Jazz Men

I do not think that Seth and Carter know that there is a Utah Jazz basketball team but they love to wear these jerseys. Seth has started to recognize his numbers, so he is number 2 and Carter is number 8.  Seth says, "Mom will you tell number 8 he needs to come play basketball with me." 

It is great that they are able to start playing with each other with out their mother needing to referee.    

Santa

We were lucky to get a picture of Seth with Santa. There was a line for Santa so we were standing patiently in line visiting with the others from our ward. I turned around to see where Seth was at and he had butted in line and was already on Santa's lap. Thomas hurried and stepped up and took a picture. The little weasel.

Through out the month we have been asking Seth whats for Christmas. He would tell us he wanted a candy cane and a football. Santa happened to have this football in his bag. Now all we need is to get his candy canes for him.

 Carter on the other hand would not even look at Santa.  He did not cry, but was glad to be done with Santa and go back to his mom.

Santa did a great job and we are excited for the season. 

After Santa we had a nice dinner and a excellent program to help us to remember the true "Reason  for the Season" 

We are so grateful to be able to celebrate the birth of our Savior. 

Snow Day

 

On Tuesday we got about 5 inches of snow so I got the boys all dress in there snow cloths and we headed out side. Seth wanted to have a snow fight. The snow was very powdery so we through it around and had a great time.

 Seth found some snow chips so he was enjoying those. I made sure they were not yellow. We also played some baseball. Seth found a stick that he used as a bat and I through him snow balls to hit. He hit them all home runs!

Carter did not last long, but was happy until he got cold. 

I then took him in the house and treated him to hot chocolate. It was a fun activity.

Little Helpers in the Kitchen

Seth and Carter follow me everywhere I go.  Sometimes they get into things and make more work for me.  Other times they help out and enjoy the work.

Seth helping unload the dishwasher.

Seth trying to act cool, knowing his picture is being taken. 

Carter is very helpful.  He watches the cookies bake.

Begging for cookies.  What a cutie!

Carter's Vitamins

Every night we give the boys there multivitamin after they brush their teeth. Seth has always loved taking the vitamin but Cater does not like it. Every time Carter sees Seth taking his vitamins he wants to take them also. This is the reaction we get every night. We thought it was blog worthy. Watch it with sound for the full effect.

Afternoon Snack

 Thomas loves his popcorn. We have had an air pop corn popper to reduce the cost of his addiction. When ever we sit down to watch a movie the boys and I have a small bowl and Thomas has his own large bowl. 

The boys were asleep, so Thomas thought it was a get time for popcorn.  He was able to enjoy the whole bowl. 

He was so sad when the popcorn was gone.

New Driveway

After we cut down our tree, we decided to put a driveway on the east side of our property. I will park my truck in this driveway and get it off the street.

I got this white pipe for free, and cut it in half. It was not long enough, so I put some old, rusty tin roofing in the middle.

I used some discarded rebar that Dad had lying around. The driveway is 10 feet wide, so I did 5 feet at a time. I mixed all the cement by hand in a 10 gallon container. The first night I did 30 bags of cement.

The next day Dad helped and it went a lot quicker with one mixing and one troweling it smooth. The first batch was not 100% cured, so we knelt on a wide board to spread out our weight and not have our toes make divots.

Getting just the right consistency is important. Less water means strong cement. Dad had a tendency to add too much water.

Mixing cement is a dusty job.

60 bags of cement later, this is how it turned out.

2 loads of gravel equaling 1 1/2 tons. Seth was there to help. I over loaded the wheel barrow a few times. It made breaking noises as it rolled along.

Black ground cover went down first, to stop weeds. I used a rake to spread things out nicely.

If cement is laid too thin it breaks. I framed the cement in so that it was 2 inches thick along the front edge that I will drive over. Then I got rotomill to make a ramp with. Rotomill is asphalt that has been torn up in order to resurface a road. Put the rotomill in place and soak it in diesel fuel, then tamp it in place.

Now we each have a parking spot. One more project down. On to the next.

Getting Ready For Christmas

Seth and Carter love to wear the Santa Clause hat. We also have an elf hat so they take turns with the two of them.

Christmas Tree

 We went out on Friday and cut down our Christmas tree.  We got it from our super secret spot. We saw several good ones, but it took us a little while to find one that was just perfect.  

 Here were are ready to carry it back to the truck.  Michael, Jen, and Mark were there as well.  Sorry Mark we did not get a photo with you in it.

Thomas and I brought the tree into the house last night. We decorated it after the boys went to bed. We even had a few presents to place under the tree (thanks Mark and Linda).

When the boys got up they were super excited about the tree. We have jingle bells on our tree so Seth started singing Jingle Bells. I think this will be a fun Christmas.  The boys are at the right age to be excited.  Everything Seth sees he wants for Christmas.

Christmas Lights

    We put up Grandma and Grandpa Jenson's lights for them. We bought them the new LED lights. Thomas was great to be the one on the ladder. Jen held the lights so the lights would not get caught on the bushes.

 Mark would hand Thomas the light clips and hold the ladder. Linda kept Mark working and helped to get all the extra lights out of the boxes before throwing the boxes away. 

 Michael talked on the phone with his mother through most of the work and then watched Seth and Carter in the house after their naps.

