WELL WELL WELL WE REALLY ARE ALIVE!

Hey everybody, sorry it's been an eternity almost since my last post! Wow how time flies when your busier than ... well let's just say busy!

My last post was pre Women of Steel triathlon. So I thought I'd report Yes I am a woman of Steel! (totally joking) I did finish and I'm proud to say I finished slightly better than the girls that I taught to swim. That was my goal. I would hate for one of them to have beaten me, how embarassing would that be. I know I know the pride. I'll work

on that. I guess you could say that

I am just a little competitive.

I'm actually doing the swim portion of The Ogden Valley Tri on the 13th of September. So wish me luck!

So here's my excuse for no new posts in forever. We bought a new house. Well new to us, but not so new. The not so new part explains me insanity and lack of blogging. We have been remodeling for two months now, and I'm sad to say, we still have a long way to go. BUT the progress is great. It's turning out pretty good considering we're new at this. In our last house we only had to do paint and carpet. This one is a little more in depth. Here are some pictures. I wish I had taken more before pics... oh well

These are just a few of the projects that we've done. We had new

carpet put in. We painted the whole basement, walls, ceilings, trim and all. We tiled the floor, we rebuilt the fire place, cut and painted new baseboards for the whole basement, we painted bedrooms, painted and antiqued the kitchen cabinets, put in track lighting in the kitchen and we're currently working on gutting the upstairs bathroom. The projects done/to be done ratio is about 50/50. So we're getting there. Our goal is to be done before Christmas. We'll see if we make it. The beautiful custom fireplace is designed and built by Tim Zabriskie. We just need to paint the bead board and bookshelves and finish the rusted metal fireplace pieces. It's a masterpiece in the making. He's awesome! It sure beats the 1960's sparkle rock you see me destroying in the first picture.

Kitchen cabinets before & whole kitchen after, it's still in the works but getting there

James loved to help me paint his room two shades of blue, a dinosoar mural is yet to come!Ragan's room was my very first finished project, although it wasn't the first one started!

This is me during my first attempt at tile. I have to say I learned a lot from my mistakes so I'm sure that our kitchen and bathroom will be masterpieces compared to our dining area, but hey you learn by doing right?

Okay so I have few more excuses for not posting that aren't so exausting. We did have some fun this summer here is the proof:

We went to visit Pete's brother Bart's house for the 4th of July. The boys (Pete and his brothers and Dad) went fishin ALL DAY while the girls stayed home with the kids. Really Pete deserved it. He's always way to willing to be the one to stay home. I'm glad he got some time with his brothers. They had lots of fun. Poor Bart he was the only one without a fish for the whole day!

We took our annual trip to Monroe Mountain. Pete's family has a cabin that's been in the family for three generations. The last couple of years they've added on A LOT to make it big enough for everyone. It is a lot of fun, not to mention breathtaking. I love to ride fourwheelers to the peak & look out over the whole valley, you can see forever.
My kids love this trip because they can get as dirty as they want and not have to take a bath unless they want one. I do bath my babies though because they look so darn cute in the tin tub!

Last but definitely not least, we went to Bear Lake. We went with the Terry's the Zabriskies and the Tanners. We had a blast. We borrowed my bro-in-law's boat for the day and then we camped in their backyard because all the good camping spots were taken. We had so much fun that hopefully we've started a tradition, an annual trip. I didn't get too many pictures, I was so excited about boating that I forgot about a lot of things...pictures, sunscreen... yes I'm still paying for that mistake. My poor Ragan got blisters on her face and my legs are still peeling more than two weeks later!!! But it was sooooo worth it.

I think I'm the winner for the longest catch up post in the history of blogging! So there it is. Enjoy.