Category: Our Family

We went into town today to pick carpet! I was a bit nervous about leaving the house though, because Weston and his brother were over working on getting the mudding/texturing done. I just wanted to be around to know how things were going with that.

I was excited to finally be picking carpet, considering that means we are really almost done. But the process of picking carpet was really starting to make me mad after a while. Talking to Dave’s carpet guy, the quote he gave was based on about $25 per square yard. But NOTHING he showed us was actually that cheap. Kyle and I had gone to RC Willey a couple of weeks ago to start looking at carpet just to get some ideas before we had to officially pick something. We found some carpet that we really liked while we were there. When we found this same carpet at this showroom and asked how much it was, we were told that it was about $40 per square yard. So we kept looking. The salesman kept showing us other stuff and when we asked how much they were it was always $35-$40 per square yard. Well if we are going to pay $40 per square yard we might as well get that carpet that we both really liked, not something else. The only reason we kept looking was to see if we could find something else that we both liked that was cheaper. Eventually, I really just wanted to be out of there because the sales man we really starting to bug me and we just decided to get the really expensive carpet that we both liked. Then we had to pick some kind of flooring for the laundry room. I told the salesman that  I did NOT want the cheap vinyl flooring that dents and rips if you drop anything on it, and I have seen washers and driers tear up that kind of flooring before. I also did not want ceramic tile because that can crack under the weight of the washer and drier. So the salesman showed us another vinyl flooring that looked like tiles, but they weren’t the thin vinyl floor stickers that my mom used to use. They were nice thick pieces of vinyl, that looked sturdy. So we brought out the swatch of the carpet color that we liked and we picked the tiles that looked the best with it. So it’s done. We picked our flooring. We are going to end up paying extra for the nicer stuff, but hey, it’s NICER. 🙂

Our doors and trim arrived today! The guys that delivered them surprised me with the fact that they weren’t allowed to take the stuff to the basement and that they needed to put it in the garage. I wasn’t very happy about that, because the garage is very full of everything that we moved out of the basement. But I went ahead and opened the garage door and told them to have a look and see if they could move stuff around in order to make enough space to put the doors and trim in there. The only thing I asked was that they NOT block off the three dressers that are out there. Those dressers are full of the girls clothes, and the only reason they are in the garage is because there is no room for them anywhere on the main floor. So I left them to get everything unloaded. I went back out in the garage a little later and found that they had just left. They left without saying anything to me. They didn’t say they were done or that they were leaving or anything of the sort. And they left the garage door wide open. Also when I went out, one of the first things I noticed was that they moved a whole bunch of stuff and blocked off the space right in front of the refrigerator. I had thought that it was a no brainer to not block off access to the fridge. Then I noticed that they also blocked off all of the dressers. Which really bothered me because now we have to figure out HOW to get to the dressers to actually get clothes out so that Tyra can get dressed for school in the mornings.

Later, Kyle was talking with Dave and mentioned that the doors and trim arrived today and Dave was surprised saying “they weren’t supposed to deliver that stuff today!” I guess he hadn’t actually ordered it yet. So I don’t know what is going on, but my garage now has a whole bunch of doors and trim in it.

Last night, after Weston and his helper left, the kids got to open their Christmas jammies packages.

We got the girls bathrobes this year. They all really like my bathrobe, and I remember being their age and wanting a fluffy bathrobe to wear. We looked for bathrobes for the boys too, but the ones we could find were really lame. Like giant balls all over them or skulls and crossbones. I WON’T buy anything that has skulls and crossbones on it, and my boys aren’t really into sports so the balls didn’t seem right either. I found EXACTLY what I wanted for robes for the boys in the men’s department, but of course they were HUGE. We will have to just keep looking until we find something better.

Sometime after the kids went to bed Santa made a visit.

The kids were up early this morning, as usual, and after I popped the turnovers in the oven we let them out into the living room. They checked out the contents of their stockings for awhile, and opened the gifts that Santa had left for them.

Then we had breakfast, which was really more like Kyle and I had breakfast and the kids kind of picked at their food anxiously awaiting the approval to go open more presents.

