Nostalgia

On Tuesday I went through Matthew's clothes that he doesn't fit into anymore to put into storage.  First of all, this kid has a ton of clothes!  Second of all, it made me sad to see all the things that he's already grown out of.

I bought some space bags.  This is the first time I've used those.  I'm impressed!

Look at all those clothes!

Before and After

More Storage

Well, our storage is finally finished.  They came Tuesday and finished the job.  I'm happy that everything worked out in the end, but I would not use this company again for anything else we needed to do.  Oh, well.

Here's the finished product:

Now I need to go through all of our closets and rearrange stuff.  Doesn't that sound fun?

8 months old

Matthew is 8 months old today! I can hardly believe it. He spent most of the day fussing, but I was able to get some cute pictures of him this morning. 

Matthew is very close to crawling. He gets up on his knees, rocks back and forth, and scoots backwards. He says dada, mama, baba, wawa, gaga, lala, and much more babbling. This morning he woke up and said 'dada dada' as if he was asking where Connor was. It was really cute. He has 1 tooth with many more on the way. I think 1 within the week, but maybe 2. He is a very social little boy. And so much fun to be around. 

Can you see the tooth?

Storage

We love our house, but our biggest complaint is its lack of storage. We don't have a basement, and there's one storage/coat closet. We talked before we bought the house about opening up the space under the stairs. Last month we got a couple estimates. We really liked one guy, but inadvertently signed a contract with another. (Always read before you sign!)

So today, almost 3 weeks later, they finally came. The guy that did the bid showed up, plus another man. They looked at the space and the first man said they were just going to leave it open. I said, you're putting up sheet rock, though, right? He said no. That would be an extra $150. What???

I called Connor. We both remember him saying he would put up sheet rock. He asked if we wanted them to paint it, and I said no. We can do that. Plus on our contract it says:

What does 'Finish Unpainted' mean to you? I asked the contractor and he said he meant finish the framing of the opening unpainted.  Hmmm. 

So Connor called him, told him that we understood that it would include the dry wall. Long story shortish, they're coming back next week to put up the dry wall. They're not going to mud and tape, but we can do that. 

Now I'm really wishing we had gone with the guy we liked. But, it's fine. We have our storage, and that's a very good thing. 

This is what it looks like now. I'd like it to have a door, but that wasn't in the budget. And it's already in a closet, so it doesn't really need a door. 

And for some cuteness, this was Matthews face while the man was cutting a hole in the wall. 

A little happier. Isn't he cute?

Uncrafty

I thought I had a great idea. I had some mismatched frames that I wanted to hang up on the wall by the stairs. People paint picture frames all the time. How hard could it be? 

Apparently, hard. At least for me.

I went to Michael's and bought white spray paint, and a gloss spray paint to seal it after I was done painting. I came home and started on my little project. I even took a before picture. Well, it was trickier than I thought. Spray painting wasn't working. So the next day I went and bought some paint. Somehow I managed to get the wrong color. I painted it, and it looked ok. I thought I was managing to salvage my little project. And then I used the can of spray paint to seal it. And for some reason it made the paint bubble on one of the frames.

So, here it is. Before and after. 

If I could bring myself to take a photo closer to it, you'd see all the issues. I don't like that it's almost the same color as my walls. But I can't bring myself to repaint.  So this will have to do until I can find a good deal on some good frames. 

I just don't think painting is my thing. Even Connor said, in the nicest way possible, that it might not be. Oh, well.  I am happy that I finally have some pictures up on that wall!

Meeting the great grandparents

Yesterday Matthew got to meet his great grandparents. After church we hopped in the car and went to Pleasant Grove where we had a yummy dinner, and spent some time with Connor's family and his grandparents. 

Matthew was kind of cranky yesterday. Church always messes with his naps. But he did relatively well. 

First he met Great Grandpa Nielsen. 

He was intrigued by his watch. 

4 generations

Then he met Great Grandma Nielsen. 

For some reason he was a little wary of her. Probably due to poor naps.

Also 4 generations. 

On a different note, I made a really yummy salad yesterday.  

http://pinterest.com/pin/268316090272023053/

It was amazing. I ate all the leftovers by myself. Yum. 

Happy Mother's Day!

My first official Mother's Day was a good one. Flowers. Breakfast. New iPad cover. :)

This adorable boy. 

It was a good day. 

Saturday

Holy cow was Saturday a busy day. We finally tackled our garden in the backyard. That was a big project. We had neglected it since we moved in, so the weeds were really bad. 

There were 2 trees that the previous owners had planted that were half dead and kind of weird anyway, so we took those out. Our soil back there is basically clay so we tried to fix it some. We rented a tiller, bought something called utelite, and tilled the soil. That was quite the project. The tiller we rented was huge, and didn't really fit in some areas of the garden. We damaged the fence a little bit, but nothing too bad. The soil back there is better, but we didn't buy enough of that utelite to really fix it.

We were on a time crunch to return the tiller, so we dropped that off, stopped by Home Depot for some plants, and came home and planted. We were so tired and didn't finish until about 7. It looks so much better. We still need to buy more top soil to put down, and we have some lights to put out there. Our plan is to do that tomorrow. 

I'm excited to see the finished project. And I'm looking forward to actually being able to enjoy our back yard this year!

Here's my before and after. I did the first photo from our bedroom window. Connor had already started pulling weeds. We literally filled our garbage can with weeds. 

Around lunch time we went inside to eat. We had the missionaries over for dinner the night before, so we heated up the leftovers and ate around the coffee table since Matty was playing on the floor. After we were done, we cleaned up and picked up where we left off. Well, apparently I forgot to put away the butter. Later I noticed the dish was still on our coffee table, but it was empty. I asked Connor if for some crazy reason he had used all the butter. (There was about half a stick.) He hadn't. Well, that explained why Andy had puked all over our patio. (So glad it was on the patio!)

Poor sick puppy. Andy didn't feel so well for the rest of the day. 

Big kid!

This kid is so cute and so much fun. He is finally sitting well enough to sit in the shopping cart. That makes life a bit easier. Since he's been out of his infant car seat for a long time, I've had to push him in the stroller while I shop. That made for lots of short shopping trips.

Also, his first tooth finally came through a couple of days ago. I do think the teething necklace is helping, even though I could tell his tooth was still bothering him when it came through. 

I am a little afraid of nursing a kid with teeth, but so far so good!