HillHapps

For the past month or so I haven’t been able to find our camera batteries, which is sort of a problem because I’m not a huge fan of posting entries without pictures…I think it’s boring.  Finally Brad found one in the middle console in his truck yesterday and I just found another one hiding under a pile of kids clothes that I have been meaning to take downstairs and put in storage…it’s amazing what you’ll find when you pick crap up.  Anyway, so after our basement flooded I kind of went into nesting hyperdrive.  I had to go through all the boxes in our basement which then led me to cleaning out our pantry, my closet and many other things.

I decided a while ago that I wanted to make the kids quilts for Christmas.  When Mormon Handicraft was leaving the Deseret Book in Orem all their fabric was 50% off, so I had Cailyn pick out a quilt pattern that she liked and took advantage of the discounted fabric.  I was really surprised that I found fabrics that somewhat coordinated with each other because when I went to get the fabric the selection was less than desirable.  Looking at the quilt now, I wish that I could have found a different fabric for the green squares that are with the yellow squares because I think it meshes to much with the other green, but what do you do. It also ended up being a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be.  Anyway, here is a picture of her finished quilt top:

For Gavin’s blanket I didn’t really want to find a pattern and then have to buy the fabric on top of that so I looked online for quilt kits.  I came across this one and it was very reasonably priced, super easy to put together and cute fabric…so there you go.  Here is his finished quilt top:

After I saw Brad’s cousin Heidi’s post about a car seat tent that she made I really wanted to make one.  So I made 4.  First I made the 2 with the girl fabric because I totally thought I was having a girl and then I figured I should probably make some boy ones just in case the baby happens to be a boy…ha!  Anyway, so here is the one that is almost completely done.  It is my favorite of the boy fabric.  I just need to find some cute buttons to go on the top of the straps.

Here are the other ones.  They aren’t finished yet.  I still need to make and attach straps to them and on the girl ones I plan on making some cute fabric flowers to go on top of the straps.

With the quilts I am making for the kids for Christmas, we thought it would be fun to get the kids bunk beds to go with them.  On a side note, ever since we moved into our house, Gavin has had a really hard time sleeping in his own room.  It seems like every night he would come into our room and want to sleep on the floor.  After about 8 months of that, I decided to just make him sleep on Cailyn’s floor.  After 3 nights of him staying in there the entire night, I decided to get his little toddler bed back out and put it in Cailyn’s room.  It was so nice to not have him coming in every single night.  A couple weeks after having him in her room on the toddler bed we went and bought their bunk beds for Christmas.  The plan was to save them for Christmas, well I ruined that plan too.  I just didn’t like the thought of not having the crib set up till Christmas and not being able to get all the baby stuff ready because Gavin’s big bed was still set up in his room.  Needless to say, the kids got an early Christmas present.  It’s been kind of a transitional period because now that Cailyn and Gavin share a room Gavin still has a hard time when I tell him to go get something in his room…he thinks I’m talking about his old room which is now that baby/play room.  I put all their toys in the closet in the babies room.  It is a lot  nicer having all the toys in one spot.  Here are pictures of the two rooms:

The kids love the bunk beds.  They can play in their room on the bunk beds with all their stuffed animals for hours and not get bored.  It is awesome.

Aside from things done in the house, we’ve also had some activity outside.  Our builder is retarded, anyway so when we did our final walkthrough, the superintendent told us that the walkway up to our stairs wasn’t to code and that they’d have to come rip it out in the spring.  Well spring came and went and summer was almost over and I finally got them to come rip it out and put the new steps in.  Well when they ripped out the concrete they also managed to ruin our driveway.  So they came and poured our new steps and then 2 weeks after came and ripped out the driveway…well half of it that is.  You know how they put lines through driveways so if they do crack they crack on the lines, well they took a saw and cut pass the middle line.  It is so retarded.  Anyway, I just a little frustrated about the whole thing and they won’t return my calls and I’m pretty much done.  So this is what our driveway looks like right now:

On the upside, we have made some improvements or will be making some improvements.  Brad has been working a ton.  He had his first day off in like 21 days last Friday, so we took the money that we got from his safety bonus for this quarter and went and bought some retaining wall blocks for our planter in our front yard and that is what we did for his days off.  Our builder didn’t do anything with the planter except keep building dirt up to make the level high enough that they weren’t required to put in a railing on our porch…another thumbs up to Bigg Homes…anyway so every time it rains a ton of dirt washes down our driveway and walkway.  We fixed the problem now and I am very pleased with the outcome.  This space is slowly turning into my perenial garden, which I am really excited about.

