Purim 2016

 Last week was Purim, and Sharon organized a little party where we ate hamentashen, colored and made groggers, and read/ acted out the story of Esther.

Some of the kids dressed up as a Bible character, Britton was David, Ella was Esther.

Getting a head start on the party.

Cary and I had a competition going on for the word search and I lost, but I don't know if you can see some small fingers in the picture above, but I had some help (distractions!) ☺

Change

If you know me very well, then you know I don't like change and most of the time don't deal with it very well. Even if I'm the one instigating it. ;) (The one exception being house remodel projects, I love that kind of change.)

I was forced into buying a new laptop and in the process of learning how to use it (I had my last laptop for 7 years) I found out that the main photo program I use for editing/organizing my photos is being dropped, so I've been thrown for a loop... and that's partly why I'm behind in blogging again. :) I haven't had time to figure everything all out yet, but it's cold today so I'm working on it...

Catching up.

 It seemed like our 12+" of snow melted in two days.

Clara taking a rare nap, another life change...all my babies are growing up and I get more time to do things and less time entertaining them. Bittersweet.

Our very redneck setup, but the kitties stayed warm and dry all winter long!

Ella likes to teach Britton things...lol.

Clara trying on her new Elsa dress, but she wasn't happy I was taking a picture.

We had dinner/ movie night with Donnie and Christina and family at Hidden Canyon Ranch, and then the next day we had Charlie all day. Thankfully the weather was warm and the kids were able to spend most of the time outdoors.

Shawn was out that weekend too.

The next weekend was the Winter Carnival (hosted by the PAT) and I was in charge of the cake walk. Cheri and Tabitha Phillips have started a business and Cheri volunteered to make my three desserts for me. (wahoo!) These are the three desserts she made. 

Everyone fell asleep on the way over...which was okay since it was going to be a late night.

Cary and Alyshia helped me with the cakewalk booth which was much appreciated!

I'm so busy with the cakewalk I don't even know what all the kids did, face painting, photo booth, etc...I just know we came home with a bunch of prizes. 

The next weekend (last weekend) was the EHS production of Cinderella. The kids (and everyone) did a great job and it was very entertaining. Clara fell asleep, but I know the rest of my kids loved it, and actually Ella asks every night since if we can watch it again. Josh, Kiera, and Jordynne came out to watch it as well, so we got hang out and visit with them.

Counter tops

Two years ago when we moved cabinets around to make room for the dishwasher and stove, we then ended up with an island. Since then we've just been living with a melamine board as our temporary counter top over the island and it's worked out surprisingly well and still doesn't look too terrible. 

We finally moved ahead on getting new counter tops for the kitchen and kids bathroom. We didn't do our other bathroom because theoretically, we are tearing that bathroom out at some point. 

I spent alot of January looking up counter top places and eventually had 6 quotes done up.

 These are pictures of how everything looked before...

 After we moved cabinets around, we had cabinets sticking past the original countertops, so we put a strip of board over the top.

The seams in the laminate had been exposed to water and were warped

 One of the first things we had to do was install some supports for the new countertop going on the island since we were planning on a 15" overhang.

I really didn't want corbels, so I had researched online and found these steel support beams and Cary installed them. 

I ended up going with a place out of Cedar City to get the counter tops from and we had an install date for last Wednesday, on Monday he wanted to change it to Tuesday, which would have been nice, but Cary was in SLC and I didn't feel comfortable trying to move out old counter tops and undoing plumbing. ☺ 

We stuck with Wednesday.

Cary got back on Tuesday night and then Wednesday morning after getting kids off to school, we started removing old sinks and counter tops.

There was a lot of rot underneath the sink

and then we were surprised to find that a strip of sheetrock was cut out behind the back splash. This was a problem since I had specifically NOT ordered the typical 3-4" backsplash in the kitchen. We are going to eventually do a tile backsplash, but I was planning on just being able to paint down to the counter top. 

Not happening now. ☺

Yay! Hyrum and his helper arrived and started the install.

I think since the counter top in the kitchen was already white, there really wasn't a huge change as far as things look, but both sinks were upgraded to under mount and and now the faucets will be easier to clean around so I'm excited about that part.

My dream counter top would be white quartz and while I think we are too practical to ever pay for quartz, when looking at solid surface samples there was a new white color that had some sparkle, which is one of the things I like about quartz, and I knew right away that it was what I wanted! 

Even if you have in your mind an idea of what you want it's hard to commit to something you're going to have to live with for a long time!

A back splash for the kitchen just got moved to the top of the list.