Away in a Cave

We had one splurge during our trip to the Holy Land last February. While in Bethlehem, we met up with a guy named Odeh, who joined the Church while in England, but is a lifelong resident of Bethlehem. Odeh owns an Olive Wood store in Bethlehem and showed us some of the most impressive hand-carved nativity sets that we saw anywhere during our trip. There seemed like no better place to get a nativity set than Bethlehem (I'm guessing he too realized this) so we couldn’t turn it down.

We were drawn to this particular set because of the hollowed out wood trunk that makes up the manger. We learned that trees are very scarce in Israel (all that are there have been planted) so the default wooden manger that we think of where Christ would have been born would have actually been a cave much like this one below. To this day, many residents of Bethlehem keep their animals in cave mangers under or near their homes. Just one of the tidbits we learned on our trip.

Donde Esta El Bano?

After three months of work, we now finally have our bathroom back. We've found that it's not the actual room being remodeled that causes the problems - it's the impact that room has on the rest of the house that gets really old. So while it's very nice to have the kid's bathroom back, it's even nicer to have our dining room (where all the tile, tools, and new fixtures were being stored) back.

I'm not very good at before and after pictures - we end up ripping things out before we get the shot. So here is a post-demo shot and then some finished shots. A leaking toilet started this project, and we found that the floor was about an inch and a half higher on one side than the other. This first shot shows how we got started by shimming the floor.

From this...

To this!

Marta's favorite part of the remodel

I had to chisel through brick to put this puppy in.

This was the last room in the house to be gutted and remodeled. I'm not sure what I'll do with my time now... I guess it's now time to move to the basement.

BYU Football

 My brother and I met up with my sister, father, and mother-in-law to watch the BYU game last Saturday night. It was good to see the Cougars take care of business and we had a great time.

What? Not everyone gets to go on top of the roof of Lavell Edwards Stadium? It's nice having some connections.

the press box (eerily quiet in there)

the view of Provo from the roof of the stadium

Temple Square at Night

With my photographer-brother Jeff in town I knew I'd get to learn some things about my camera. We did some night shooting downtown and, despite the cold weather, got some great shots. In two weeks all of Temple Square will be filled with people there to see the Christmas lights, so if you want shots without people, this is the last chance for a while.

Halloween

Marta does such a great job each year with this. Every year up until now we've had three animals for Halloween. This year, just one. Pierce was dead set on being "brown dog" while Beau and Cash went with household heroes Luke Skywalker and Jack Sparrow. Three parties later, they had enough candy to last them each a year...but somehow a week later it was all gone.

Leading 3 to 0 to 0

Cash has the early lead in broken bones. He fell down some stairs a couple of days ago and broke his arm near his elbow. This is the same arm he broke when he was 2, but this time he has chosen a new cast color. When I asked him why pink he said, "Because Audrey likes pink." Audrey is a girl in his Sunbeams class who occasionally comes over to play. The kid already knows how to please the ladies.

School Pics Are In

This is the first year that all three of our boys are in some school and each got school pictures. These shots pretty accurately sum up how these boys are right now. I was trying to put words on each of them and here's what I've got. I think you can see from Beau's picture that he is a very confident little man. He knows what he wants and he'll tell you. This picture of Pierce screams "defiance" to me. He is a very sweet boy but will do his own thing. Cash is going through a shy phase and I'm sure just getting him to half smile took some serious work by the crew, but he did give in because he knew that's what they wanted out of him. We are very proud of our little men.

Not Your Typical Night...

I'm sitting on the couch when I hear what sounds like someone crashing their car into our house. I grab my shoes and as I walk outside I see a car flipped over on the street in front of my house and a guy a few houses away sprinting. Pretty entertaining evening...

Ever since this night I've been thinking about the incentives here. The guy was clearly drunk so does he stay and get a DUI or do does he run and (assuming he doesn't get caught that night)  and get charged with leaving the scene? In the end, the guy got away from police that night but was found a couple of days later and charged with leaving the scene.  It turns out, since no one was hurt, that it is a class 2 misdemeanor. So there is incentive in this case is to run, which is kinda messed up.

By the Couch, Not On the Couch

With Beau in first grade and Pierce and Cash both in preschool we are getting our first taste of life with everyone in school. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty great.

This was from their first day after Marta said, "Go stand by the couch so I can take your picture."

Here We Go Again

We noticed a leak in the toilet a couple of weeks ago. A little water was coming down the pipe into the basement on each flush. Usually that's a bad ring on the bottom, so not a huge deal. But that's not really how we roll. So here we go again.

The old toilet was put in before the tile so it had to be chiseled out. Our floor was so out of whack that the new toilet couldn't be leveled and look nice, so we decided to take out the old tile and level the floor with shims and new sub floor. New tile on the floor means we need to also change out the shower tile. If we're going through the trouble to take out the floor then we're going to go ahead and change out the vanity to a pedestal. To do the plumbing for the pedestal we need to move pipes into the wall. After taking out a chunk of the plaster wall it was easy to see how hard it would be to get a level surface for the brick wainscoting planned, so let's take it out. Here's what our bathroom now looks like - all because of a faulty $1.29 wax ring and some twisted logic.

