private...

Hey we're going private....sigh....so leave a comment with your email address, or email me, so I can invite you...

THE DECK

This is our deck BEFORE:

We don't have any pictures of the whole old deck, because we never did anything on it because if you barely touched it you would get a sliver!
This is after Eric took it all apart:
and dug some holes to pour concrete for the new footings
I didn't get a picture of him mixing the cement! It was hard work, and the girls were just fascinated watching him. Here is one of four cement "piers".
The piers with posts attached
The next step:

And then we didn't take any more pictures until he had finished putting all the boards on the top and he was working on the stairs. Oh yeah, and we used Trex, the composite wood stuff that we will never get slivers on! It is WONDERFUL and SO worth the extra cost.
The girls on their new sweet deck!! They love to run around and around in circles on it.
YAY!! I am so proud of my amazing husband. he built this in a little over a month, almost completely by himself. He still has to attach the finishing boards on the sides and maybe piece some boards together for the fronts of the stairs, but he's essentially done and taking a break. I loved watching him work and figure things out and do a really good job.

The stairs were tricky, you can see the cement patio slopes down and he wanted the stairs to be level. It looks like he did it! Anyway, we LOVE our new deck and will enjoy it for many years to come. And we love to be able to use our back door again.
For his birthday weekend Eric just wanted to work on the deck, that's all! So I ran a half marathon that Saturday morning, (and did GREAT and loved it!) and then he worked and worked until the stairs were done that evening. We didn't even go out to dinner! But he was happy, so I was happy. Then on his birthday, Sunday, he was rewarded with this amazing ice cream cake made by ME.
Seven layers of yummyness, and it was a LOT easier than I thought it would be to make! it probably only took me 10 minutes longer than making the normal layer cakes I've been making. Eric's family always gets ice cream cakes and so I thought it would be fun to try to make one. Mmm.... Happy birthday Eric!!

more deals... in the future I'll try to refrain from posting pictures of my groceries!

sorry, this is more for my journaling benefit than anything else, I'm just so excited that I went to Albertson's again and did their buy $30 get $15 off your next order TWICE and used the second free $15 to buy the rest of my groceries for the week. whew, long sentence.

My favorite deals are: All those Breyers ice creams for $1 each, cake mix and frosting for 25 cents each (Eric's birthday is Sunday), cereal for 50 cents, and laudry detergent (32 loads) for 1.25 each. yes I'm still making my own detergent, but Eric refuses to use it, he thinks it's weird. But he does his own laundry usually, by choice, so I can handle buying regular detergent for him. :) ANYWAY, I spent $36 on $88 (sale prices) worth of stuff. Albertson's told me that I saved $127, but I would never have bought most of this stuff at their normal prices! Okay, I'm done posting about groceries. :)

vocab

I forgot to type a couple of quotes the other day. Katelyn likes to bust out words that I didn't know I used enough for her to know, such as:

" I like to snuggle Beneath things"

"I keep hiding it AMONG other books, but Whitney keeps finding it."

It gives me hope that my lacking vocabulary isn't hurting her too much. Yet. :)

$11.79

Yes, that's right folks, I got all this stuff for only 11 dollars and 79 cents.

Yes, I went to 2 different Albertsons stores today to do it. But I had to go to Provo anyway, so I just stopped at Albertson's in Spanish Fork on the way and did their current deal "buy $30 of these certain products and get $15 off your next shopping trip", then went to Provo and got another deal "buy 8 of these Kelloggs products and get them for $1.67 each" and now I'm going to send in my $10 rebate request to Kelloggs for buying 10 of their products. Ask at your grocery store for details about the Fuel for School rebate from Kelloggs! I also used coupons for almost every item that I've been getting in the paper or printing off of www.grocerysmarts.com. Love that website! If you live in Utah you can use this passport to get into the lists where they match up coupons with sales at stores: g84ctm. If you don't live in Utah you can still get good coupons from their main page. I also used some double coupons from Albertsons to get my amazing deals.

True it took me a couple of hours to plan this shopping trip- figuring out what I could buy that we would actually use and what I had coupons for. But that was fun, it's like a game, see how cheap you can get things for! Don't worry, I'm not turning into a crazy couponer, but every once in a while a great deal comes along that I can't pass up!

So I spent 21.79 total today and once I get my rebate check it will be only 11.79 for 26 items, 14 of them cereal (workin' on my 3 months' supply). That's about 45 cents an item people! Woo- h00!!

