Getting Excited for the Upcoming Season(s)...

Another House Update

Here is a picture of the bathroom, finished (FINALLY!)



Unfortunately, I don't have a good before picture, so it may not seem like such a vast improvement to those of you who didn't see it before...allow me to describe it briefly: Fake wood paneling on two walls, the wall with the medicine cabinet was painted dark red. The medicine cabinet was brown wood set within a strange panel of hunter green corian (as in countertop material). Existing light fixtures: one was gold and silver metallic and one an ancient round glass ceiling light. Basically, awful.

So, here is the "after" picture...and it actually feels much bigger now that all walls and ceiling are bright white. We kept the exiting wall sconce, medicine cabinet, and sink cabinet and just painted all of those things black...paint can do amazing things.

Oh, Wow...

So I went to a friend's house for lunch, and her 3 and a half year old daughter, Kylie, was there. After I'd been there for a little while, Kylie was walking past me and glanced my way and kept walking. Then she stopped, looked back at me again, and with wide eyes said, "Oh, Wow...Hey...Wow...How did your tummy get so full?"

So, new pics for those of you curious about the size of my tummy:




In other "big" news, the nursery is finally complete. Along the way, we learned words we never really had to use before, like "miter" and "cope" (as in a crown molding technique involving a small hand saw). Jim is totally my hero for learning how to do all the trim work and we've included some detailed pictures of corners and angles so you can be just as impressed as I am with his carpentry skills. I think its safe to say that the odd ceiling shape of the nursery presented more challenges than a normal square room. What a room to learn on! We're pretty excited about the finished product...more pics to follow when we move in furniture.

First, a before picture...just to see how far we came....

November already?

With only 6 weeks left in this pregnancy, the pressure is on to finish the nursery. Of course, the time crunch has no effect on Jim, who is always up for taking a little time out to pose for the camera.



Since our last update, the nursery walls have been retextured, primed, and now painted "lime sorbet" in Sherwin Williams Harmony paint which has no VOCs (i.e...doesn't smell!). Jim's put down new Baseboards around half of the room (kept the existing other half) and we've started painting the bead board. Windows arrive Thursday and new carpet next wednesday, so hopefully we'll have a super cute nursery photo in a little over a week!

Meanwhile we decided to also attack the bathroom (why stop at just one project?). We'll post pics of that soon too.

In other news, Jim was the lead singer in an 80s cover band for the college 80s party on Oct 30th. Since that night he's been seriously wondering if 80s cover band singing is really one of his spiritual gifts...and how he could possibly use this special talent more often. I'm just glad that we don't have to listen to Van Halen and Bon Jovi on repeat anymore.

More things we've noticed about Utah:

Fry Sauce. This is a concoction of ketchup mixed with mayo that is served at various burger places. As in, "Could I get a few packets of Fry Sauce with my happy meal?" or "Fry Sauce is over there at the condiment bar." Tastes okay, but I'm still a fan of straight ketchup.

Coffee part 2. The church staff had dinner at Carrabbas, and about 8 of us ordered coffee with dessert. It took a little while for them to bring the coffee out (had to make it fresh...you wouldn't just keep it on hand.) and when Rich asked for a refill, the waitress said it would be a little while, as they were out of coffee mugs and had to wait until they could wash a few mugs (apparently health code prevents you from refilling the glass/mug directly, you have to get a new one). We all pondered the fact that this restaurant only had about 8 or 12 coffee mugs in stock. Fascinating.

Progress of the Nursery

Here's a few pics of the progress on the nursery. Beadboard Ceiling is almost done...and for those of you curious about the progress of Kristen's bump...there's a picture for you too.

Moab, Lamaze, and Beadboard

This past weekend we spent three days camping in Moab with 47 teenagers. Having a baby will be a piece of cake.

Actually, it was a great weekend, the annual Christ EV student ministries camping trip to Moab. For those of you who haven't been to Moab, its a fascinating place of red rock formations...home to the much photographed Delicate Arch. We know better than to take valuable electronics on trips with teenagers, so no actual pictures were taken on the trip...but if you want to see what Moab is like, just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moab,_Utah . Its a little bit like visiting Mars with lots of hippies in VW buses. A team of adult volunteers went down to cook for the weekend, and stayed in camper trailers...so Kristen actually didn't end up sleeping in a tent on the ground.

Lamaze classes. Just finished our 3rd of 4 classes. Besides the fact that Jim and I are one of the oldest couples in the class...most first time parents are still in college at BYU!...we like it a lot. Many striking similarities to Bill Cosby's childbirth routine (check it out on You Tube). We've got three breathing techniques mastered, learned about various relaxation strategies and tonight our class actually included Jim giving me a foot massage. What's not to love? As a bonus, Matt will be happy to know that at no time have we been forced to share our feelings with our classmates. Nor has anyone mentioned calipers.

Beadboard goes up on the nursery cieling. Not totally covered yet, but significant progress has been made. Jim's gotten to use lots of power tools and the peeling bumpy cieling is almost a foggy memory. Still to come: new windows, remove tacky paneling, more beadboard on walls, fresh paint, new molding, new carpet, and, oh yes, new baby. Hopefully in that order.