Bring on School

Beau started 1st grade a week ago and I couldn't help thinking, "Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life". It's full days from here on out kid. One of the school districts in Salt Lake offers a pretty unique program of language immersion. Kids start when they are in first grade and spend half their day in an immersion program for another language - no English is spoken for half the day. The district currently offers Spanish, French, and Chinese immersion.

We thought this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. After looking into the Spanish program and talking to Beau and one of his friends who was enrolled in the Chinese immersion last year we decided to put him in the Chinese program. It is amazing what the kid has picked up in just one week. On Saturday we were sitting at the table and he brought in the piece of paper in the photo. He told me he had just written it in his room, but honestly I didn't believe that he already knew how to write Chinese characters. I was shocked when I saw him do it again. This was a little reminiscent of his first written sentence in English, although I like the content here a bit more. At the top of the page is his name and then below are the numbers 1 to 10. It's pretty amazing how kids at this age can soak up new things.

Chef 2.0

Pierce has turned into our little chef. He loves to pull on the apron and help out in the kitchen. He's also going through this phase where the moment he gets home from anywhere he will immediately change into pajamas. Each evening as dinner is getting made Pierce will drag a dining room chair into the kitchen to help out in any way he can - especially if he can clean the mixer spoons.

Pioneer Day 2011

Pioneer Day has turned into one of my favorite holidays. We live just a few blocks from the parade route so Marta's dad and sister and family came up early so we could pack some powdered mini donuts, blankets, and lawn chairs and hit the parade. We put the grill to use for a lunch BBQ, and kept the kids up way past bed time to go and watch the fireworks. It was a long day for these guys - Cash actually fell asleep during the fireworks - but everyone had a blast.

Pierce & Cash Turn 4!

We are reminded every year how cool it is that our twins were born on different days - two parties on back-to-back days. Party one was a Fat Cats pizza and bowling bash followed the next day by our home party with presents. These guys have come a long way in four years. Pierce loves Buzz and wants to be him for Halloween while Cash really wanted his very own "computer". There is currently never a dull (or quiet) moment around our house.

Summer Baseball

Last night was a perfect night in Salt Lake for a Bees game. We met up with some friends for the game and, as you can see, Beau keeps himself pretty entertained.

Father's Day Feasting

I had a great Father's Day this year. Did you see the pic of the new grill? It cooks with In fared - seriously oozing with manly awesomeness. The day began with a french toast-smothered-in-strawberries and home-made cinnamon syrup breakfast in bed delivered to me by Beau - who then stayed to cuddle. Church was uneventful, which is actually a great thing. No serious crying or threats were even required. The last four weeks I've either had to teach or speak and there was none of that this week either. We all did a bit of lounging together afterward, and it was capped off by Marta making delicious pulled pork and coleslaw sandwiches to go along with the famous chocolate cake. I'm not going to have too much problem eating leftovers for lunches these next couple of days. Bar was set pretty high in 2011.

The Backyard is Done!

Last August, I posted Marta's new backyard plan, and it has been a very busy few months this spring as we've put it all together. We changed the layout, redid the sprinklers, built and painted a pergola, wired it for lights, planted 5 or so trees and a ton of other stuff, built a fountain, planted a garden, moved a few tons of gravel and bark chips, more sprinkler work, and poured some concrete counter tops for an outdoor kitchen. We got it all done just in time for an Elder's Quorum BBQ (gotta love putting those deadlines on projects).

It was a ton of work, and with all the hazards in the yard during these weeks I'm still surprised we got it done without having to take anyone to the emergency room. The goal was to create different outdoor spaces with shade, so in about 10 years when all the trees are big and the wisteria grows up over the pergola - we'll be set.

Big Box = Fort

Our family has literally spent each dry moment of the month of May in our backyard. The boys playing, riding bikes, jumping off of things and Marta and I working on the new backyard plan. We've made a ton of progress and are now finally starting to feel like we're getting there.

We got a new grill as part of it all which means a big box that - even before the grill was unpacked - was earmarked as a fort. Next came the creation of windows, escape hatches, weapon holders, and who knows what else. Hours of entertainment in a box.

Easter Sunday

It had been a while since I pulled photos off the camera and when I did it I came across some shots from Easter that I had forgotten about.

Easter Sunday was a big deal for us this year. We worked with Beau all week practicing and he gave his first Sacrament Meeting talk all by himself. He did awesome! As he moved from page 1 to 2 he gave a kind of dramatic ruffle of the papers that was pretty impressive. It cracked me up.

Growing up it doesn't seem like we had a ton of traditions, but one we did have was that we always had a lamb cake each Easter. The tradition lives on.