There is a house next to us that was having their sprinklers put in last week.  One day after work, Brad saw one of the guys trenching for their sprinkler system so he stopped him and asked how much he’d charge to trench our backyard.  He has said that he would do it for the past week, but finally today he came and did it…so now we can put our sprinklers in this weekend.  The guy initially said he charged $50 and hour.  He only took about 15 minutes to do the job but charged us $30.  I’m not really complaining, because it would have taken us way longer to trench our backyard with shovels so anyway..here is pictures of our backyard:

I have several other things that I am working on, but this is what you get for now. Until next time….

….was to not find out what this baby is going to be because we figured since we had both boy and girl stuff it would be fun to be surprised.  I started thinking about it and I was feeling kind of stressed about not knowing because I don’t want to have to do anything when it comes and we are going to be pretty much broke when it comes and I wanted to be able to buy stuff now if I needed to.  They had to do another ultrasound at my appointment on Tuesday because when I had my first ultrasound, they were unable to see some of the things they wanted to see, so at the last minute I asked to doctor to look.  I was going to keep it a secret and not tell anyone…including Brad, but then I couldn’t do that so I ended up calling Brad as soon as I was done with my appointment.

For the past couple of months I really thought it was girl, because of how hormonal I have been.  But I was proved wrong.  So, yes, we are having another boy.  I’m not going to lie, I was a little disappointed when my doctor said it was a boy, but after going through all my baby stuff and washing the little boy clothes, excitement has come over me. Anyway, so there you go…15 long weeks to go.

Things I am grateful for:

Electricity

Shop Vacs

Neighbors

The Gospel of Jesus Christ

So, Yesterday around 5pm we had a major rainstorm here in Eagle Mountain.  It only lasted about 20 minutes but during most of those 20 minutes you couldn’t even see the houses a short ways a way from my backyard because the rain and wind were so bad.  After the storm subsided I decided to go outside and assess the damage.  I found my backyard was flooded and  a lot of the water and mud was draining through a hole in our rock wall into our neighbors garden.  I hurried up an ran in our garage and grabbed a shovel and started digging a trench so the water would stop eroding away at our rock wall.  After I was done digging the trench, I went and looked in all my window wells to made sure we weren’t having flooding into our basement.  Well, we have been having issues with one of our window wells in the past and I found about 6-8 inches of water in the bottom of it.  I hurried into the garage to find a bucket when one of the guys in our ward showed up with several buckets.  He jumped in the window well and started hand me and my neighbor the buckets.

My neighbor asked me if I had checked to see if there was water in the basement.  I hadn’t.  I wasn’t too worried about it because I had recently moved everything away from that window so I didn’t think it was a big deal.  After taking some of the buckets of water to the gutter and thinking about it a little more I decided that I should probably go check out the basement.  Well, when I got down there, water was everywhere.  It covered half of our basement and was continuing to spread.  I hurried outside and found our shop vac and my neighbor grabbed the 3 that she had and we rushed downstairs and started sucking up the water.  Luckily there was enough dry space on the floor that I could move all the wet stuff to the dry area.  It took me and my neighbor about 30 minutes to get it all cleaned up, so it wasn’t too bad.  I was stressing out because all our books were in boxes that got wet.  Thankfully the only things that we damaged were some paycheck stubs that were in a folder on the floor and a couple of books that don’t really matter.  (Oh yes…If you’re wondering where Brad was during all of this, he was at work….an hour away from home.)

After we were done cleaning up my house, we learned that there were several more houses in our neighborhood that had been flooded as well.  Our Relief Society President, who is also a good friend, stopped by and asked if I had any lemonade mix that we could mix up some drinks for the people that were helping at all the other homes.  So we made some drinks and jumped in her car and went to help out the other people.  She ended up just taking the kids back to her house so they were out of the way and me and my next door neighbor who helped me with my house ended up staying to help take things out of the other peoples homes and get rid of water.  Brad finally showed up around 7pm and started helping as well.

We were really lucky compared to everyone else that had flooding issues.  Our situation was a piece of cake compared to the others.  At the end of the day, there were 15 other homes besides mine that had been flooded.  The majority of them were really bad.  The 3 houses that I help out with were devastating.  Most of them had only been in their homes for about a month and all of there belonging were ruined.  There were two homes that I helped with that there were feet of water in their basements and mud everywhere.  It was horrible.  It was around 9:30 before we were done.  The last house we were working on the people weren’t even home.  Luckily they had left their front door unlocked and we were able to get the mess taken care of.  However, there were several computers in their basement and most of them were ruined not to mention all of their childrens toys and many other belongings.  Some of the flooding at the houses was so bad that their windows broke through which caused even more problems.

