Mike's new toy!

Meet Mike's newest toy! He bought this shear last year but didn't get it up here until recently. He keeps this machine on-site with one of the large companies that he services. This little guy cuts metal like a pair of scissors and makes it so he can process it easier. He put a magnet on it too, for when he needs to load little nuts and bolts kind of stuff.

Josh and Mike take a minute from their concentration on cutting metal to pose for a picture.

Josh loves to feel like a big boy in the machinery, no matter what it is!

Mike has been hauling lots of tanks lately. This is one of the smaller ones that will fit on his truck without cutting it up. Here he is loaded and ready with another load to go to the mills.

Luau Week...accidentally!

This past week was definately not in my top 10! On Monday, I came out of our house to get in my truck to go meet Mike in town. I looked over and noticed that my fence by one of our barns was on fire! When I ran around the corner, I stopped dead in my tracks. Our barn was burned to the ground with just a few support beams still smoldering. It looks so out of place to walk among the charred ruins and have life springing forth all around it. I was in shock and mildly traumatized...something I have never experienced in all of the traumatic experiences I have been through. I am usually so calm about it all. I was calm in the midst of it all while it was happening, but it was afterward that it set in. Well I guess you are waiting for the story so here it goes... Earlier that morning, Josh and I had been doing chores and it was such a beautiful day that he didn't want to go in so I decided to clean up some of the area. I put some of the feed sacks and boxes in the 55 gallon burn barrel and burned them. I made sure the fire was out, and sprayed around it before going inside. Sometime during the day, a march wind kicked up and must have found some warm ashes deep down in the barrel and must have blown them into life. The fire started smoldering in the surrounding ground until it made it to the barn. The rest is history! A couple hours after we had come inside, I had the thought a couple of times that I should go check to make sure the fire was out. I kept pushing the thought away and checked out the window several times to reassure myself. Well from our house, you cant see the barn because the shop blocks the view, and so I didn't see the smoke.

After I saw the fire, I grabbed some shovels and the hose and began spraying the hot spots. The hose had terrible water pressure because it was old and had holes. As I was spraying the remaining fire, the nearby power pole fell down and because the wires were live and I was spraying water, I ran to the breaker box and flipped off the power, before there was a chance to be electrocuted. With the power off, our well shut off too, and so did our water supply. The wind kept blowing and fanning the fire further. Mike called and had headed into town unexpectedly, I told him what was happening, and he started home. One of our friends called for help.

In five minutes, I heard some sirens and looked over to see firemen coming around the corner and firetruck after firetruck coming to our farm. I have never been so grateful to see such hero's at any other time in my life. Our farm is the boundary for 5 volunteer fire districts and so we had at least a couple of trucks from each district show up! At least we know we are covered! After being sick to the stomach from the smoke and the thought of the bill we would receive, I found out that taxes cover the expense of the trucks and the firefighters are volunteer! I wanted to hug them all, I was so relieved. They were all so well trained and efficient. Because many of the fires they respond to are in the country, they have huge temporary tarp pools that they set up and they pump water from them as the water trucks fill them up again and again.

Some of our casualties included our two pregnant sows that probably died from the smoke inhalation. The irony about the whole situation is that we had a quote done on home insurance the week before, but we were in Denver so we hadn't followed through and had it put in force. I guess if you look on the bright side, Mike is in the scrap metal business so getting rid of all the junk metal will be no problem at all!

Moral of the story, dont procrastinate buying fire insurance, drown the ashes, and most importantly listen to the spirit!

My Daily Comedian!

Josh has become quite opinionated! He seems to know exactly what he wants and when he wants it! Lately this has included what he wears. One day he brought down one of his swimming suits and wouldn't let me rest until I put it on him.

"Look mom, I dressed myself"!

I couldn't get it on camera fast enough, but he had this on his neck the other way, like what a dog wears when it has a wound.

Baby Grizzly Adams bundled up for a Wyoming winter!

Poor boy, after smacking his head twice on the same spot, Josh had a goose egg to beat all!

Josh spending time with cousins Spencer and Baylie munching on some homemade popcorn. Ignore the fact that they all look handicapped, this was the best picture.

