Elf family Dancers

I had to copy my sister in law Karli with this one, it was so funny.

The Bastian Elf Dancers

Click above to see them live!

This took a bit to load, but very worth it!

the longest day

My poor Gauge is sick. Lets see, whats on the list...

ear infection

eye infection

teething

fever due to teething and ear infection

virus/cold

It's been a long couple of days. We were up all night long last night for this poor kid. I didn't realize until the eye infection today that he might have an ear infection. To the Dr we went, the kids on meds, and hopefully he will be feeling better.

We're turning in early; time for some sleep!

As Paxton would say "good night guys"

Thanksgiving

Too many things happened this weekend to only post once. I really feel like I had such a wonderful weekend though. Like I said before, most of Ryan's family was able to make it into town for Thanksgiving. Sid and Leslie pretty much made and had dinner for all of us. I just love Ryan's family so much, I guess its been 8 years now that I have known them and I feel so close to them and hate when we have to say goodbye.

Everyone got into town on Wednesday. I had to work so I really don't have any details as to what happened. I am pretty positive it must have been kind of lame without me though. Thursday we headed to the Mapleton Bastian's house and enjoyed the day. Here are a few pictures of the boys hanging out.

Gauge putting on his power-ranger mask Gauge smiling at mommy...Gauge coming to GET mommy
Gauge and Oliver learning to kick it together
The family pictures...one without Sarah and one without LeslieAll of the cousins lined up for Pie. Paxton cut right to the front of the line here!

The next day, Friday, came motorcycles. All of the guys went riding from Walsburg to Daniel's Summit, note the turbo Cummings in the background (Dan's ride-it ROCK's) The rest of the weekend consisted of shopping, Guitar Hero and of course, myself kicking butt on guitar hero! I will have to post more of that later. By the way, I ROCK!

BYU football

Ryan and I hit the BYU Utah game on Saturday. This game has become a tradition for us, mostly because we have watched it since we were first dating, whether or not we were following BYU that year. Back when I worked at eBay and was dating Ryan I scored some tickets to the game when it was up at the Rice Eccles Stadium. Something that I hadn't thought about at the time was that most tickets from someone up in the Salt Lake Valley, were probably going to be tickets for U fans. So Ryan and I head up to the game only to realize that we were the only "blue" fans on the whole west side of the Huge red stadium.

I decided after we got there that we would have to keep it quiet. I was too scared to let these people know we were BYU fans. The U fans were so nice. They handed us UofU red oreo cookies and other food that was brought. Everyone laughed and talked to us right up until BYU made a touch down and Ryan jumped out of his seat and cheered...all by himself, the only one to do it on the whole side of the stadium.

Needless to say, things got a little uncomfortable. Everyone was glaring at us. No more cookies were offered and some man down the isle told me to "take that damn hat off" (it was blue)

That game turned into a last minute (literally) win for BYU and we were able to make fun of everyone around us and then we got the heck out of there. Last year was a re-peat of that game. Probably the best game we've ever seen before, so this year I had to get tickets and get to the game.

Needless to say, we killed them, and despite the announcer,

everyone rushed the field! It didn't match last year, or the year we were at the U, but it was a great game. I only hope that next year the Utes give us more of a challenge...;)

Time for Ketchup

What a long wonderful weekend we've had! Late into the night Tuesday we were up finishing our work,taking down the wall. Dave came again that night and worked right along with us to get the walls painted the beautiful Suede color that we chose. What I hadn't realized is that the Suede color wasn't just a color, the paint was actually made to look like Suede when put on the walls. This made it harder to get on for Dave, but he didn't complain and I am so pleased with the results! The picture above, and this one below are from way back on Tuesday night Here are a few pictures of the finished product-

This first picture was taken from the kitchen, this is the view into the living room. (just to warn you, our furniture has been in the garage and I was too lazy to clean it before I took the pictures so its all a little dusty)

Having an old house has its perks. The huge baseboards and the beautiful crown molding were pretty easy to work with

This picture above is to show you what we have yet to do...Ryan is building a banister to go around the stairs, then we'll be sheet rocking the back wall at the stairs and tiling..at which point we'll finish the Suede, it will go all of the way into the kitchen, and the kitchen green will be finished.

The view from the kitchen, into the basement. We'll finish tiling all of the way around the stairs and the banister will go on top of it. We're thinking that we'll wait until next spring, and then we'll refinish the wood floor.

Happy Thanksgiving!

what a wonderful fall!

I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am that we have had such a beautiful fall. We had one snow, and I was pretty upset about it. I was sure it was going to be terrible. As you can tell from these few pictures...its so beautiful!!

Thats all I have right now...We've painted the living room trim, stand by for the color-woot woot!

Comin' along

I thought I would give you all a look at what we've been up to. Walking into the living room from our kitchen you can see the plastic draped in the farther part of the picture, and the load bearing wall that we are in the process of taking down.

Above we have the steel beam that Ryan has put in place to help support the load on one of the sides so that we can open up the whole area. Ryan anchored it to the wall inside the steel beam all the way up and down the beam.

This is inside the living room-Ryan is standing inside the dining room. We are finally prepped, texturized and taped. We start shooting the primer tomorrow-YES!!A shot of the bay window. Dave taped up every single window pane, and then taped up the boarders so that they would all be the correct colors.Here is the front room, where you come into the house and the front window. We are so close!!

To our Veteran's

In junior high my parents were able to give me the opportunity to travel to Washington DC with a class of mine.