It was so amazing to see everyone just drop everything to help the people in need.  What a blessing it is to live in a neighbor/ward like that.  I feel like we are where we are supposed to be.  It is really interesting how the Lord guides us in our lives.  Before we were looking to build where we did we had an offer on a house which we loved, but the offer fell through at the last minute and so we decided to build instead.  I also vowed that I would never live in Eagle Mountain.  As soon as we decided to build here everything that kind of fell into place and it was just right.  Anyway…that is my story for today.

Oh yes, I am also famous…not really…but KSL showed up and our neighborhood was on the 10pm news.  I had my 2 seconds of glory.  You can see the story at http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=11808415 I am in a blue shirt passing peoples belongings through a line of people.

For Memorial Day weekend, our friends Kendall and Jamie Ehat invited us to go stay with them in Jamie’s parents condo in St. George.  We left Friday around 5pm.  I was driving.  We decided to take Redwood Road to Goshen to hopefully bypass Memorial weekend I-15 traffic.  Well, about 30 minutes into our drive, we were about to Pelican Point and a stupid dear jumps out from this ditch on the side of the road and decides to jump on our car.  There was nothing I could do but hit it.  We were really lucky, because the only damage it did to our car was smash the windshield and manage to kick of the driver side rearview mirror off.  It was crazy because it hit the windshield and then it flipped over the top of the car and I saw it land on the ground behind our car through the rearview mirror.  Here are the pictures of our sad car:

We decided to keep driving…well I made Brad drive the rest of the way because I pretty much freaked out and I wasn’t about to drive anymore.  While we were driving we called around to places to see if we could get the windshield replaced the next day so we didn’t have to drive home with a cracked windshield.  We got ahold of one place but they wouldn’t be able to do it until Tuesday, so that wouldn’t work.  I found the number for Jones Paint and Glass in St. George and called but they were already closed.

I called right when they opened on Saturday morning and luckily they had my windshield in stock and they didn’t have anything lined up yet for the day so they asked me how soon I could get there.  So I left poor Jamie with my kids and her super cute twins (the boys had gone golfing that morning and weren’t home yet).  When I got to the Jones Paint and Glass the guy told me that it was a good thing that I called so early because he had a funeral that he had to go to in 2 hours.  Anyway, when he was done replacing the windshield he asked me where I had gotten it replaced before.  I told him that was the windshield that came with the car when we bought it.  He said that who ever replaced it last time did a horrible job.  Apparently they didn’t prime the seal so water was getting in and was starting to rust.  Anyway, here is a picture of our beautiful new windshield:

After the boys got home from golfing we went swimming at one of the 3 pools that they have there .  The water was pretty cold and it was a little breezy so we didn’t last very long.  After we were done swimming we went back to the condo and ate lunch and fell asleep.  After we woke up we went a did a little shopping at the outlet stores and then went to Olive Garden for dinner.

On Sunday we went to a little Branch that they always go to when they stay there.  It was kind of funny because the speakers kept commenting on how they felt they were speaking at a Stake Conference because of how many visitors were there.  After Sacrament Kendall and Jamie took their boys back to the  condo to take a nap and we took a little drive to the temple to take a little walk around it.  Apparently a ton of other people had the same idea.  The temple grounds were packed.  Anyway, here are the pictures we took:

That night we had a barbecue and just kind of hung out.  It was pretty fun.  On Monday we just kind of chilled at the condo for awhile and then we decided to try out another pool to see if it would be warmer.  The pool that we ended up going to was way warmer and the kids had a blast.

Gavin, Daxton, Jacoby and Cailyn waiting to go swimming.

It was a nice and relaxing trip minus our run in with the dear.  Thanks Kendall and Jamie for inviting us, we had a great time.

This year for our anniversary we decided that we wanted to get out of Utah since we haven’t been on a trip since before Gavin was born.  We decided to take a little trip to San Diego.  I apologize for all the pictures, but that’s what you get.

We decided to leave Wednesday night (May 12th).  We drove to Mesquite and stayed in a hotel for like $30.  The drive there was pretty good except for the fact that I was trying to get over a sinus infection and my ears wouldn’t clear with all the elevation changes and I pretty much couldn’t hear much of anything all the way to Mesquite.  Here is a picture of the kids when we got into our hotel room.

