What we have been doing this summer...

As you can see from my previous posts, out summer has been consumed with the process of building a house, but between the work, there has been a little play. Here are some of the fun things we have been up to...
My dear friend Betty and I at the Bryce Canyon Half Marathon. We finished in 1:52! It was a great race! Jeff ran too, he is just faster than us. (He ran a lightning fast 1:43!)

Here are Jeff and I with our Wasatch Back team. We ran 191 miles over three mountain ranges from Logan to Park City through blistering heat, freezing rain, and a dark night. We finished in about 30 hours. Lots of fun!

Utah State reunion with dear old friends Sheree, Kelly, Kelly, and Amie. It has been 15 years since I lived with these girls and I still love them just as much as I did then! I am so lucky to have wonderful life-long friends.

We love camping and this was our first big trip of the year to the Little Sahara Sand Dunes near Delta. Brock's hair was so long we had to put it in pony tails to keep it out of his face. Pretty cute! Since this trip, we have also camped at the Cedar campground, and Cedar Breaks during wildflower festival.

Here is Emily with one of many caterpillars she caught with her cousins at Zion.

Here is Britton with his undefeated soccer team "The Gators". He loves soccer and had a great season!

Our summer has had some other fun adventures. It kicked off with a Rowley family reunion in Parowan. I loved seeing cousins I haven't seen for years and especially enjoyed the talent show. I have some amazingly talented cousins!

In June, we took an anniversary trip to Las Vegas where we played in the lazy river at Mandalay Bay, saw the Lion King, and visited the shark reef. We had a good time, but next year, we are celebrating our anniversary without kids!

We also had a great time at the Mikkelson family reunion with all of Jeff's family. We spent the day in Beaver where the kids rode four wheelers and played on the water slide all day as the adults visited and ate great food.

I was in charge of my fifteen year highschool reunion and was able to catch up with dear old friends!

My nephew stayed with us for two weeks while he and Britton participated in a Shakespeare camp for kids where they learned monologues and scenes from The Comedy of Errors and Henry V along with learning sword fighting, vocal training, and lots of other fun things. They really enjoyed it!

We are just two weeks away from moving and I can't wait to live in a home I know I will be in for a long time! We have plenty of room for visitors, so if you would like to come partake of the best hiking and theater around, we would love to have you!

What a difference a month makes...

Wow! What a difference a month makes! As of today we are officially two months out from the day we broke ground ground on our house and we are more than half way finished. Jeff's cousin, Jamon is our contractor and he has really moved things along! The exterior is ready for stucco and stone, the roof is half way finished, the upstairs drywall is hung and the downstairs will be finished on Monday. It is so exciting to walk through and see the rooms I have drawn and debated over for the last year actually take shape, and I like them even better in real life! This week, we are getting our block walls in the yard, the exterior will be scratch coated for the stucco and stone, and the taping and texturing of the walls will begin. I have all my paint and stain colors chosen, the lighting and plumbing chosen, the stone, stucco, soffit and facia, and shingles are ready. The only major decisions I have left to make are the carpet, door and cabinet hardware, and trim styles. I feel like we are in the home stretch! We are going to make it! Now I just need to get ready to move...

Britton's Baptism

Saturday, May 2nd, Britton was baptized. It was a really great day. Fawn and I started it off early by running the Hurricane half marathon. It was Fawn's first half marathon and I was really excited to be able to experience it with her. We were finished and home by 10:00 and able to focus on the rest of the day. Our family kind of ended up running the show at the baptism - my mom read her wonderful baptism book to the children being baptized as the talk, my mom, Fawn and I sang, Britton played cello, and Jeff accompanied a musical number, and my dad said the closing prayer. Jeff baptized and confirmed Britton, and we headed back to our house for a barbecue with our family. I was so grateful to be surrounded by our loved ones on this special day, and so proud of Britton and the choices he has made that make him an exceptional young man and a wonderful son. Congratulations Britton!

Britton's birthday party

Britton turned eight on April 27th. Britton kept saying things like, "I have been waiting for this birthday for like eleven months!", and spent the last last few months before the actual big day scheming all sorts of things we could do to make this big birthday special. We settled on a "mad scientist" birthday party, where we dressed the kids up like scientists complete with Albert Einstein hair, and performed several science experiments. We made volcanoes (note for future reference: do not let the kids put the lids back on their volcano bottles after the baking soda has been added unless you want to turn the experiment into a rocket experiment), made slime, and had a crazy cupcake decorating contest with many unique frosting color combinations and various gummy animals to mix in. I think the kids had a blast. I must admit, it was pretty fun, even for the party thrower.

