The cover are our Halloween pumpkins! (you'll need to click the picture to see the rest)

Polar Bears

Ok, so it's bottom to top again! Sorry! I keep forgetting to post everything backwards!

Robby

(I know it's not the best picture but I like his smile and how you know he's about to go do something somewhat mischievious! I would have put some of Jenni, but she doesn't like her picture taken)

Friends!

Hello

Chillin

Wrestling

So I haven't been very active at blogging, but these are some cool pictures we took at the zoo : )

ah, how do you get it off?

I don't know how to get the "cutest blog on the block" logo off of my page or the "this photo or video has been removed" thing. Any one have any ideas?

Carpet

Yay! We got new carpet and we LOVE it! We've gone around smiling for the whole weekend! We aren't afraid to have kids over anymore because we know what's on the floor! : ) Again, logically it's best to start at the bottom but oh well.

The entryway that I made. It works with the carpet! Oh, and we may paint the walls a color similar to that weight that we use as a doorstop. : ) I want something fun.

DEN- we're trying to move everything back in stages so we don't just move the clutter back into the rooms.
Living room with our favorite chair from grandpa Carter. And my family : ) Weston & Snowy.

Jenni and Robbie visited us and I rolled around on the carpet with him. We are lucky to have them as friends.

Yay! Fresh carpet smell!

Before the carpet. It was really echo-y. But now we know what's under the carpet and it's nice and clean!

The soffit that I built in the bathroom! It's done! And ready for the lights we are putting there over a medicine cabinet.

SUMMER!

We had a very FULL summer! We've found that the longer we've been married the more we enjoy being together and this summer was a prime example of that! We've learned so much from our previous vacation mistakes! Free time has been one of the biggest struggles in our marriage since we enjoy using our time on such vastly different things. Thank you to all our friends and family who helped us have such good times!

So I started from the bottom since that's the easiest way to put pictures on. So start there!

Carrying the drywall from the garage to the bathroom. Drywall is heavy!!! Mom and Dad thank you so much for all of your help! There's no way I could have done it without you.

The finished entryway : ) I like it!

They finally tore down one of the condemned houses across the street! Yay! So much nicer now! That should help the value of our house go up a little.

I deleted these pictures on accident so had to re-load them, and there's no way I was going to try to moved them down the page several lines at a time. This was the pretty view coming back from the waterpark with Steve! Thanks for driving Steve!

Picture that Jenni took on our walk at the Fallen Timbers monument a couple days ago!

Around the shower. haha, the curtain matches!

Where we got to on the ceiling. (that box will be the light)

What we got done by the time they left. I mounted the old sliding door on the tub to the wall! I'm excited about that! And that means I have to buy less drywall!

Cutting it in our garage. I was proud of myself for going in there! There are a lot of spiders. It helped that mom swept out all the leaves that were on the floor!!! Thanks mom!

Installing drywall! I don't know why but now "green" board is purple... *shrug*

The framework with the wires that will connect to our new lights and outlets.

Making the framework for the ceiling drywall. This was hard to level.

Another glimpse of what it feels like to use an unfinished bathroom. But hey, we've got a working toilet and shower... it works.

Another look at those wires. *shudder* Talk about a fire hazard!! We're redoing those needless to say.

So we got some tar and tried to seal it off from the inside. I have a WHOLE new appreciation for Joseph Smith. This stuff was NASTY and I didn't even have to deal with it hot or touching me! I don't even know how he possibly COULD have cleaned up enough to preach the next day, not even thinking about the pain and exhaustion he must have felt!

We then discovered that we could see daylight through the walls! Where the roof and the wall met was not sealed! Luckily I doubt we ever got water unless it was a downpour (it rained while this was open and we didn't get any water in) The eaves above it direct the water about a foot away from the wall.

It was interesting taking showers in an unfinished bathroom!

The way scary wiring behind our walls!!!! I still don't understand why they chose to put the wires together like that and in that order.

Putting the side piece on (I know this is a little out of order. I had my pictures and my parents pictures).

"You want to do what?" They often couldn't see my vision for the bathroom. It was a lot of work to decide what was important enough for me to step in and direct and what I just let my dad do because he wanted to do it his way. Usually his ideas were great! But I'm picky about some things.

This was cutting another piece of 3/4'' plywood for leveling the floor under the bathtub.

Weston helping get ready for showers the next day!

Doing the plumbing.

Installing the walls.

Installed bathtub! We got really lucky, the drain fit into the old one!!! We didn't have to remove any of the cemented PVC drain pipes!!!!! Way lucky.

We now have insulation behind the bathtub!!! I'm so excited for a warmer bathroom in the winter! This was after we leveled the floor to put the bathtub on it.