Baby update: Currently I'm at 31 weeks, still due Dec 17th. Dr thinks the baby's at around 3 or 3.5 pounds. He moves a ton...very active. Jim thinks he's working on little building project of his own and it definitely feels like it sometimes. He loves it when we practice music (for college worship) or sing at church on Sundays...he moves all around...pretty distracting and pretty entertaining.

More things we've noticed about Utah:
They love Halloween here. More than TX, MD, or VA. Remember how Coppell houses get decked out for Christmas? Its like that here with spider webs and ghosts and moaning sound effects and orange lights. They've been working up a Halloween fervor since the end of September. Fascinating.

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Amazing.

Final thought: Take a few minutes and check out Sunday Bloody Sunday as performed by President Bush on youtube.com. Excellent entertainment.

Things we've noticed about Utah

Fall begins pretty early here! We took this pic a week ago on a drive on the "Alpine Loop" that travels the mountains just east of us. You can see some of the fall colors on the mountains, and Sundance ski area is on the distant left. Trees down here in our valley are beginning to change, and although there aren't nearly as many trees as in Virginia...the colors are pretty vibrant so far.

Quick update on the baby: sonogram on Friday confirmed: 100% Boy. Also, he checked in at about 2.5 pounds, at 27 weeks, which is bigger than the average 2 pounds...so Jim's hopes for an NFL all star might be coming true.

Now, for things we've noticed about Utah:
1) Oh My Heck. This expression pops up pretty frequently around here. Used in place of Oh my gosh, etc. Pretty funny.
2) Utahns love RVs. We are convinced that there are more RVs/Winnebagos/Campers per capita in Utah than any other place we've seen. There is at least one RV parked on each block. Really. I've counted 15 just in the four square blocks around our house.
3) Utahns love ice cream. Similar to the RVs...(wonder if there is a correlation??)...there must be more ice cream shops per capita in Utah than anywhere else. Amazingly, there are more ice cream shops than there were Starbucks back in DFW (or any other normal coffee consuming area, I suppose). And they are always full of people, eating ice cream. Pretty impressive.
4) Coffee is not a staple of life. This morning at around 10:30 we stopped at a bakery for breakfast. Jim ordered a cup of coffee and the waitress said, "Hang on, let me see if we made any yet this morning." At a bakery. Amazing. We're assuming that this fact alone will keep Matt from looking at job opportunities at BYU and UVSC. But don't judge too quickly. There is one (1) Starbucks in this valley of 400,000 people.

In other news, we're still working on the house and becoming official residents. Tomorrow we're off to get drivers licenses and become official Utahns ourselves. Take care, and drop us a line!

Livingston Guitars

Hey gang. This is a short post, but just wanted to let you know that I'm having a new guitar being built by a master craftsman from Texas. Check out his website to see my guitar as well as others in various stages of production. Most fascinating though is the podcast of my guitar being built which you can find by clicking on a link on his website. It is www.livingstonguitars.com
Higher quality videos than what you would find on PBS!

ski season just around the corner

A picture of our house from the front.

Our first snow...SEPT 16!! Only in the mountains, though. These are shots from our front yard. They don't do the beauty justice, but I'm going to get better shots with my other camera. Hope everyone is in the mood for skiing this year!




O.K...so I went back out front and took a few more zoomed in a bit. I realize that the telephone pole in the dead center of the pic isn't going to win me any awards, but when you are looking at the mountain in real life you don't even notice that it is there. Just another reason to come and visit and see for yourself!

Our House...in the middle of our street...

After one week of feverish work with loads of help from Kristen's mom, Kathy, (who made the trip up just to lend her decorating expertise) and our new found Utah friends, the house is looking like a home...

The Blue Room (Guest room/Office) Before and After
The bedroom and guest room both had raw cedar trim around all the windows and doors and closets. Strange. We were lucky enough to have Misty around to lead the team in ripping this trim off. Actually replacing it with real crown molding and floor boards is a longer term project, but at least its gone now.









The Living Room: Before and After:








The kitchen BEFORE: You can see where the previous owner had his dart board. Thankfully he took it with him, although he left up the wooden planks he installed to protect the wall. When Jim took those down with a crowbar, they came off with a lot of the wall. We had to replaster with joint compound. Kristen loves working with joint compound (really).

By the way, the little room you can to the left, just off the kitchen, is the laundry room/mud room/back door entrance. The previous owner left his washer and dryer, which we at first attempted to use, then attempted to clean, then abandoned altogether and replaced....We love Costco.

The room off to the right is the bathroom.






The Kitchen AFTER








And here is our favorite helper: McKenna. We had some great folks spend their time helping us paint, patch, and move in. McKenna was the only one who diagramed her whole family on the wall in paint.

New House

Jim getting ready to open one of many boxes waiting to be unpacked. Painted kitchen in the background. More (and better) pics to come of the house transformation process (after film gets developed).



These are some pics of our home recovering from asbestos-ridden popcorn ceilings. You can't be too careful.

Pregnant Kristen

Well, here we are at not quite 24 weeks (6 months). Since we moved to Utah on July 6th, we've been living at the McKinney's house and this was taken in their backyard. We're hoping to close on our first house on Monday!

This picture was taken from the Alpine Loop during a hike on Friday morning. It took us about 20 minutes to get here from Orem...not bad.

Jim on the hike of the alpine loop. Over his shoulder is Heber City and valley.


More pictures of Kristen and baby "Jack" (still not the official name...but perhaps).