Emily "Graduates" From Preschool

Emily has been attending preschool the the SUU preschool. Her teacher has been Miss Emily (of course, she thought that was pretty cool). She has had a great year and is very prepared for kindergarten. She finished her year at the end of April. She recieved an award for the most "positive attitude". Some of the other awards given out were "most rambunctous" and "most likely to come to school dressed like "Indiana Jones", so positive attitude may sound a little bland or generic, but could be much worse. At the end of the graduation, all 50 preschoolers sang a song together (well, kind of), and you couldn't help but notice Emily, front and center and a solid three inches taller then the next tallest child. I sure hope she likes volleyball...

Progress on the house...

We are one month in to our building process and look how far we have come! The first week, the basement was excavated, week two, the foundation was poured (see bottom picture), week three, the basement was framed and the floor trusses were laid, week four, the main level is framed the the roof trusses go up on Monday! We can now walk through the house and get a feel for the size and layout of things. I love the windows, I feel good about the room sizes, and the kids are starting to get excited now that they can stand in their own rooms, closets and bathrooms. As stressful as this process is, I am enjoying it. It is fun to see something you have drawn and created come to life.

Santa delivers... a few months late

Santa brought the kids a certificate for a new trampoline at Christmas. We thought we would be in our new house, but decided it was worth it to set it up since we are still going to be here for the summer. Jeff spent a solid ten hours putting the thing together, (you are so handy, honey!), but it has already been worth his time (according to me!). The kids have been out there for hours every day - rain or shine. Brock jumps in circles yelling "This is fun!" Britton and Emily have a blast together, and I think Jeff has even enjoyed it. Unfortunately I am a few kegal muscles short of being able to jump without peeing my pants. Darn the post-childbirth bladder!

HOLY HOLE!

The process has bugun! We have a hole! I was so excited to go see some progress being made on our house after all the months of preparation. You can see some of the view we will have from our back windows. It is just beautiful! The plan for this next week is to do the underground plumbing and start pouring the foundation.

We're movin' on up!

Okay, here is the next chapter in the Gardner housing saga, and my excuse for infrequent blogging these last few months. Despite my apprehensions toward building a house (see former posts), we have decided to take the plunge. After things went sour with our short-sale, we cried a little, moped a little, then got up, brushed ourselves off, and started the house hunt once again. My list of must-haves is not long, (a neighborhood with kids, a three car garage, an open kitchen/great room area, a mud room, and room for a grand piano), but there wasn't anything out there to match our list, so we are building. The closer we get the more excited I am. It is fun to be able to put together a home I really love. It may not be my dream home if money were not an issue, but it is my dream home for real life and real living. I am so excited to see it through from start to finish and look forward to being "settled" for the first time since I left home a mere fifteen years ago. I will post pictures of the progress as it occurs! Wish us good luck!

EMILY!!

Sweet Emily! Emily just celebrated her fifth birthday. I am so excited to be able to tell people that she is five. People would just roll their eyes and mutter a "ya, right" when I would tell them she was four. You just don't run across too many 4 foot tall four year olds. Especially with a vocabulary like Emily's. These are just a few moments from the week before her birthday that I actually wrote down (Yeah, me!):

While reading a valentine from a class mate aloud she said: "To: Emily From: Elsa - hey! that's alliteration!"

"This ring pop has an exquisite taste!"

(Jeff had just told Emily to clean up the living room and they could play a game she had just invented called Karate Ping Pong afterward. Emily went to clean, then came back and said:

"Dad, God just told me that we are supposed to play games THEN pick up." Jeff said: "No, he didn't." Emily answered, "Yes, he did, you just can't hear Him because he talks to my mind."

and finally - "If I were cheese, I would eat myself."

How can you not be entertained with a child like this in the house. I love you, Emily!

Addendum to the previous post...

Just a little FYI, the home shown in the previous post does not belong to us and will not be the home we raise our family in for the next thirty years. We learned a lot about addendums this past week. We learned that if your realtor does not hand one in on time and the other realtor doesn't like your realtor and wants to "teach him a lesson", he will promptly submit another offer, even if it happens to be 7:30 on New Years Eve, and you will wake up to the new year, thinking you are moving in a few days, but wrong, oh so wrong. Oh well, renting isn't such a bad idea in this economy, right?...