When we came in the house this is what Carter was up to. He was wearing one of Grandpa's hats and wearing my slippers.

The lights look great. The LED lights seem to have more of a sparkle. We want to change our lights to LED for next year. 

New Sink...for Real.

The upstairs bathroom sink was the last piece of the yellow porcelain in the bathroom.  (The kitchen sink is the final piece of yellow porcelain in the whole house.) 

Seth saw us remove the old sink and put in the new one.  When we were all done he kept saying that we had painted the sink; like the tub.  When Seth gets something in his head, it hard for him to let it go.

The sink looks great and finishes the bathroom.  My favorite part about this sink is that it only cost $5 at DI.  Deseret Industries is Thomas' home improvement warehouse.

Thomas broke one of the plastic pipes when he was taking apart the old sink.  He'll get one after work today, may be from DI (probably not).  For now the sink will empty into this bucket.  It's funny how much water you conserve when your sink drains into a bucket.  We are using as little as possible.  This five gallon bucket will probably only have half a gallon in it a the end of the day.

New Tub?

When we bought our house, the kitchen sink, the toilet, the bathroom sink and bathtub were all yellow. Not dirty yellow, just made that way. I guess yellow porcelain was popular some time ago. We don't particularly like the yellow and we have decided to change it.

We wanted a white tub, but we did not want the work of tearing out the old one. We decided to use a Rust-oleum tub and tile refinishing kit.

We cleaned the tub really well and then taped off the edges. The kit was enough for two and a half coats and it covered extremely well. The kit was a two part mixture of paint and epoxy. When I started brushing it on, it nearly glued the brush to the tub. There is no way that paint is coming off. I figure your could paint your car with this stuff.

This paint made so many fumes. We opened the bathroom window, turned on a fan, shut the door, and but a towel outside at the bottom of the door to block the fumes. We waited one hour between coats.

We needed to wait 72 hours before getting the tub wet. We applied the refinishing kit the night before we left for the weekend. Now when we get back home, the tub will be already to go.

Tree Removal

When we bought our house, there was a large tree in the front parking strip.  Parts of the tree had no leaves and it looked half dead.  Thomas was talking with the neighbor about removing it.  He told us that the city will do it for free. Thomas decided to go talk to someone at the city offices about it.  He planned to go after work.  Before he got a chance, someone from the city knocked on our front door and asked if we wanted that tree removed.  Its roots were pushing up the sidewalk and the gutter and the city wanted it taken down.  

 We were glad to see it go.  The city did the work for free.  Thank you taxpayers.

The city came with their boom truck and cut it down with a chain saw.  It told Seth they were going up in a bucket to cut down the tree.  He got confused and kept saying "Look at that guy in the cup." 

 Seth must have thought it was better than TV.  He watched every moment of the work.  He even threw in a few oh's, ah's and look at that's.

 This is what they left us with.  No more tree, just a massive stump.  That's when the real work began.

We dug around the edges, chopping roots as we went.  Some of the roots were only the size of a baseball and Thomas cut through them with an ax in one or two chops.  A few were larger and took more effort to remove.  The largest was the size of a basketball.  It took Thomas an hour or so to get it out and took his hands to brink of blistering.  After the sides were all exposed with dirt and roots removed about twelve inches under each side, we brought in a truck.  One of our neighbors was kind enough to use his diesel truck and a chain to yank it out.  Hearing the crack of the roots and seeing it move was a great feeling. 

Now all that is left is this giant hole.  We'll start filling it in and tamping it down.  Thomas plans to make a driveway where this tree once was.  We'll let you know how that goes.

New Entertainment Center

Jennifer told me months ago that I could get a new TV. I should have listened to her and got it immediately, but we have been very busy remodeling our house. With our old TV, we got zero channels. With our new TV, we get twenty channels; including BYUTV. With no TV we just watched DVDs. Now Seth and Carter can watch cartoons and Jennifer gets to watch the news and see the weather report. If we put the antenna in the same corner as the TV, we only get ten channels. We ended up putting the antenna in the front corner of the house and running a twenty-five foot cord to the TV.

The reason it took me so long to buy a new TV was that we did not have a stand to put it on. Our old TV stand was a cabinet and was not wide enough to fit a new flat screen bigger than a twenty-nine inch. I ended up taking off the top and cutting the sides and then putting the top back on the new height. We threw away the doors and painted the cabinet black. It turned out great.

Halloween 2011

Halloween was a nice, fairly warm night.

The boys got pirate hats at the dollar store.  They wore their Sunday shirts and some vests.  We painted on beards with water colors.  They had a great time.

Seth saw Thomas wearing his hat and eye patch and told him, "You look stupid."  He just wanted Thomas to take it off and give it back.  We had a great time with these little boys, and we got lots of candy. 

Thank Heaven for Little Boys

They are always cute when they are sleeping. I do not know why they sleep in some of the positons they do. I guess if it is comfortable for them then it works.

Seth and Carter are always right by our sides while we are working. They do not want to miss out on anything. For them water is like a magnet. They are always drawn right to the water every time we start working on cement.  Carter tries to lift and move everything that Thomas does.  He tries to lift full bags of cement and then whines for help.  He is so silly as he tried to be so big.  He follows Thomas around and moves all of Thomas’ tools as he puts them down.  The tools end up far from the work spot and we know Carter is to blame.