Memory Lane

 

Still working at cleaning out photos on my camera.  Here's some pictures we took...sometime...on a trip to Idaho, we drove past some of our old homes and neighborhoods and took some pictures of what they look like now.  This one above is from Twin Falls.  A very pretty home we liked quite a lot.  I planted that tree in the front and the one showing over the corner of the back fence, they have grown so much.  Hey, I just noticed it looks like they brought the wishing well from the back yard and have it in the front by the porch....interesting.  Not a big fan of stuff like that in the front yard, but it's cute and fun in the back. 

 

 

Obviously not an old home.  This is Kennedy Elementary in Rexburg, don't think Chelsea ever went here but the other kids all spent a number of years in this school which was right in our neighborhood.  I even worked at a teachers aid for a year there. 

 

Probably my favorite house - (if you don't count the one we're in now).  Rexburg, the last one we lived in there.

 

One of my least favorite houses, no curb appeal at all, and the layout of the house was just awkward.  But it was the only one for sale in our old neighborhood and ward when we moved back to Rexburg for the 2nd time.  If  was fine, we redid a lot of the carpet, painted, redid tackily done things.  We did like that the backyard was right off the school playground - it looked like our yard went on forever :)  Stayed here until the house above came on the market....we bought it and moved down the block! 

 



 

Our first home in Rexburg.  It used to have a ton of trees in the front - you couldn't even see the house!  And some awful railroad ties all around the grass (never could figure out why someone would do that.)  All that is gone now....really changes the look of the house.  This was one of those moves where I never saw the house until we moved in....we had a couple of those.  It was just easier for Dave to find something than for us to bring all our little kids miles and miles and house hunt.  He usually did a pretty good job picking out something for us. 

 

It's always nostalgic to return to old homes, especially Rexburg where I really thought we'd live there forever when we returned the 2nd time.  Even though the weather is horrible in the winter, I really love Rexburg. 

Landscaping - cement edging

 

No matter how much you try to keep control of things, it always doesn't work out.  We were bound and determined to be around when anything was done on the yard.  Well, we were out of town when this edging was done.  When we realized it was going to happen that way, the landscaper came over the day before we left to draw the lines out just as I wanted them, and then commented before he left, now we're doing the colored cement with a stamped design, right?  NO!  We're doing the curvy edge with regular grey cement.  We had discussed that months ago with him....but very easily we could have ended up with the wrong thing - while we were out of town.

 

When we got home the edging looked very brown -- but as it dried it became more grey.  The wind was blowing dirt all over, so we think most of the brown was the dirt.  We were a bit worried there for awhile.

 

I don't like the sudden drop-off of the cement at the end of the side walk, we've had it tapered off on previous jobs we've had done at other homes, but it looks like this is what we're going to have here.  I would have had them fix that....if we'd been home.  It's just always a good idea to be around for stuff like t his.

Conference Weekend

 

Tara brought crafts for the grandkids to make over the weekend.  These masks were a great hit!  Who is who?!

 

Trying to get photos of the kids is hilarious.  We can not, Not, NOT get all of them to do the same thing at the same time.  While trying to figure out which one was the best, I decided I actually like the funny ones!  Their wonderful little personalities just shine through :) 

 

See :)

 

I don't think we ever got a photo of Addie smiling.

 

Of our three little families, this one was the only one that was complete (Dave and Spencer weren't here), so no one else wanted family shots.  Elizabeth already knows how to smile for the camera!

My mother's visit to Roosevelt

 

We have lived in this eastern corner of Utah for over 8 years and a few months ago my mom came to visit for the first time.  She actually had some business that needed to be done here, which prompted the trip, but it worked for us :)  It was over conference weekend, so 3 of my 4 children had made arrangements to come anyway, so it worked out well for some photos. 

 

This is my sweet sister-in-law, Anne, who has moved in with mom now to help her out with things.  Anne has lived on the east coast for many years, and we haven't had a chance to see her often.  My son, Blake, didn't even remember meeting her before.  It was nice to have her here, too, and now we hope to see her much more often.

 

All of my grandchildren with their great grandmother. Kinsey, Molly, Addison, Elizabeth, Tayton, and Austin.

Landscaping....finally!

This will be our 3rd summer in this house, and we're finally going to have the front yard put in.  We have the worst ground here, it's mostly rock with a little dirt around them - it's awful.  We tried to figure out how we could take care of it ourselves, but finally decided it was beyond us to dig up all that rock and have several feet of new top soil brought in on top of sprinkler systems....before any plants are even thought of.  We saved up the money and are just paying professionals to do it.

 

A whole crew worked all day and ended up with this wonderful, no rock, end result!  Even just this dirt looks so much better than what we had before.

 

Unfortunately, here it has sat for a couple of weeks now.  I had to be out of town for almost a week, and I didn't want the yard to be put in while I was gone.  (Been there, done that - did not want to come back and have things not the way I wanted it done.)  Evidently the cement edger person only works on Saturday -- so we're waiting until this Saturday for that to be done, and I guess that means that maybe we'll have the rest of the yard done next week. 

 

We do have a little retaining wall already, though I think we're going to ask them to make it a little higher.  Stay tuned, we hope to have green stuff soon :)

Book: Under the Dome by Stephen King

It's been forever since I've posted on this blog....many things have gone on in our world and I have many photos on my camera I should have downloaded (and put on here).  I need to try and catch up a bit.  This is a sort of silly place to start, but here it is.  I just finished reading this book, I think I saw it on a book blog and had it on my list to look for at our library.  It was actually there, and I about died when I saw the size of the book.  It was huge!  I've already returned it to the library so I googled it and one place said it had 1074 pages.  Pretty heavy to lug around.  I don't really like Stephen King movies, and have never read any of his books, but the story line of this one sounded interesting, and it was.  There was some trashy and violent parts that I could have done without, but still a very interesting story.  One of those books that I found myself wanting to read instead of doing something else I really should be doing (don't you hate and love that!)  One day, in a small town, there suddenly was an invisible dome surrounding it.  Birds, planes, and vehicles ran into it before people realized it was there.  They could communicate with the outside world, but that was it - nothing else could pass through this barrier, .  The story is about what happens, very quickly, to the political/social system within the dome.  Very Lord of the Flies-ish.  I have to admit that I enjoyed it.

The next generation?

I was catching up my quilting blog and this photo was with those pictures so I decided to post it over on this blog.  Ashley is here living with us for awhile and decided to give the longarm a spin on a baby gift for a friend.  She discovered that it does take some practice, but did a nice job :)