On this trip we visited the Vietnam memorial and I think that was the very first time that I was able to realize the cost of war. I have so much respect for those men who are willing to fight for this County and for those who are not able to defend themselves. This post is for them. The honorable Veteran's and the honorable men who serve for us today.

Thank you!

I've got that warm feelin'

I don't know what it is, but right now I am totally beat down tired-and I still have this little gitty feeling inside like its the holidays and Christmas is already here.

I couldn't even come straight home from work-I had to stop at the store to buy cinnamon rolls and some meat for a roast. Standing outside, even though it should be cold, its warm and silent, almost telling us that its going to snow and right now, I almost can't even wait for snow--I said ALMOST!

I think that my having kids makes the holidays so much more fun. I remember driving home from Salt Lake one year with Ryan. We were coming home from my parents on Christmas. This was way back before we had kids. While driving home, I began remembering that during the holidays on drives home from Salt Lake my family would sing Christmas songs-so naturally I decided thats exactly what we were going to do.

To my surprise, I don't know why I was surprised, Ryan wasn't having any. I said to him something like"I can't wait until we have kids. When we have kids, I'm singing Christmas songs everywhere we go!" (I know, real mature)
*

Thats the difference though, now that we have kids, its more fun singing Christmas songs and talking about Santa Claus. I can't wait to take Paxton to see Santa. I want to watch movies inside and drink hot chocolate. I guess that today is going to have to be a practice day.

So-I am off to find a recipe for this Roast, wish me luck! I hope you all feel the holiday cheer that I am already feeling. Have a happy Sunday!

Shy

Well, to be honest with you now that I have gone out of my way to get all of your attention and to make you have to create accounts to get to my blog-I am feeling a little shy. I don't even know what to write about or where to start! Let me just tell you whats been going on.

Right now we are working hard to get our house back in order. We have been remodeling a lot of the house and our dear friend Dave has been helping us to get things painted. I have to be honest, I don't know what we'd do without him! We are starting to find a million little things that need to be done before the painting can be done and his professional eye is really helping out. He even comes in the evenings after his already long days at work to tape up walls and to prep our living room for paint. We are trying to get it done before our family gets here for Thanksgiving, which brings me to another point-I can't wait for Thanksgiving! I just love Ryan's family so much- and we are going to be having another little reunion! Woo-hoo! We want the house to be done so that's pretty much what our lives consist of right now.

If I can offer anyone any advise about remodeling though, its this...

DON'T DO IT!

I love our house so much but the work that we have done to it over the years, when you think about it, has really added up. That house has been so good to us, its been part of us as long as we have been together but its so hard to remodel man! Just don't do it-find something that someone else did the way that you would have, and buy it! I think that might just have to be my own personal motto ;)

Ryan and his FSAE team have gotten last years race car running again and are going to start driving it for practice. I am a little scared. When I see him taking his helmet to school to protect himself I can't help but think-maybe this could be dangerous...the car probably goes pretty fast! He is excited though and I really hope that they pick him to drive the car next summer for the race. I know he is probably heavier then everyone else on the team (they are all half his size) but he is a professional driver and it would be so AWESOME!

Paxton is in the middle of Potty training-I know...your all thinking-STILL?! The answer is yes. He wears his big boy underwears all day, but still tries to tell me he doesn't need to go to the potty because he's dry. He isn't getting the concept that the only way to stay dry is by going to the potty...Paxton loves to sing, he likes to sing the alphabet song with me especially and he has a huge imagination. He is a million different characters all day long-Police officers, Cowboy, Spider-man, Superman, he is a Sultan, the other day he was even an Ice Skater. We passed a channel where there was ice skating going on and for the rest of the night he was running across the room doing turns and "skating" He is a good boy!

Gauge is getting closer to walking. He balances all day long. We've seen a step or two but he quickly drops to his knees afterward. He is so fun to play with, he loves to smile at us and he loves to cuddle. If he is in a room and we walk into it, he crawls right over and climbs up our legs to be next to us. He is patient too. He lets Paxton have the attention and just watches. He loves to clap and to talk.

I have been great. I am in this total work mode-I think its because I am not pregnant. When you are pregnant there is just so much less that you can do, so I feel like I just need to be taking advantage of every second right now, getting everything that I can... done. I just got a new position at work. I am still a dispatcher but now I am the Fire department and Dispatch Quality Assurance Coordinator. Its only QA for the communication between the two of us. I will hold the meetings with the fire guys and administration where we'll go over calls that we had and work on making things better. I am really kind of excited for the new challenge, it can only mean good things for me at work. This is something new to our department that I am going to have to kind of create-we already have Police and medical quality assurance so this will only be about the things on fire, or things that are leaking some sort of gas, spills, that kind of thing. I know I will learn a lot.

Anyway, I want you to all know how thankful we are for you, and we love you. I hope you are all doing well!

PS: I stole these pictures from the web so to give credit, they are from Provo Canyon, and they were taken by Stan McQueen.

This song

This song is one of Ryan and my songs. Well, this song and Pink Floyd's "On the Turning Away" When we first started hanging out and dating we went on a lot of drives. Something that we do now, only back then it was in the spring and summer, crusing in the Riv. We would listen to this music and talk for hours listening to Pink Floyd over and over. This song just takes me back. I haven't listened to it in a long time and then the other day I heard it on the radio and it put me right back into that car, holding hands with Ryan and driving.

Halloween at work

As terrible as it migt seem to have to work on a holiday, we get by!

S to the U to the P to the E to the R to the MOM...

I know, pretty ridiculous compared to the other costumes, but I couldn't think of anything until last minute. Thank goodness Pax let me borrow his cape for the night!