Friday, March 30, 2007

My wife has the most beautiful eyes in the whole world

I just had to get that out.

I was looking at pictures of her and seeing her eyes get me just as excited as the first time I really looked into them.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

This guy attended my high school

I think he's from either Russ or Amanda's class (he's 27). I don't have all the facts (actually, they're on a web site created for him, but who knows if they are facts or not), but if this is true, how sad that a country could be like this??? Makes me more greatful for our country and reminds me to stop whining about the things our country doesn't have. At least we have due process.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

I'm excited for this summer

I want to have a good summer with Alene so bad, mostly for the sake of building good traditions and and bond with her. We talked a few weeks ago about how many actual weekends we have open for things like camping and outdoorsy stuff. We figured from mid april until the end of July we have 14 weekends. Our goal was to be camping (or on some sort of vacation/trip) at least 7 of those.

To kick things off and do a little "warm up", we are heading down to the San Rafael Swell this weekend. We plan on finding a campsite somewhere along the Swell, then hiking Little Wild Horse canyone as well as Goblin Valley. We're also going to just explore the swell around our campsite. It should be a lot of fun.

We have a trip planned to visit the Grand Staircase (Escalante) and see the place Alene spent two months on an archaology dig. I am REALLY looking forward to that one. We'll likely do that one in May.

We also have a possible trip planned to visit Alene's brother (Brian) and his wife and kids in Washington.

In between (and after) we hope to get out more than we did last Summer.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Some projects I've been doing

I've been pretty busy here and there helping my parents finish up some major projects in their basement as they get ready to sell their house. I (along with other members of the family when they have time) helped them drywall and tile their laundry room. I also built my first shower, which was a fun project. 5 years ago I had built a shower in this same bathroom, but it was one of those cheap vinyl kits you can buy and you basically glue hard plastic to the wall and cover the seams with silicone caulk, which eventually get's moldy and messy (over time). Well, the shower was falling apart, so I tore it down and re-framed in a nice shower to tile. My dad picked out the tile and the pattern and Russ and I put it all together. It was time-consuming, but a good learning experience and it turned out nice. I only have pictures of the shower (laundry room was a bit too boring for pictures I guess?). Here it is:











I also finished up a few things in our kitchen at home. Aside from laying baseboard around the island and painting some holes I patched, the kitchen will officially be DONE! We added a pots and pans rack above the island and I put two support brackets under the over-hang on the island (just in case). Here are some pictures:



Sunday, March 04, 2007

Logan Temple, Pizza tossing, new car, and Winter

Alene and I went up to Logan on Friday. It was a nice trip as she was able to get some work done, and then we went to the Logan Temple. Her parents got sealed in the Logan Temple, so it was nice to go there and see it ourselves. It seemed very small, but I don't know much about the Temple and if it has multiple rooms, or just the one we were in.

Here are some pictures of Logan.









Here is a clip of me tossing pizza dough



Alene and I got a new car, being that her car (Ford Focus) was falling apart and also that she was going to be commuting to Park City every day for her new job. We decided on a Subaru Outback, which is an all wheel drive car, that still get's decent gas mileage.

Alene saying goodbye to her ford


The ford falling apart




The new outback



As Feb/March/April rolls around, I find myself REALLY getting depressed with the winter weather here. However, when the days right after the snow falls and everything is just blanketed with it, it looks really nice. These are pictures from my street.







The kitchen is finally (almost) done!

That's right, Alene and I finally got around to finishing the island in the middle of the kitchen. Forever it's been sitting there without a finished back or countertop and we got it done this past weekend. Our plan was to add a maple cutting-board style countertop to it. I was going to do this by getting all fancy and trying to get some rough maple boards, glue them together, sand it, stain it, varnish it, etc. and make my own countertop (a lot of work).

When I went to the wood supply place, I found out they actually carry the maple cuttingboard blocks all finished and varnished and ready to go. So, I called Alene and she agreed to get it, even though it cost's more than the rough materials, it would save me TONS of time of inexperience and work :).

So I installed it yesterday and it turned out quite nice. Forever we had a piece of plywood on as a countertop (so we could use the space) and the plywood was covered by some sort of table cover. It's so nice to have this on now.

You may not also notice, but we added wood paneling around the entire cabinet (except where the doors are). We had to do this because this cabinet I used had no finished back on it, so we needed to come up with an idea for something on the back. This is what we decided on, so I think it turned out really nice.

The cool part is that we have maple pergo floors in the front room, so it kind of matches.









The last thing we need to do in the kitchen is add a pots and pan rack, and add the recessed lighting, then we are DONE.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Two video's I've recently seen on youtube that I like

The first one is AWESOME. It's from the 1930's and it shows some dudes dancing the charleston, but someone put it to the song "around the world". I think it's amazing because this is some of the dancing you see people doing today, and this was done 70 years ago. These guys were so progressive.




The next is a video of Gnarles Barkely recording their song "Smiley Faces". What I dig about this group is not only their originality in some ways, but that they always dress up as characters from some sort of pop culture from their early days growing up, to the present. In this video they're dressed up like characters from the movie/musical Grease (I thought my family would appreciate this because we used to watch that movie ALL THE TIME!)



Enjoy