Meet our new and improved Home!

Finally, after months of remodeling and moving in, I took pictures of the projects that took up so much of our time. I posted the before pictures several months ago, here are the after pictures. I do have one disclaimer, note the cleanliness of the house in every room...in order to accomplish this I had to clean one room like a whirlwind, lock Josh...and Mike(dont tell him) out of the room, hurry and snap some pictures and let them back in! So when you come to visit, do not be disappointed that my house looks nothing like the pictures! Enjoy!
This is the living room. We tore out the carpet and discovered beautiful hardwood floors upstairs and down so I sanded them down, stained them a cherry mohagany and varnished them.

We textured and painted all the walls in the house, and put up crown and base molding. We found the rugs on clearance at Lowes.

We installed new windows in the whole house to help keep the heat in. This is a 1941 model so it is lathe and plaster, but it stays remarkably warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

We did a whole addition to the house to enlarge the kitchen/dining room area.

We had a builder frame it in and sheet rock then I took over. We bought unfinished cabinets, and I painted and finished them. We did a cream base coat and put a glaze over the top to give them an antique look.

We tiled the floor, the backsplash and counter top. We bought our stainless steel sink off of ksl for $15.00 and our bar stools are a DI special $4.00 each!

I bought a lot of fixtures at thrift stores for $2-5 refinished them and hung them up.

Some kitchen decor to bring a country feel to the house.

Mike had one request in the kitchen...that the cabinets be lit underneath. Wish granted times three. I wanted all my food storage close by so it would be used and not forgotten. These two large cabinets and a pantry still to be built made this possible.

The current dining room used to be the kitchen. to look at it now, I dont know how they fit much in there at all!

I saw the beadboard in the background at a chuck-a-rama restraunt in SLC and loved it, so I incorporated it in our house. We did splurge and bought a new kitchen table for $125.00, we love it.

Some of our decorations in our house.

The bathroom was a complete makeover. We installed a new sink and toilet to make it feel larger. Put up a new mirror and hardware, and light fixtures.

We put in a new cabinet for storage, and tiled the floor. An interesting fact on the toilet, it is a newer design that uses 1/3 of the water that traditional toilets use.

We installed a shower, boarded over the window and tiled the shower walls. We also love our curved shower curtain!

One of the neat features I like about the house is the arched doorways. We also redid the closet in the hallway so we could walk in and lined it with shelves instead of the drawers that were there. It makes lots more storage space.

Our bedroom is upstairs so the ceiling is a little slanted on the ends. Both bedrooms have huge closet spaces with built in shelving.

Josh's room is across from ours. If you look close you can see him in his cage, I mean his crib!

The wood floors upstairs were cedar so they were beautiful red and golden stripes, making for lots of character. I stained them a natural color to preserve them and then varnished them with a gloss polyurethane.

Ok, the padded recling rocking chair was my idea. (it has a built in massager) I decided that if I had to get up to take care of my baby, I was going to be comfortable doing it!

We turned the third bedroom on the main floor into an office and study. We left the wood floors the original oak color.

This is where I take care of our business paperwork and post on my blog!

We picked up the desk at the DI for $10.00 since our other one was not big enough.

When we bought the house, the realtor gave us the keys to the front door. The keys were the original two prong, cinderella style keys! As we remodeled, I tried to use as many of the original items in the house as I could like reusing these knobs and keeping old door knobs.

The mud room is used ALOT, so i painted a cupboard and hung it for storage, put two coat racks on the walls, and added a bench with shoe storage.

In the basement, we framed in the walls, raised the floor, laid carpet and made a temporary bedroom for guests. This room will eventually be extended and be turned into a family room, since we remodeled the guest house outside.

I made a craft desk for Josh and he loves it. The top lifts up and is full of crayons, paper, coloring books, playdoe, scissors, and other craft items.

We also framed in the walls in the utility room and I claimed this room for my sewing, scrapbooking, and craft room as well as the laundry room.

We used the cupboards from the original kitchen as storage. This room is still being remodeled, but should be done by spring.