Home Improvements

We have lived in our new house for a little over a year now and we have made quite a few improvements to it since we moved in. You know what they say though, the projects never end as a homeowner. Tyler and I have a list of more projects we want to do within the next year. I thought for this blog post I would give a little before and after of some of our projects. Again, this is probably a boring post to most of you, but I blog for my family and this is one of the things I want us to look back on.

One of the things we loved about this house was the backyard, but one of the things we hated about this house was the backyard. It has so much potential, but it needs so much work. Here's a little before of it.

 We knew the first thing we wanted to do was to have a big patio. Tyler spent weeks designing it and then he and his dad spent weeks forming it. I was so impressed at their work ethic. They would work for 12 hours+ just to get it ready. Here's their forming job...

One of the guys who came to help us said that this was the best forming job he had seen from people who didn't do it for a living.

We ended up having to do the whole patio in two pours.



And here's the finished stairs

They look so good here and they weren't even finished yet.

They had to put this special powder on the patio for it to get to the color we wanted, and we had to leave it on for a week. It was very tempting for a certian toddler to not step on it. We ended up finding a lot of these...

So cute!!!

And now the moment you've all been waiting for... Our completed patio!!

and the side lot...

I don't mean to gush about Tyler too much, but he is pretty amazing! I know everytime he does a project it is perfect. We love our new patio; it is so fun to sit out there and look at the view of the mountains.Oh my gosh, you guys... look at the view (sorry, inside joke). Thanks Tyler for working so hard this summer to make our patio AMAZING!!!

Tyler also painted the back fence. Here's the before.

And the after...

We have also added about 6 new trees to the back yard. Here's the before...

And the after with two of our new maple trees...

Our yard has improved, but it still needs some work, but that will have to wait until next spring.

Not only have we improved the back yard, we have done some projects in the house.

I think I have already blogged about this, but we turned the spare upstairs bedroom into Caden's room. Here's the before picture that I took about a year ago. That's Makayla in the picture. So weird to think that Caden is about the same age.

And here's the after with Caden...

We got new couches in our family room. Here's the before...

And the after...

This isn't that new, but I like to see how my favorite wall has changed with new pictures of the babies.

After...

We moved our leather couches downstairs. Here's the before...

And the after...

We got a new playing card table... Have we played cards on it yet? Nope.  Here's the before...

And the after...

And finally we transformed our computer room/ work out room into a full fledged gym. Here's the before...

And the after...

Whlep, I think that's all the home improvements for this year. It's been a lot of work for Tyler, so I've given him permission to take a few months off before we start our winter projects!!



Sweet Potatoes for Cader-Tot

On October 2 Caden got to try his first baby food. We thought sweet potatoes would be the perfect start because Makayla loved them so much. We got the camera ready for his first taste

 Bad news... Caden did not like sweet potatoes. It was kind of a task to get him to eat the whole jar.

 He looks kind of miserable here. I would be too if I had to eat mashed up sweet potatoes.

 More of it ended up on his face and chest than in his mouth.

 But by the end we managed to get a cute smile out of him.

 Since then we have tried carrots and squash and Caden seems to like those foods better. Surprisingly we tried fruit thinking he would love it, but he doesn't. Hmmm.... I guess my plan to chunk-ify Caden will be harder than I expected.

Oh I could just squish him! I love him so much!!!

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears... Oh My!

You knew that title was coming, right? For this weeks Friday Family Date (well, technically it ended up being SFD) we took the kids to Hogle Zoo. Makayla likes animals and always points them out in her book so we knew she would love it. And Caden, well Caden just didn't have a choice but to join us.

We started out at our date with breakfast at Denny's. Makayla colored while we waited for our food.

(I love this little head tilt she is doing every time we take a picture of her)

 And Caden played with his toys in the car seat.

 When Kayla's breakfast arrived, she ate her eggs so fast you would have thought we starved her.

 Then we headed to the zoo. We were prepared for really cold weather, but it was a perfect day! We loaded the kids in the Cadillac (aka our double stroller) and off we went for a day of fun.

 We started out by visiting the elephants. Kayla was pretty cute. She pointed to them and said "woah". Then she made sure to waive bye-bye as we left.

Cader-Tot hung out in the stroller.

 Then we went to see the rhinos. We got an up close view of them

 After we posed by the statue of the rhino.

 We got to see the sea lions, seals, and polar bear

 The polar bear (or pola bear as Colton would say) was show-ing off! He kept doing little flips in the water.

 We got an underwater look at the sea lions

 Then it was off to see the giraffes.

 And then to pose on the walkway.

 Caden was having a blast at this point.

 Kayla enjoyed her pretzels.

 And me, well I was just being me.

 Caden eventually fell asleep from all the excitement.

 So Kayla and I got to go on the Merry-go-round

 At first Makayla was a little scared of it, but when it finally started, she was having a blast.

 We bought two tickets so Daddy got to go with Makayla a second time.

After that we headed home before the zoo got too crowded. We loved the zoo and can't wait to go back again.

Family Pictures

Since we had an adorable addition to our family this year we thought it was time to get new family pictures taken. Plus it was perfect timing for Caden's 6 month pictures.

Oh my has our little Cader Tot grown up!!! He is so stinkin cute, but I'll let you judge for yourself in these pictures. 

 Little Miss Makayla is now 20 months old. She was a little more difficult to get pictures of her. I guess there were more interesting things to do than sit still and smile for pictures. But we did manage to get two cute ones of her.

 Getting pictures of the two of them was a different story. Makayla didn't want to sit in the chair but as soon as Caden sat in the chair she threw a fit. So laugh if you want but this was the best the photographer could get of the two of them.

We eventually gave up trying to get more with the two of them. 

This one is pretty cute of them kissing. 

 Here's our family pictures

 And of course the love birds.