Did you know it is still summer?

For the last eight years, my summer has ended right around the beginning of August, when it is time to get set up for the next school year.  But this year, I am taking a break!  That's right, for those who don't already know, I am not teaching this school year.  Spencer's office is doing well, so I am staying home.  It is quite nice.  And it means that I can enjoy my summer straight through August and even into September!

Since the school year has started, I have...


...built a chicken run with Spencer...

...purchased four little chickies...

...harvested a plethora of veggies from our garden...

These were all picked on the same day, by the way!

...and gone climbing with friends.

Yes, I like this continual summer.  I like it a lot.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner!

I am on a roll - two blog posts in two days!

A couple of months ago I entered a photo contest held by Utah Senator Mike Lee.  He was looking for photographs of Utah to put on his website, and one of my entries was chosen!  If you go to his website here and scroll over Constituent Services, you'll see my photo of a sego lily plant (Utah's state flower).  Or you can just look below to see the photo.

It's about time!!!!!

Sooo......, you'd think since I've been out of school for over a month and a half, I would have found the time to blog before now.  I am way behind on posting all the fun things we've been up to, but for now I am just going to post a few projects we've been working on at the house.  

Let's start in the front.

BEFORE

DURING

The trees were dead, and now they're a stack of firewood in the backyard thanks to a chainsaw and Spencer's new winch.

AFTER

The next area is the east side of the front yard.

BEFORE

AFTER

crookneck yellow squash, pear tomatoes, goliath tomatoes, zucchini, acorn squash, bell peppers, and two types of lettuce

And now let's venture inside the house, shall we?  Starting with the family room.

BEFORE

Sorry for the lame photo - I couldn't find another one.  The walls had blue wallpaper under the chair rail (which was painted navy blue) and a border just above it.  It was gross.

AFTER

And finally, the kitchen!  This is my favorite interior project so far, and it was also the most work.

BEFORE

Yum, shredded carrots!

DURING

cabinet doors removed

sanding

painting (our garage was unusable for a while)

tearing out the drop ceiling

It took Spencer a while to figure out how to push all these wires into the newly raised ceiling.  He had to extend some of them, put in a few junction boxes, drill holes through the floorboards, and more, but he did it!

After painting cabinets, raising the ceiling, installing canned lighting, painting walls, and getting new counters...

AFTER

My favorite part is the granite countertop.  

It's also the easiest part because we didn't have to do any of it ourselves!  We hired out the countertops and the drywall on the raised ceiling, but everything else was done by us--with the help of our families.

We've done a lot in the backyard too, but you'll have to wait a little while to see those pictures.  

Last Night

We're slowly settling into our home in Pleasant Grove.  Overall, we LOVE it!  There's just so much to do, and my commute is about 45 minutes each way now, so our free time is pretty limited.  But last night we took a little break from the unpacking, cleaning, weeding, etc. to have a little fun.

My brother Michael and his wife Jessica came over to help us get our new fridge moved in, but we got a little "distracted."  Michael and I recently both got new cameras which just happen to be the exact same model.  So we thought we would practice using them.

First, we admired the sunset:

But I must admit, that was a little boring.  As the night grew darker, we moved to the backyard to mess with the exposure settings.  Here's what we got:

The red name was done with my headlamp's red light.  An LED flashlight was used to create Spencer's name.  I turned the flashlight on and off to separate the letters in the image above.

It was so much fun, we all wanted to take turns.  Then we thought - why take turns?  We can all play at the same time!  Here is what two flashlights and two headlamps can create in a 20 second exposure:

As we were about to call it a night, I glanced over at a tree in the corner of our yard and just had to take a few more pictures.  Here's my favorite:

I love my new camera.  Spencer bought it for me and surprised me with it a few days after my brother got his.  Spencer is the best.

Stay tuned for some pictures of our trip to southern Utah to check out the pioneer trail, "Hole in the Rock."

