Prep work...no digging yet

The escavators didn't make it out to the house today as we thought, but it did give Curtis a chance to do some prep work that would help the escavators do their job that much more quickly. The escavators are waiting for someone to come out and locate wires & pipes underground before they can do their digging. So here are some pictures that will give you an idea of what our add on will look like. It looks kind of small now but that's what I thought when they were building our house when all they had were the floors down and no walls.

Curtis is marking the yard where the walls of the addition will be.

Isn't it a lovely patio? Goodbye bushes! The window in the kid's bedroom will be moved to this wall.

And here's the soon to be family room and side view.

Looking toward front yard.

Nikki is sitting where our dining room will be extended and Garrett is in the half bath.

Other side view.

That's right, another little patio by the extended dining room. Perfect spot for the ugly old BBQ grill. We'll be moving the existing sliding door to the red line in front of Nikki.

Curtis is getting the pipes capped off and removing any sprinkler heads in the construction area. Does anyone have an extra hose and portable sprinkler head we can borrow?

Approved!!!

Just found out a few minutes ago that the city has approved our plans to add on to our house! Yay! Curtis is going to go pay for permits today. It shouldn't be long before we can start tearing things up.
For those of you who don't know yet, we are adding on about 623 sq feet to the back of our house. We'll be extending our dining room, adding a half bath, adding a bedroom, adding a little hallway and nice sized family room. When all is said and done we'll actually have a patio we can go outside and sit to relax that will be covered by the house. We're extending the roof over the patio to make a patio cover. It will be so nice!

We'll be sure to take lots of pictures during the whole process! Can't wait until it's all finished!

This is my flower

I am a Snapdragon What Flower Are You?

Six years and counting!

Well today Curtis and I celebrate 6 years since the day we both said "Yes". Since today is Sunday we decided to celebrate a little early. So Friday night we went to Boise to eat at "Joe's Crabshack". I'm not actually big on seafood so I just had good ol fish and chips. Curtis was going to get a crab but changed his mind and got some other kind of fish, don't remember what it was. We did try the crab nachos though and they were yummy. Afterward, we drove over to Costco in Boise where on the way Curtis actually missed our exit. So we had to drive all the way to the Eagle exit and then turn around and come back. Now a days, that is a costly mistake with gas prices as they are. At Costco I finally got my own copies of "Twilight" and "Eclipse". Since they didn't have "New Moon" in hard back I decided to wait on that one. "Twilight" was soft cover but I didn't have a choice on that one since they haven't ever printed hard copies on that one. So off to Deseret Book where we picked out a new CTR ring for Curtis since he hasn't had one in years. We also picked up the 2nd book in the "Fablehaven" series. It was kind of fun shopping together for our anniversary gifts this year. We were sure to get what we wanted. Here's to another 6 years!

World's Greatest POP!

So even though Curtis said not to I did wake up and make him breakfast for Father's Day. I hadn't made him breakfast last year so I knew I needed to do it this year. I made him good ol' bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast. I think he was really happy that I did that for him even though he said not to. Anyway, so after breakfast he was off to his church meetings, which gave Nicole and I time to get his gifts put together. As you can see from the pics, the main part we worked on was cutting out paper neck ties to put on bottles of root beer, which said "To The World's Greatest POP!". We gave the first one to Curtis and then made 3 others for his dad, my dad and Grandpa Norton. Nikki also told me she wanted to get Curtis a hat, so I picked him out a new and clean orange BSU hat.

I wanted to make sure Curtis would get his gifts before church so I made him take the van to his meetings so he would have to come home to get us. Curtis loved his homemade necktie card and root beer of course. He drank it so fast he thought I had maybe already had some and complained there wasn't enough in the bottle. Anyway, then of course we ended the day with our dinner at Mom and Dad Norton's. It was overall a great day!

Getting Wii fit!

So Curtis had his brothers and their families over last weekend to have some fun with the Wii and the Wii Fit. Watching everyone do the hula hoop was hilarious! Check out Curtis!

Go Curtis go!

Swings!

Okay, so I decided to take a break from reading "Eclipse" to play with my kids. I figured since I'm on the 3rd book now and the 4th one doesn't come out until Aug that I can take my time reading this book. As you can see, they are having tons of fun. Garrett absolutely loves playing on the swings. He's always wanting to go outside to play.






Garrett loves his swing.

Our weekend

Okay, now that I've finally broken away from my book and found some spare minutes I will tell you what we did during our weekend that will help tell about the pictures I've already posted.

So we left Idaho at about 5:15 a.m. Thurs morning to head for our weekend in Utah. I was surprised at how quickly time flew by because we had our cousin Alivia traveling with us and kept us talking (more Curtis than me) most of the time. I didn't even notice when we passed Twin Falls or Burley. Then of course I started to read my book, "Twilight". We didn't stop until Tremonton to gas up and have a break.

Then we stopped again in Odgen to take a look at the Flowrider (surfing machine). It was pretty neat but we were breathing chlorine big time. That stuff was so strong. Also in the same building was rock wall climbing and indoor skydiving. I would love to do all of those. Anyway, then we continued on where we dropped off Alivia in Bountiful and then to Salt Lake where we were able to relax for awhile and eat lunch.

When Curtis's brother Nic and his wife, Celeste and daughter Taelyn showed up at the condo we all went down to the pool to swim. About a half hour later the security guard came and told us that our kids had to be over 2 yrs old and toilet trained to be able to swim and apparently it was some residents that complained to the security guard when they saw us in there. So the guys took the babies out while the girls stayed and swam awhile longer. After swimming, we got cleaned up and dressed and went out to dinner at the Pie Pizzaria in Salt Lake by the University. We ate a 23 inch pizza and it was the biggest one we'd ever seen or eaten before and it was very good too. Then it was back to the condo to watch the season finale of LOST, our favorite TV show.

Friday morning we went out to Springville to visit Deedra's mother and Grandparents. We had a nice time visiting there and ate lunch with them. We were there for about 5 hours. As you can see from the pictures, the kids, my mom, and I were outside for awhile shooting hoops with a bouncy ball. The kids had a real good time with Gma Marsha, especially Nikki.

Afterward, we headed off to Derek and Rachel's where we first stopped in Murray to get discount tickets for Lagoon. And what do you know, right across the street from Costco is the high school where David Archuleta is from. I know, I had to throw that in there. Anyway, then we went to Derek's house in Kearns where we talked, ate dinner, and played a few video games. Nikki was so mad that we were going to leave because I had told her she was going to be there all day (Saturday). So since we were going to be dropping her off the next morning anyway, she ended up spending the night. The next morning when we came to drop off Garrett she got upset as soon as she heard our voices because she did not want to leave yet. Of course we told her we weren't taking her home yet. We were headed off to Lagoon with Nic and Celeste. Derek & Rachel watched Garrett and Nikki for us while we went to Lagoon all day and we had a blast! I was so tired by the end of the night that every time I closed my eyes I felt like I was on a roller coaster or some other ride still. So the fun still continued even after we were done, hehe. Then we packed up Sunday morning and headed home, where I finally got to do some more reading of my book again. I'll note that I've been reading it all day today and am now halfway through already.

Well, that was our weekend. Hope you had fun reading about it and hope your weekends were enjoyable also!

Utah trip May 2008