Home Improvements

The joys of home ownership. N-O-T.

Matt and I often talk about how exciting it will be when we can become renters again. I think I'm more excited about it than Matt. :)

Lately we've been fixing up some stuff. Matt was a lot more accomplished and doing the things he started than I was. So here's a post about how awesome Matt is about home improvements. You may be wondering why it is that Matt and I have been working on separate projects. It just kind of ended up that way, wouldn't it have been better if we worked together? Totally, but *spoiler alert* I'm afraid of dealing with electricity. I'll explain in the next post.

I should have taken "before" pictures but I didn't even think about it until I saw how beautiful Matt was making it. Matt made the shelves that the pile of wood is sitting on. That pile of wood has been taken up a lot of space in our garage for over a year. We had this great idea of putting up shelves and Matt attacked it!

"Kind of Before"

Matt got a work table from his Mom and had a great idea of putting a peg board behind it in order to hang up some useful items. It is awesome!

"After" -- Do notice the peg board with useful items attached to it.

This was project number one.

Project II

Matt LOVES pottery and over a year ago purchased a Kiln to heat pottery when he saw a killer deal on one. Last year he purchased a wheel. The wheel has always worked but the Kiln need a special outlet. 

Matt spoke with an electrician and figured out what he needed to do. Does Matt have a lot of experience with putting up electrical wires in one's home? 

No.

Yes, I was a little worried. Hence the reason why Matt is doing this project without me. Matt invited a friend to help him put it in and they drilled holes and ran wires through. Here Matt & Duke are drilling holes to run the wire to that blue box. 

Here's the almost final project.

What it looks like in the house. 

It works! The kiln works! I'm so proud of Matt. Now we can use the pottery wheel because we'll have a place to heat up and cook the pieces. We have had some people come over and throw a little bit but we haven't cooked a thing. I'm looking forward to that part!

Matt and Zach

So here is the positive part of the home improvements. Matt is awesome and got the garage looking wonderful! I'm so proud of his hand many skills and I love how much room we have in the garage now! The next post.... my projects. The agony!

Halloween

Matt's mom bought our little Tomatillo this adorable costume. So stinkin' cute!

Matt is working on being certified as a Canyon Leader for the boy scouts so he can take boys through canyons. The testing was this week so we packed up our gear and set out for yet another camping experience. This time we headed to Moab.

Yes it's November. Yes it was FREEZING. Yes our little Tomatillo was warm. :)

At least for the first two nights.  He did really well camping! The problem at night is, he doesn't like having his arms bundled up in his blanket. He grunts and slowly begins to cry, getting louder and louder.  Sometimes I can get his hands to be bundled up but it's a risk I take because in the case that he doesn't want it he'll wake up and have a difficult time going back to sleep. So I get to choose between freezing hands and a sleeping baby.

The last night was the worst, it was freezing. Also, as a result Tomatillo woke up a few times too. His hands were ever so icy! Since we were camping with a large group of people (others who were participating in the certification) we were worried our baby's cry would wake others up.  So I swept him up and we ran to the car for refuge. A little time with the heat running, Tomatillo slept long and hard.

Bundled up with at least 4 blankets and a hat. This night he let me shove his hands in with his body.  

Our sleeping arrangements. Matt, Me, and Tomatillo.

While Matt was getting tested....

For this test Matt gets to climb up this rope using some hand dandy prusiks.

You see that knot on the rope (the white rope)? Matt has to climb up this long rope, detach himself from his belaying device and reattach himself above the knot. This is possible with the use of his prusiks, the blue rope.
The orange rope is attached to the blue rope so he has a place for his feet and the green webbing is attached to his harness. He's hardcore. :)

We went for a hike. :)

Hiking Park Avenue

My sister Aline is pretty into Arches so I've gone quite a bit with her and I feel like I'm already too familiar with Arches National Park. I sought to do things that I've never done before. Some of the stuff was pretty dumb, which is probably why I didn't do it in the first place. After returning home and looking up "Things to do" in Moab I've decided that, in the future, I will be avoiding Arches altogether. There are HUNDREDS of additional trails around Moab. Why didn't I think about that before our trip? I really wish I would have done this. Ah--- the regret! 

An additional note. Before having a child I always felt kind of lame hiking by myself but now that I have someone to carry around I don't feel like such a  loser any more, even if my partner is always sleeping on the trips and makes for poor conversational company. 

I have to admit I was pretty excited to show him around. 

Delicate Arch from behind.

                 

Rendezvous

We make A LOT of trips to Zion. I'm sure we've gone down this year more than 10 times.

Looking up in Pinecreek Canyon

It's just so beautiful.

This time we went for a "Canyoneering Rendezvous" that they have every year at Ponderosa Ranch, located just outside the national park. Canyoneers come from many different places to do canyons together and to talk about canyoneering. The best part for me was doing a canyon with other women.  When Matt told me about this event I thought for sure I'd be the only female, but that was not the case! Personally, for me, it was pretty fun to go with other women and see canyoneering from a women's perspective. These women took the time to explicitly explain things to me that helped me understand a little bit more of what I was doing and why I was doing it. They also showed me some pretty cool things they had made to help organize their gear.

Where was the baby?

With Matt.

We went down on Thursday night. I did a canyon on Friday day and Matt did a canyon on Friday night and Saturday. We also went down with a friend of ours Raul, who did every canyon we both did plus one on Sunday. Can you guess who got the better end of the deal? 

Raul

On Sunday Matt & I went looking for something we hadn't already seen. I love technology and smart phones! We just looked it up really quick on our phones and TA-DAH-- Petroglyphs!

Tomatillo's first petroglph! 

