Welcome Baby Oliver!!

    
     Corey's youngest Brother Tyler and his wife Annie had a sweet baby boy.  It's been about 3 years since we've had a baby in this family &  we were all very excited to meet Oliver.  Although Breck did not care to hold him :).

 

Oldest and youngest cousins!  

Larrabees New Adventure

     After many years of begging and pleading we finally got Jared and Kathy to move their family to Utah.  They were here for about 2 1/2 years and we loved it!  They lived 6 minutes away and I loved having them close enough that they'd drop by just so Gretel could leave pictures for  the boys.
      Recently Jared took a new position in the company and was transferred to Washington state.  I have to say we're heartbroken.  We love this family.  They have the majority of girl cousins in this family and I'm mourning a loss of tea parties and Barbie play dates.  We're hoping this position will lead to an eventual return to Utah.  Washington, on the other hand, is beautiful and should be a great experience for their family.  Love you so much Larrabees!!  Have a great adventure! 

2014

One of our favorite traditions is our New Years cabin trip.  We all squeeze into the little cabin, play in the snow, watch movies, play games and eat good food.  It doesn't get better than that!

Here are our family sledding pictures.

 Rugg Family: Conner, Kari, Ethan, Kedar and Aubrey

Moir Family: Carter, Ava, Marci, Jasen, and Tanner

 

 

My kids had been asking me to make gingerbread houses all season.  We got all the stuff and never got around to putting them together so we made it a cousin/cabin activity.  Fun! We are officially too big for a group picture, family groupings it is.

 

 

Another successful trip.  Thanks everyone! 



Merry Christmas!

 We had a wonderful Christmas!  This is the most wonderful time of life to enjoy the holidays with a young family.  We started our week with our FHE family nativity. 

 

 

In Corey's family growing up they had a tradition to have the kids line up youngest to oldest before they go out on Christmas morning.  The biggest boys woke up first and got the youngers up.  Avery was last to wake up and it took her a minute.  We were telling her to get in front of the line and, in her early-morning haze dropped to her knees and started giving our family prayer.  Everyone kind of looked at each other and slowly bowed our heads to join in..it was hilarious and awfully cute! 

 

 

 

And here it is....Christmas morning.  Need I say more, I LOVE the morning hair!

 

These are by far the ugliest Christmas gifts I've ever bought.  Of course, they were the hit of the day!

  

One wonderful thing about this Christmas is this fabulous gift....a finished basement.  Boy did my man pull through on this one.  He did so much of the work himself.  We're so happy to have it done and topped it all off with a new TV.  This was early Christmas morning watching a movie in our new basement on our new TV, yay!! 

 

Pre-Christmas Play

      I LOVE it when my kids play together!  I think I love it because it's getting to be less frequent.  With the difference in ages and friends, etc, these times are bound to be outgrown.  So on days like this when they're all out playing in the snow together I eat it up. 
     They were so happy with their snowman I suggested they make a snowwoman.  The snow was perfect for packing.  A great start to our Christmas break!

After!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, after you spend this much time, money and energy on remodeling you can put a bazillion exclamation points on your blog title, and fill it with way too many pictures ;).
      Once we started remodeling our living room we did away with our old TV and did without one for the half-year or so of remodeling.  Don't be too impressed, we watched on our computer, but still, it's not the same.  We finished up right before Christmas which was perfect timing to get a TV for our family gift.  

 

 

A very Merry Christmas!!

 

 

And here's the rest of it...

 

Down the stairs to the reading nook, down the hall to the living room and bathroom.

 

     I know this is kinda weird, but I'm so thankful to have these things behind doors!  Since we moved here our furnace, water heater, & water softener have been out in the open.  Loved those closed doors! 

Our beautiful new bathroom with toilet securely installed on the FLOOR!!  Yay! 

 

 

Our beautiful living room finished and ready for our family to play, watch, read & relax. 

 

 



Construction Expands & Continues

 

     Once we got into remodeling it was easy to justify expanding to the living room, hall & extra room (pretty much the rest of the basement that hadn't been recently remodeled).  So we put insulation and actual sheet rock in the living room. We also installed a support beam that had been removed before we bought the home. 

     This one stair is the only picture of our lovely church carpet.  It was painful to rip up because it had been glued to the cement floor.  We were so happy to have it all gone...sayonara church carpet!!
The corner at the bottom of the stairs had a funky "shower," if you could call it that.  It was set on two feet of solid cement...another jack hammer job.  Again so thankful for a hardworking hubby!
One of our main plumbing lines runs right here so it took a little creativity to make it a normal, useful space. 

      Here it is sheet rocked along with the sheet rocked bathroom & walls up the stairs.

      Decisions, decisions....

 

     I really wanted wood floors for our heavy traffic areas.  The top of the stairs is right at our back door where a lot of dirt is brought in.  Come to find out you can't put wood on concrete because of the moisture so we started looking at wood laminates.  We found this one and loved it.  Corey wasn't happy about installing it, but after the biggest argument of the remodel, Stan's help & encouragement and a few days of silent treatment....it was done.  Beautiful!  We had just enough tile left from our kitchen to tile the bathroom, Corey did a great job. 

 

     And then there was paint....

 

     These two were so excited to "help" paint.  After this day of not-so-productive painting the Mom's came to the rescue.  Blyth took the twins and my Mom & I spent the day together painting...I'm so mad I didn't get a picture of us.  It was such a good day to spend with my Mom.