Go to this link for info about the next rebate I'm excited about! Most of the items on the list aren't things I normally buy, but hey, if they're essentially FREE, then I'll try some! Especially ones I have a coupon for so I actually MAKE money on the deal... :)

http://sheshopssmart.blogspot.com/2009/07/25-free-food-after-rebate.html

what we've been up to...

Okay so we had some computer problems and got a new computer, and then the last week I've been busy/lazy and haven't posted. So here's a few new posts for ya'll. (Sorry, am I allowed to say that? I've never lived in the South so I don't know if I've earned the right :) )

Anyway here's the girls enjoying the fresh fruits and vegetables of summer. MMM. I love summer! katelyn got ridiculously messy eating cherries the other day. She is the queen of messy-faced and -handed eating.

Whitney eating peas with scraggly hair (see the end of this post). She figured out she could pick them herself, how fun! We've loved our peas and will definitely plant twice as many next year! That will be one of my favorite memories from this summer. picking and eating peas as a family most evenings for a few weeks.
I took the girls one day and drove to Ephraim to see my good friend Rachelle that I hadn't seen in 8 years! She was there for a family reunion, she lives in Idaho. We grew up together and she was one of my best friends in high school. I just love her and her family and it was SO GREAT to see her and just talk for a couple of hours. We still have so much in common and life is good. I love seeing old friends.
After seeing Rachelle we stopped at the Manti temple. It was hot but the girls liked it. The best part was when we were sitting on the grass in the shade for a minute and looking up at the temple. I told Katelyn that it's so peaceful at the temple because it's Heavenly Father's house and you can feel His Spirit there. She looked up for a minute at the windows and was like "which room is Heavenly Father's?" so sweet. I told her that it's probably the highest one, and that he lives in Heaven and just comes to visit this house and all the other temples. :)

We went to the Orchard Days parade and Katelyn had a good time even though she refused to go out into the street when people would throw candy. Whitney LOVED it of course, especially when some floats and trucks were throwing out frozen OTTER POPS, her favorite treat ever! She went crazy over the horses and would dance whenever there was music.
And, I was quite the haircutter this week. I trimmed Kate's hair, accidently cut Eric's too short (not my fault, he handed me the buzzer with a #1 on and I thought it was ready to go! 5 seconds later it was too late and we had to do the whole thing that short) and gave Whitney her first hair cut! It was cute but a little scraggly before:
Here she is mid-cut, what a squirmer!!
and the finished product. I'm just happy that now it's closer to being all one layer on the bottom, so as it grows it won't be so scraggly again. And I did a little bit of an A-line, it's funny.

Katelyn quotes

Here are a couple I didn't think I'd be hearing quite so early in her life:

"This does not concern you Mom!!"

"But you're not understanding me!"

Funny eating quotes:

(Kate pretending to scoop bites out of me and eat them) "I'm having you for some breakfast for me."

Me: "You're eating me for breakfast??"

Kate: "Just one slice."

Eric: "good job katelyn, you ate a piece?"

katelyn: "just one innocent little chicken."

Oh how the months go by...

Whitney will be 15 months old in a couple of days and she's growing up fast! She can say several words: mom, dad, dog, down, done, whoa (when she sees something cool), juice, and sometimes cheese and she's tried to say bear and ball. I love it that she's following directions really well, trying to help me clean up and give stuff to Katelyn. I know she can understand so much of what is going on. She is a cutie cutie and she smiles and laughs easily. She dances around when she gets excited about something, which is often. And she loves books, baby dolls, and anything Katelyn is doing. This video shows her new favorite accomplishment, climbing up the ladder and going down the slide by herself. Katelyn didn't learn this until she was much older, but we also didn't live here until she was much older... I still think she wouldn't have gotten it this soon. Whitney is more daring, and it probably helps that I don't hover around her quite as much as I did Katelyn. Anyway, good times. Oh and I love how katelyn hugs her at the end of the slide, and how Whitney almost bumps into the swing. She is SO clumsy, it's hilariously cute. Even a couple of teenage boys in our ward have told me they like to watch her in church! She walks out into the isle a little and then comes back in too quickly and falls almost every time.

One more thing- Eric's been building us a new deck, so in the evenings we play outside while he works, it's fun. We'll post pics of the deck soon.

portraits

We got pictures taken of the girls a couple of weeks ago, check them out.

It was fun the first 5 minutes until Whitney satrted crying and wouldn't smile basically the rest of the time. Hence only one picture in the purple and green outfits. Katelyn was an all-star though, she did great.