Our pretty new floor :)

When Will and I were house hunting, we first stepped into our house and we both just cracked up. The entire house had a black marble floor. Living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, hallway...and we just thought it was funny looking. We also saw another couple that looked at the house and they laughed at it as well. We decided we could look past the ridiculous marble for the time being and we bought the house.

Now, we have actually received a lot of compliments on the marble. People come into the house and the first thing they say is "Wow! What a beautiful floor!" or something along those lines. A lot of people asked if we put it in. I kind of find that a bit offensive. Not only is it hideous, but it's put in horribly, not to mention stained and just gross looking. I mean, really, don't people think we could do better than that? Okay, I'm not *really* offended, but...seriously.

 

I have a hard time comprehending that people like it, but here are a few of my speculations on it:
1. It's so eye catching - I mean, you REALLY can't miss it - that people's first reaction is surprise. So they must comment. And then, since they commented, they compliment it to be kind. "Oh, is this real marble? It's very nice!" Basically, they compliment it because it's different, not because it's actually nice looking.
2. People that come to visit us simply have bad taste in flooring.
3. We simply have bad taste in flooring.

Those are the only things I can think of.

We bought the laminate sometime in January, but we waited a while to install it because we had to tear out all the marble, plus a thick underlayment, and the original wood floor, and we knew it was going to take a while. You might ask why we tore out the wood floor too - it was so nasty. Urine stains, bad patch work, stinky, just altogether gross. Thank goodness the subfloor was still in pretty good shape! Will had a 4-day weekend, so we started on Friday. I thought for sure it would take at least a couple of weekends to finish, even with the long one. However...Friday we got all the marble out and started on the underlayment and hardwood. Andy and Steph came over to help for a couple of hours on Saturday, and we got the rest of it out. Their couple of hours was SO helpful!! I couldn't believe how quickly it came out. Then we got all the nails out and cleaned the subfloor. On Sunday we vacuumed it and got it ready to put the laminate on top. We also fixed a few pieces in the hallway where we did our "practice" installation to test it out. On Monday, we REALLY got started on putting it in. It went fairly quickly, and we got it all done probably around 3ish.

We were (and still are!) so tired and sore from those four days, but it is SO worth it! Last night Will and I kept randomly wandering into the living room just to see it again. We both love it so much.

Doesn't it look so much more home-y and inviting? Black, cold marble doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, but I think this does!! Now I just have to wait another long time till we can buy new furniture and I'll have the living room I truly want. But this is such a huge step and I am thrilled with it! Here are some more pictures if you want to see.

Valentine's Day

I'm such a sucker for holidays. I love decorating and celebrating for basically ANY reason! This year, I did something fun for Will - I gave him two weeks of Valentine's. They were everything from yummy treats to notes and gifts. I wanted to do something a little extra for him because he's been working so hard and doing so much for our little family on top of his job. I promise I did things other than make pretty looking junk food, but that is all you're going to see. ;)

One day, I made him homemade donuts for breakfast:

Another day I made Rice Krispy Treats! He saw these and said "You lots of Rice Krispy Treat hearts me??"

One day we decorated sugar cookies. I've decided I'm horrible at making sugar cookies. They always turn out weird. They tasted pretty good, but I can never get the shape right. They puff up like balloons and then fall very flat. These were my first "heart" cookies.

Uhhhm, yeah. Lovely. Below are our decorated cookies, and there is a cookie in the next picture that may be considered a "PG-13" cookie, just to warn anyone who is sensitive. I randomly came across it on a blog and it made me laugh. I just HAD to do it.

For Valentine's Day evening, we had a really fancy dinner. We put Kaylee to bed a little early (luckily, she didn't fight it, too much...) and ate late. We had a salad, chicken cordon bleu, potatoes, asparagus with cream sauce, rolls, chocolate covered strawberries and cream cheese brownies for dessert. It was SO GOOD!

Aaaaand now that we've both probably gained about 20 pounds, it's definitely time to slow down with the treats. :( But we had fun!!!

Kaylee's photoshoot

I made Kaylee a new dress this week. We did a photo shoot. She was a goof.

Getting ready.

 Flashing Daddy.

She didn't know that's inappropriate.

 "Where's your tongue?"