Once the drywall, plaster, and lathe was gone from behind the bathtub. Yay! No more mold!!

Come on, everyone knows deconstruction is the most fun! You can take any frustrations out on the walls and it's really hard to mess up when you're taking something apart!

The wall we took out to see the plumbing.

"Eww! Look at that mold where the caulk didn't keep the water out!"

The drywall behind the bathtub.

Ok, my parents came for a week and a half and we did a whirlwind bathroom remodeling project. Here's a picture tour of what we did! It started out as just replacing the bathtub and turned into replace everything. Here is the old bathtub!

The picture mom took of Snowy. She looked like that alot while my parents were here. Very leery of everythigng.

Before carpeting we had to finish our entryway (we're carpeting soon) so Weston helped me take staples out of the floor under where the carpet was. The finished product is at the top.

I loved this picture while camping. Another family had a little powerboat on the river but I loved how it was all foggy and you could just see it.

Snowy has been really interested in the fridge lately! We have to be careful about not shutting her in!

Look at my giant mosquito bite that swelled up immediately! I got eaten pretty bad before it got dark. There weren't really any mosquitoes later when we watched the meteor shower.

We went camping at Mary Jane Thurston State Park so that we could watch the Perseids meteor shower. It was awesome and there was one meteor that looked like a firework! It went like all the way across the sky and lit up in a fireball! We then when kayaking the next day. We also really need to work on our charcoal lighting skills! We need to be more patient. The first time I'd ever lit charcoal myself was at girls camp and Sis. Steele got mad at my girls for not doing it right, but it was me that didn't do it right!

Look at this awesome giant praying mantis that was on our front door!

We went to Cedar Point water park with Steve in June! It was fun and cheap since we only did the afternoon pass!

At the Tollers'. The Tollers have been so good to us! Along with the Felts. This summer we spent alot of time eating and playing games with the Felts : ) Now they are gone on an away rotation. We spent time with Steve too when Jenni was off in Utah. We love our friends, they make Toledo the best place we've ever been!

The boys playing football.

Fireworks on the 4th of July with the Wielands. They are so nice to us and invite us to things!

Snowy... how we all felt this summer! Way hot! She got to love being outside whenever she wanted!

Together. (They don't have drawers or doors yet.)

The cabinet I built at the beginning of the summer.

The counter I built at the beginning of the summer.

Living room where Joseph Smith and Emma slept. It was here that Joseph was tarred and feathered and their twins died.

Summer kitchen

We were at the John Johnson farm and we got to take a tour (Weston and I, most of the girls had already been). It was cool : ) There was some really beautiful woodwork and we really felt the spirit. Here is the kids room. "Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!" (I learned where that saying came from! Tighten the bed and beat it to get the bugs out of the straw!)

Weston's priesthood tent! He came up for the 1st 3 days!!

They laughed at me because I never made a normal smiling face for pictures, I always made weird faces. They're right! lol. I didn't realize that.

Katie

Robyn- Robyn and Ashley took way better pictures than I did!

Lexus and Ashley

Tori

Haley



These are the awesome young women that I got to be with at girls camp! I LOVED going to girls camp! Plus I liked being a leader because then I'm not pressured to make friends with the girls. They can think I'm weird and that's ok.




We bought kayaks instead of going on a road trip to Maine this year and oh how we love them! We've only taken them out 4 times but they were great! Twice on lake Erie at Maumee state park, once on lake Michigan (while visiting Weston's family in Holland, MI, that was a fun trip! Thank you for hosting Tami and it was so good to see Weston's cousins!), and once on the Maumee river around an Island. I'm going to keep doing that one. Plus, I've gone out on a limb and sent an invitation out on our ward's community blog for kayak partners. We'll see if anyone actually wants to come with me... I'm not very good at small talk, so I'm kind of nervous being alone with a girl (I'm much better at talking to boys) for two hours.

This is her in the morning exhausted from her night's work.

This is Snowy. She keeps a vigilant watch of our house at night. I just wish she would signal us if there were ever any suspicious humans outside!

Oh yeah, she had an exciting night while my parents were here! In the middle of the night I woke up to fabricy rustling sounds and bumps. When I opened my eyes I saw a shadow moving around the room and Snowy chasing something. I said "I think that's a bat!" And it was! We had a bat in our house and Snowy was trying to get it! I woke Weston up and we opened a window to try to get it out but it was flying too high! I was going around through the upstairs running into walls, I felt bad for it, but also a little wary because bats can carry rabies. When we opened our room window Weston tackled snowy and held her on our bed while she watched me trying to direct the bat out the window. We eventually trapped it in the bathroom and it found it's way out. But while I was watching there were several other bats that flew past our window while it was open! I wonder how it got in and now I can see why Snowy loves watching out the window at night!