The original plan was to leave early Thursday morning and drive the long stretch to San Diego, but we were glad we didn’t.  The drive on Thursday was more pleasant because of it.  This was our breakfast for the hotel on Thursday morning.

Brad and his freaking huge ham steak…gross!!

After we left Mesquite I realized that I forgot our San Diego travel book at home so we found a AAA in Vegas and made a little stop to get a map and another travel book.

This little thing was at the AAA.  It just made us laugh so we had to take a picture. (If you don’t watch The Office, you won’t get it. )

We have never been to Trader Joe’s so while we were in Vegas we decided to stop and have the fine experience.

Brad and the kids were getting pretty hungry.  When we were about pass Barstow, CA Brad saw a sign for a Tommy Burger so of course we had to stop.  There is a Tommy Burger in Provo which Brad absolutely loves so he wanted to see how the one in Barstow, which is apparently the original one, compared to the one in Provo.

Now Brad he can say he’s been there, done that, got the shirt and but he still thinks the one in Provo is better.

Our fine Super 8 Hotel 3 miles from the Mexico boarder.

On the way to our hotel in San Diego, the kids kept bugging us about wanting to go swimming when we got there so even though it was almost 7 pm, overcast and the pool was pretty gross, they got to have their swimming fix for about 30 minutes.

Me watching from a safe distance while doing my word finds.

This is Cailyn after she remembered that we didn’t put her ear plugs in. (She has to wear ear plugs now since she has tubes in her ears.)  I figured she didn’t need them because there is now way she would get water in her ear since she sat on the step the entire time.

This is her after she won and made me go up to our room and get her stinking ear plugs.

We decided to spend the next day at the San Diego Zoo.  It was really fun, but man I forgot how huge it is.  We didn’t bring out stroller on our trip because of the lack of room so we decided to rent a stroller for the day.

On the sky tram.

Cailyn pretending she was a flamingo.

When we decided that it was lunch time we went and purchased an over priced meal.  While we were in line to pay Cailyn saw these stupid cups that you could get free refills all day.  Well the cup was about $10…it’s all about the experience right.  Well when it came time to pick out what kind of top you wanted on your cup the kids were fighting between two.  So we made an executive decision and got one .  Well we didn’t end up getting the one Cailyn wanted so she basically had a melt down.  After freaking out for about 10 minutes Brad took our screaming child back into the restaurant.  We were not going to buy another entire cup but Brad convinced them to let him purchase just the cup top (which apparently wad against the rules but they saw our screaming child and made an exception ).  Anyway so every time Cailyn or Gavin took a drink they had to have their own stupid top on which made for a lot of annoying switching.  It was fabulous.  Kids….gotta love them.

We went to a bird show while we were there and at the end you could donate money to oil spill clean up and other things that have slipped my mind.  You gave your money to bird and it would drop it into the bucket.  We thought it would be a fun thing for Cailyn to do.  When the bird grabbed the money out of her hand, she pretty much freaked out.  It was hillarious.

At the end of the day, Gavin was pretty worn out.  He fell asleep within 5 minutes of putting him in his car seat.

Cailyn and her new snow globe.

While traveling, Cailyn would color in this book for hours.  While we were trying to find some place to eat dinner she fell asleep while coloring.

On Saturday we decided to go to this children’s museum.  It was pretty sweet.  There a ton of fun things for them to do there.

These are little car things that you move the lever up and down and it makes you go.  The kids had a hard time doing it themselves because they were having trouble pumping the lever and steering at the same time.  It was pretty humorous.

There was this whale that the kids could paint.  We spent a good amount of time there.  Cailyn couldn’t get enough of it.

After painting we went and played with clay.

Then went and played with bubbles.

Me and Brad were sitting there talking to each other.  The next thing we notice, Gavin is at the very top of this rock wall looking a little worried about how he was going to get himself down.  Crazy little kid.

They had all these weird costumes made from duct tape.

After we were done at the museum we went back to our hotel and ate lunch.  After we were done with lunch we went to the Imperial Beach to play.  We picked kind of a crappy weekend to go to Cali because it was overcast the entire time so it wasn’t very warm at the beach.  Oh well, it was still fun.

The plan was to make a sand castle, but it just ended up being a giant hole.

Cailyn running away from the water.

After we were done playing in the water we decided to go back to the hotel and get cleaned up and then go back to the beach because they were having a block party type thing there with food, live bands and blow up toys.

By the time we got back they were starting to put everything away.  Needless to say, the kids were pretty put out.