When it came time to open the really big packages that my parents sent, the kids were REALLY excited. My parents sent large felt bags with soft presents inside and these peaked the kids interests the moment they saw them come out of the box. The girls also tried to get a peek at what was inside. I caught them before they could get a good look, but I heard them telling the boys what they thought they saw. So when they finally got to open them this morning they were really excited. Then when they saw that they each got a pillow pet they were thrilled.

Kyle got the family a PS3 and the Lego Harry Potter games to go with it. Someone also gave us a Mario Party game. I got a lot of cake pop making related presents from my family. Cake pop makers (two), cake pop stand, cake pop decorating station, cake pop sticks, and mixes. You’d think that that they think I like to make cake pops or something. Actually, I’ve never made cake pops, just cake balls which are completely different. 😛

Debby and Jeff came over this afternoon to open their presents, and have dinner with us. I had Jeff this year and I got him the cologne that he had asked for. The mall had it for $60 but I found the same stuff on Amazon for $16, so I bought it from Amazon. But when it came I noticed that the box was kind of pink, I thought it a bit weird but figured it was just a difference in what the lighting in the picture made it look like. Then Kyle saw it and told me that I bought perfume not cologne. I couldn’t return the one I got because it was considered a dangerous liquid, and I ended up needing to buy another bottle. But despite having to buy two bottles, I still spent HALF of what I would have had to spend, buying it in the mall! So I’m ok with that.

For dinner we had turkey and mashed potatoes leftovers. I also made some fresh guacamole for tonight. We were just getting ready to call everyone to the table to serve dinner when Lydia, who was standing on Kyle’s chair at the table, threw up. She got it everywhere. She was standing on Kyle’s chair, close to the counter and she projected that vomit with so much force that it got almost all the way to the couch in the living room. Ya, so she didn’t get to eat, and Kyle just held her for awhile to keep her from wandering around the house. She had had so many cake balls today that her barf was totally chocolate in color. I’m just hoping that we aren’t dealing with vomit working it’s way around the family for the next week.

All in all it was a good day. I’m so glad that we didn’t have to go anywhere, or do anything fancy. And now my house is an even bigger mess than it has been lately.

Yesterday we had a Christmas dinner with Granny and Laurel and Roine and their family, and Kyle and Roine disappeared to the basement for awhile to run the network wires in each room of the basement, like they did on the main floor when the house was being built.

This morning Weston arrived, and when the drywall hangers got here he went over the job with them, and then he left them to get to work. They were here ALL DAY! Dave had originally said that they would work in the morning but that he had told them to go home and spend Christmas eve with their families. But these guys decided that since we lived “so far away”, that they just wanted to get the job done in one shot so they wouldn’t have to come back out after Christmas. So they got it done and right after they left, Weston was back with another guy to clean up the scraps. By now it was dark and getting late and we kind of wanted to put the kids to bed. Kyle asked him why he wasn’t at home with his family for Christmas eve, and Weston mentioned that he doesn’t have any family here in Utah. So they didn’t leave until they got most of the mess cleaned up. I went down after the hangers left and before Weston arrived (which was only a window of about a few minutes) to take a few pictures, and it is like the whole place has been through a transformation!

The family room:

The laundry room:

The girl’s room:

Look at the dust floating in the air! Funny how the camera picked that up. Here’s the girl’s closet:

Here is the boy’s room:

The boy’s closet:

And here is the tiny linen closet in the hall. It is so cute!

This year for the holiday season I created two new cake balls. 🙂 Chocolate mint, which we somehow forgot to take a picture of, and gingerbread cake balls:

Cake balls are pretty simple to make, but they are very time consuming these ones were even more so. Every cake ball that we have created, we have come up with a different way to decorate them so that we can tell at a glance what kind they are. For the gingerbread cake balls I REALLY wanted a little gingerbread man on top. Kyle thought we could come up with some way to just stamp it on, but I don’t know how he was thinking of doing that, so I sat there and with a toothpick drew a little man on each one. Sometimes the gingerbread man turned into a gingerbread girl when the chocolate for the legs smudged together, but they were cute just the same.