More Manly by the Minute

Well, It's been a while since I blogged, but I'm excited about my day yesterday.  Through work, Michael (my brother-in-law and business partner) and I have arranged to come up with performance incentives.  The first incentive that I received was a welder; a Hobart Handler 140, seen here:

I have rock sliders on my 4Runner for off-road armor so I don't turn my nice car into a scratch & dent.  Sliders are the tubes under the doors, and they are generally used for two purposes: 

and

You can see the shape of the sliders (if you can look away from my cute wife) 

When I initially built them (or had them built, I just put plastic end caps on, and they were getting all rusty on the inside, and filling up with dirt.  I decided to cut off the ends and use my new welder!  I ultimately thought they looked pretty terrible anyway.

So I made the first incision:

Ground the paint off:

Made my first official weld ever!

Cleaned it up a little bit (not too shabby, I say):

Ground it smooth:

Primed and painted!

It's basically a custom set that would cost over $300 that I made for under $100 total.  Plus I learned to do something new!  I like the way they look much better now too.  I only ruined 2 jackets and started one small fire (oops!). I've got the bug now, so I'm probably going to be spending some more quality time with my welder soon.  Any suggestions about what to build?

Top Five

The top five reasons why I have been such a slacker about updating our blog:

Number 5:  Time - more specifically, the lack thereof.





Number 4:  I lost my camera.  I am very sad about this, in fact you might say I am in mourning.  I really loved that little camera.  Maybe I will find it some day.  Maybe.  Fingers crossed.





Number 3:  I lost my motivation.  It must be with my camera somewhere.  Ha ha!





Number 2:  I'm gonna say time again, just because I can't think of anything else and I really wanted to have a "Top Five" list.  Actually, maybe I could say I've lost my creativity, since I can't even think of five simple excuses!





And the Number 1 reason for lack of blogging is...

...drumroll please...

(by the way, no - I'm not pregnant!)





...we are moving!  

It's all happened so fast, I feel like I've been in a whirlwind with everything.  A few weeks ago, Spencer and I decided we should check to see if we could qualify for a home loan.  Spencer contacted a lender, and sure enough, we were in business!  So for the next few days we looked for homes online in our neighborhood and surrounding areas.  We found ourselves looking further and further south, until we ended up looking in Pleasant Grove.

So that Saturday (March 26 I think) we made appointments to walk through some of the homes we liked in Pleasant Grove.  We found a great house way up on the east side that already had an offer in.  Actually, it was the first house we looked at.  Before we toured the house I had a great feeling about it, but when we walked through the first time I wasn't so sure.  After seeing a few more homes that day, I couldn't get the first one out of my mind.  We ended up going back and walking through a second time, and we both fell in love with the potential this house possesses.  So we had to act fast!  We submitted our offer on Monday morning, and by Tuesday or Wednesday we found out our offer had been accepted!  The difference between our offer and the other was $80.  Can you believe it!?

Since then, we have been scanning documents, signing papers, looking up old forms, and sending and receiving emails, faxes, and phone calls between our real estate agent, insurance agent, and lender.  The home has been inspected and appraised.  And today, FINALLY, we have final loan approval, homeowner's insurance is all set up, and we are basically good to go!

Spencer has been SUPER busy at the office, trying to deal with a huge influx of new patients thanks to some great marketing through Groupon.  So I have tried to handle most of the work of securing the loan and getting everything squared away to move.  And it has all been well worth it!  My spring break starts today and I have all next week to pack up and move.

I have made several lists of things to do and have been able to check off A LOT of stuff!  And now, I can check one more thing off my list - updating our blog!

Don't Be Jealous

My family started its own university.  That's right folks -- the Jolley University held its first session in January with Pie Crusts 101 and Introduction to Website Design.

The pie making class was hosted at our house.  My mom was the instructor, and she made all the women in the class our own cute aprons.  Thanks to her great teaching, I was able to make a delicious cream pie.

Here I am with the crust...

...and here's the finished product.  Looks good enough to eat!

My younger brother Michael taught the website course at my grandma's house.  

I created a website for my first grade class, but need to tweak a few things before I make it available to parents.  If I'm being honest, I probably won't get around to it this school year.  Oh well!