It was a really fun trip.  We probably won’t go that far for that little of time ever again…especially since we spent a good portion of our time driving, but we still had a great time.

So I’ve kind of not had the desire to blog for a really long time and to be honest I don’t really feel like doing it now, but I kind of need to so here’s an attempt.

February 12th- Brad’s work

We’ve gone up to Layton to have lunch with Brad a couple of times.  Here are the pictures of him and the kids in his office.  He actually has his own office with a window and everything…a lot different from having a desk in a conference room in a trailer.

We usually buy a cake from Walmart that is entirely too expensive, but this year I decided to make a lopsided cake…it doesn’t matter what it looks like right, as long as it tastes good…and it did so we were okay.

The gum ball machine she got from Grandma Julie.  The kids love it…I hate it. (No offense mom) It’s new home is in Cailyn’s closet on the highest shelf were she can’t reach it.  It wouldn’t be so bad if you had to have a quarter to make it work, but it will spit out the gum balls with just a twist of the turny thing.

A cute picture of Gavin…except the fact that he’s wearing Cailyn’s flip flops.

Our fabulous green dinner with green eggs, waffles and apple juice.  I ran out of food coloring or the bacon would have been green too.

Love when he is asleep.  Our home seems so much more peaceful…I wonder why?!

We even made kids quesadillas for the kids so they could have the regular Cafe Rio experience…Cailyn was thrilled as you can see.

At Cailyn’s last wellness checkup I had her doctor look at her tonsils.  He said that they were pretty big…which wasn’t obvious at all.  My gadfree, if you looked in her mouth they took up the entire back of her throat!!  He also said that he saw fluid in her ears so he referred us to an ENT.  I called and made the appointment.  When we went to see her she said that she could tell that her tonsils were huge just by listening to her talk.  Then she looked in her mouth and said, “Yeah, those are freaky huge!!”  I knew went we went in there that the doctor was going to say that she needed them out.  When she looked in her ears she said that her ears looked pretty irritated.  She gave us and antibiotic and said that she would check her ears the day she gets her tonsils out and if they are cleared up she won’t put tubes in but if they are the same, that she would go ahead and do it.

Oh and by the way….this little alien is due the day after Thanksgiving.

About a week after we moved I started walking almost every night with my friend Cheryl in my new ward.  We  have recruited some more people since…my neighbor Rebecca and Cheryl’s neighbor Tanessa.  I love it.  We walk almost 3 1/2 miles every night.  Anyway, so when I got home from walking last night (we leave at 9pm and get back around 10pm), this is what I found:

Got to love it!!

The last block of the month class that I went to at Deseret Book they showed us some ideas of how we could put together our quilt tops.  They said that if we brought our finished quilt top(s) to the next class in February that our names would be put in a drawing to win a gift basket.  I bought all my fabric to do it, but I had a couple of blocks that I had to finish before it was possible.

Last Friday I was determined to finish one of the tops because Brad was at a camp out with his scouts and I didn’t have anything better to do.  After I put the kids to bed I started working.  I was sewing from 10pm to 4am.  6 hours straight…but I finished it.  Yesterday I started working on my other one, which seemed to come together much faster then the last one…maybe because it wasn’t so early in the morning.  Anyway, I’m really proud of myself because I actually finished both of them 2 weeks before they are supposed to be done.  WooHoo!!  Anyway, here they are:

This is the one that I finished at 4am on Saturday morning.

This is the one that I just barely finished.

Yes, the title is correct.  I have never cut Cailyn’s hair.  Yes…she is almost 4!  I’ve really been wanting to cut Cailyn’s hair for the last year.  Every time we’d talk about it, she’d start to freak out and have a major melt down.  Last week we were talking about it and she said that she’d get it cut on her birthday.  Her birthday isn’t until February, so I obviously was not for that…so I suggested that we do it on Christmas Eve.  She thought that was a great idea.  I really didn’t want to do it today, because I have way too many things to get done before my family shows up so I suggested that we cut it last night.  Cailyn persisted, “But it’ not Christmas Eve!!”  Then I said, “Well, it’s the Eve of Christmas Eve!!”  Then she said, “Oh okay.”  So I hurried up and got all my hair stuff ready so she wouldn’t have time to change her mind.  Here are the pictures from the blessed event.

He hair was almost down to her butt!!

Cailyn pretending she doesn’t like it.

Cailyn and her pony tail that we cut off.

My crazy child and her super cute new do.

Goose Egg!!  Cailyn was running and slipped and ran into Gavin’s bedroom door.  She takes after her mother.  :)