 "Can you touch your nose?"

 "Where's your eye?"

"Where's your belly?" She likes her nose better.

"I'm tired of this."
 Yeah, looks like it's about time to stop...

21 weeks

Okay, I'm definitely starting to look pregnant now!

Birthday/Gender party

When I first heard of a "gender party" I was like "Oh, good grief...can we come up with some more excuses to have a party, please??" I thought it was a bit ridiculous. And then I guess I changed my mind because we decided to find out to the gender by ultrasound this pregnancy and then announce it on my birthday. We were in Provo, so we invited our old friends to come, and decided it should be a party. It was definitely more of a gender party then a birthday party, for sure. Everyone sang to me at least, though!

I made the food and the cupcakes for the party. The food was all related to my cravings, so we had Doritos, pickles, fruit, white chocolate fountain with cookies for dipping, and little cheese and meat tortilla roll-ups (the pinwheel things). Kaylee helped me with the cupcakes on Thursday.

We played a couple of silly little games. One of them was a list of Old Wives Tales about the gender - if you carry high or low, if you look pregnant from the back, what you crave, etc. etc. I got 15 random questions off the internet and had someone read them to me out loud. I would answer and they would put the corresponding pink or blue paper onesie on the board. This game said girl! I had an odd number so there wouldn't be a tie, but it was so close...guess the tales don't mean very much.

We had everyone write down their guesses for what it was.  Boy outnumbered girl! Will and I both guessed girl, though. In all honesty I had no clue. I didn't have any idea with Kaylee until later on, but I wanted a girl, so I said she was a boy, because I'm always wrong when I guess anything. Well this time I said girl, because I didn't really care at all but was kind of leaning toward boy. Another girl would have been great, but Will insists that we must have one of each before we can be done. I was terrified of being one of those moms that has like 6 girls in a row.

Our last part of the party was the cupcakes. I made 18, 9 pink and 9 blue. This game was completely Will's idea. He made 17 papers, 9 of which said girl, and 8 that said boy.

We went around the room and everyone took a paper and then took a cupcake, the color depending on the gender they picked. The last color left was the correct gender. Now, I was sure that we were going to have like 3 blue ones or something left at the end. Especially after the first four people went, and they all got girl. No big deal either way, but it ended up perfectly. We finally had one pink and one blue left. It was great!! So Will took the last paper, which of course said girl. So, it's a boy!! We're so excited. Of course, it's not 100%, but I am hoping this means I won't have 6 girls in a row...

My Birthday!

My mom normally, when you get married, lets up on the gifts a lot - no problem with that, as we're our own family and now and take care of each other. This year though, she decided to do a little bit more than usual - it must have been inspired, because it made me so happy to still have some presents even when the other ones I got were stolen!

Kaylee was VERY interested in them.

She went through all my presents, one by one, and finally gave them all back to me. Then she chose what I suppose she had decided was the best: the chocolate! She grabbed it and ran off with it, trying to get it open. That's my daughter...she knows the good stuff!!

Arghhh.

This weekend is just not going so well. My birthday was great, but I got my purse and presents stolen from my car (stupid me leaving unlocked, I had no idea) the night of my birthday, my car wouldn't start at Costco on my birthday (luckily just a loose cable), a couple of other things happened that I don't really want to talk about but that were not fun for me, and I've just been kind of cranky about it yesterday. I felt better this morning, and church was good. Except that I went into my classroom and another teacher, who teaches a class right after me, had her whole lesson set up, leaving me no room on the table. I pushed some of her stuff out of the way so I could at least have my manual there, and left my own poster at the end, hoping she would get the hint that someone else uses the classroom (I don't know who it is). Today Kaylee has been tired and falling down constantly and having a fit every time she does, driving me NUTS. I'm like, really, if you can't walk without hurting yourself, sit down and play! So I'm just kind of on edge and stressed out. I finally decided to blog and talk about my birthday and the party we had on Friday, and...they're gone. They were both saved, both posted, I checked them over, went back to add my last post and nothing.

I wasn't going to come on here and complain about my weekend. I was going to say ALL good things about it, because it really was good in a lot of ways. But now I'm frustrated and felt like complaining. That's all. I hope they magically reappear, but if not, I'll try again tomorrow...