I have to show you this picture:

Yeah, that's Matt doing a 300 foot rappel. :)

 This canyon is called Englestead and the first rappel is 300 feet. After that the rappels are much, much shorter but no one wants to carry the additional rope. Matt asked if I could come so he wouldn't have to carry all that rope with him through the canyon. I was fine with that, really. It was "suppose" to be a pretty easy trail, but.... that's not really how it ended up for us.

I have a wrap where I keep Tomatillo in front of me and I was going to carry the extra rope in a back pack, behind me, so it wouldn't be that bad, but we parked our car in the wrong place so we had a horrible time finding the first rappel and we had to do a lot of bush whacking. Doing that with an infant is as horrible as it sounds. Lucky for me on my way back up I met an older gentlemen and his two grandsons who knew of a shorter trail and offered to give me a ride back to my car. 

I've made the offer before, but really if you would ever want to do a canyon tell Matt! 

He would L-O-V-E to take you!

Reassurance

I find that I am really concerned with milestones.You know the list of things they can do as they get older; make eye contact, coo, crawl, eat solid food, etc.  I think it's because I worry that my child may have some type of learning disability. (Not that he has done anything so far that has made me wonder!) I think it comes with the trait of being a teacher. I want him to be able to attend a regular public school and be able to focus and learn like the majority of kids in the classroom.

I talked to another teacher at my school and she told me she worries about the same thing. I didn't feel so alone when she said that. I do call the doctor a few times if my son has been awake for more than 2 hours. I worry when his poop isn't always the same color or texture. I think that 2 months appointments are too far away. Why do you have to wait every other month? I think I need to see the doctor once a month. I need the reassurance that my baby is "normal" and okay. :)

Apparently every baby is different. 

Anyways, last night our little Tomatillo rolled from tummy to back. An important milestone? I'm not really sure, but it's moments like these that reassure my worried heart. :)

It's too cute!

Blessing of Baby

 We blessed our baby boy! 

Blessing? If you're not too familiar what I mean by "blessing" our baby let me offer a quick explanation. Similar to other faiths (not just christians!). We take our child in front of the congregation and pray for traits and characteristics that could bless their lives.

I was actually pretty curious about why we do it and I did some reading on what other cultures do when their babies are born too. I thought it was interesting all the customs and traditions centered around a new spirit. :)

We invited our family and a few friends to come join us. We had a dinner first on Saturday and then on Sunday we blessed him. 

Aline made a lot of yummy food! 

My aunt Monique and Grandma

We had an ice cream sundae bar!

Aunt Kim was seen like this all night, holding the baby. :)
Who can blame her? He is darling!

It rained on our little back yard dinner. :( It was like a masoon! It was 

heavy and hard. Aline is wearing a garbage bag to protect her clothes from getting wet. 

I'm not really sure what Muriel is doing.

Both my Grandpas :)

Osi and Muriel (Again, what is Muriel doing?)

Grandma

                                                                 Grandma


                                                  Our little guy is pretty loved. :)

Muriel, Me, Tahia, and my mom

                                          Not everyone can have two beautiful sisters? ;)

"Normalcy"

So here's a quick post on Matt & I. We are regular "normal" people still, even though we do have a baby. So here is what we, regular people, have done.

Grill.

Regular people grill.

Matt got this beauty from his parents for his birthday. (THANK YOU!)
We have been talking about getting one and looking for a great deal, but finally his parents made the decision for us, by surprising Matt. They had the thing all boxed up, came over and said: "your present is in the car". They even wrapped it up for him! (I thought hiding it in the car was fine wrapping!)

So on Labor Day-- we grilled. Matt made veggies and I ate a hamburger. :)

Football.

  

Regular people like football. (This doesn't mean if you dont like football you are irregular.)

I made these velveteen cupcakes and cut out those Us out of sugar paper. (Not as easy as I thought it would be!) We have season tickets this year and went to the first home game of the season against Colorado. It was fun. :) It's funny when people found out we weren't taking our child they called our outing a "date". So here's my question... isn't only called a date when you dont have a child? Because pretty sure before we had a baby we went out all the time and I never thought those were dates. Were they? Or do you only begin dating once you have a baby because now you have someone to leave at home? Hmm.....

                                    

Canning.

Is this considered an activity that can label you as "normal"? 

Well it's harvesting time. 

I pickled beets! I pickled these over a month ago. I ate some yesterday and they were DELICIOUS!

 Saturday I made tomato sauce that I canned. This does look impressive.... but

Eh...not so much when you have the right Kitchen Aid attachment. All I did was cut the tomatoes in fourths and shove them through. It was SO EASY!

I made pickles! We purposely grew cucumbers for pickling.  I always wanted to make pickles! This was super easy too. I just bought some pickling mixture added vinegar and water and VIOLA. I think we even forgot that we were growing them until Matt stumbled upon them in our garden.

For me the thing about canning is I can't tell if it really worked until a couple of weeks later. I canned some beans and I left them on the counter so I could monitor how they were doing and although one of the jars were sealed tight it looks like I have some type of bacteria growing in the water. So I think that was a no go. So I have begun the monitoring phase. Let's see if it all turns out.

Another problem with canning is that I am so proud it's canned I don't want to open it. I have tomato sauce and today I almost bought some Ragu. I love the fact that my sauce is in a jar.... I dont want to open it!

Music.

Truth-- this was before the baby was born.

Truth-- I had to blog about this. I. Love. Josh. Ritter.

Remember when I didn't have a camera and I had to illustrate my summer experiences?  Well this summer I actually had a camera and I took REAL pictures of everything. :)

Red Butte Garden-- best venue ever

Snacks!

Friends!

Love!

As I finish up this post I have this song in my head "Lantern" by Ritter. Check it out.