The floor!!! Epic project...

Right after i took this picture ray ray got on the stairs and puked. He eats everything and has a weak stomach so he pukes pretty often and we were excited for the new floor because it would be easier to clean his puke (the least of many reasons). But he just wouldn't puke on our new floor. Silly little dog. But i digress...

Here is our new floor!!! We've been looking forward to replacing the old floor (old bleach stained carpet that was in the living room and the dining room. i know who puts carpet in a dining room!) since we bought our house last October. And over the past couple of days it has finally happened! David, his dad, and Brad put in a couple extremely long days and nights (they were up until 4am Saturday, slept a few hours, worked all day Saturday until the sun was rising this morning they are such troopers!) working on the floor. They were so great to take part of their holiday weekend to help us out with this!!! And the floor looks fantastic! I love it already. It makes our lovely house just a little bit lovelier.

We got a new throw rug to go under the coffee table i refinished recently (bought it at DI for $10 and refinished it to look like that, it was a very fun project.) I think everything looks great together.

The other benefit about having friends and family help with projects over a holiday weekend, other than the extra day off work so you can recover from the project, is that you have a great excuse to invite tons of people over for a BBQ and show off your new finished project. And that is what we'll be doing the rest of this lovely 4th of July evening!

Pool at Murray Park

We watched Alice yesterday while Carolyn and Erik help grandma clean her house. After getting some great ideas from my co-workers about fun, inexpensive things to do with a 2.5 year old we decided to go to Murray Park and play in their awesome pool! It was a great idea!

The pool was super warm and had a huge shallow kids area that Alice could just walk around and play in. They had those mushroom waterfall things and she had fun going in those. She had fun getting rides on our back and "swimming" to us. The pool also had this awesome water slide. Alice loved it. She wanted to go on it over and over. The only drawback was that while you're waiting in line at the top the wind makes you feel pretty cold but it wasn't so bad once you got your turn on the slide.

Uncle David and Alice right after the slide. Aren't they so cute!

This was during the hourly pool check time. They have everyone get out of the pool for 10 minutes once an hour so that parents can change kids swim diapers, apply more sunscreen or eat a snack. Alice didn't like these pool checks very much because that meant she had to get out of the pool. She especially didn't like it when it was our turn to go down the slide next and then we didn't get too because it was pool check time. When we were walking down the stairs she was crying and saying "go up not down." But after pool check and a few crackers she was ready to play again and go down the slides a few more times before we left.

She was so tired after playing in the pool for a couple hours that she passed out just about right when we had her strapped into the car seat. The half hour ride home nap was the only nap she got but she wasn't too cranky in spite of it. After that we went home and ate and then we went over to Brad and Amy's. David and Brad and Dave went to pick up our new bed frame we bought off KSL (thanks guys) and Amy and i watch the kids and watched a sappy 90's chic flick, "Only You" and a weird 80's movie, "The Boy Who Could Fly." Then when the guys got back we had an awesome BBQ and Carolyn and Erik met up with us. It was a very fun day. Very tiring, way to go all you parents of toddlers, but very fun!

While we were at Brad and Amy's Alice wanted to hold baby Pepper. She was in love with baby Pepper. She love to feel her hair and gave her kisses on her cheeks. She'll be such a good big sister to Baby Jack in a few months!

His one true love...

Our puppy loves the outside. I was in the kitchen doing something on Saturday and David was upstairs. I hadn't seen or heard ray ray in a while, which is usually a bad thing, so i went to check on him. This is what i saw. Him gazing lovingly at the outdoors. He's so cute and sweet. he loves to go on walks and wants to go with us everywhere we go.

This is his "puppy dog" face. "Please can i go outside? A walk?"

May

We went to St. Louis for David's old roommate's wedding. It was a lovely wedding! We're so glad we were able to go out there to celebrate with them.

Nate and Sarah (yes there are two of us "Sarah" wives now) are our new drive in movie buddies.

David and Nate have matching wedding rings.


The St. Louis temple.

It was a perfect day. It wasn't too hot and it wasn't rainy. It was just right.

We explored St. Louis a little while we were there and i fell in love with that city. Seriously! I would move there if we every had the opportunity.

I love the old buildings and houses. They are so charming and just take you back in time a little bit. I'm a sucker for old architecture.

We were in St. Louis so of course we had to go see the Arch. It is pretty awesome! If you're in that area it's a definite must see. And it's free so you really can't pass it up.

The Arch is right next to the Mississippi River so David got to touch it for the first time.

The Arch had some great photo opportunities. We had fun taking pictures.

If you needed a Personal Injury Attorney you would totally want one who is a pirate huh?!

Also, if you're in St. Louis you must get some BBQ. This place was awesome. It was recommended to us by a friend who had served his mission in St. Louis. They are world champion BBQers so they really know their stuff.

David got ribs i got pulled pork. They were both delicious. One cool think about this BBQ place is that they have 6 different sauces on the tables so you can try them all; we did.

Jedi Ray Ray. He got a cold this month and was shivering so we wrapped him up really well. He loved it.

We have a lilac tree!!! I'm very excited about it.

And finally, it snowed in mid May. Seriously! Not cool Utah!

So there's our may. It was awesome. We also went to Denver to visit the family but i forgot the camera so no pictures from that trip. Now it's June. We'll see if i get to posting anything before the month is over. Oh well if i don't i guess.

1!

1 year ago we were here.

Yesterday was our anniversary. David got me these flowers. Then we went to The Melting Pot. It was very fun.

Year of milestones:

• Graduation
• Real Jobs
• Move cities (although not states and only an hour away so I'm not sure if it really counts)
• Bought a house
• Worked on the house (paint, back splash(see the other blog) gaining some furniture etc.)
• Hosted Thanksgiving
• Got a dog
• Garden!

Year of travel:

• Moab 3x (honeymoon, raft for the cure, 4th of July)
• Denver 2x (reception, new years)
• Michigan (reception)
• Chicago (honeymoon)
• Boston (lovely roommates wedding)
• Disneyland/LA (valentines/for fun)
• Hawaii (2nd honeymoon/fun)
  

We had a lovely year together. We really haven't had too much to complain about. We still get along great. We still are very much in love and are just loving our life together.

In the plans for next year (really there's not many more major milestones for us to accomplish, at least not for many years so we're just focusing on some small things):

• Put in hardwood and tile on our main level
• Finish the basement
• Spice up the bathrooms with some paint.

Travel plans:

• St. Louis tomorrow (for an awesome former roommates wedding)
• Denver (in a few weeks)
• Michigan (holidays)
• Sacramento/redwoods (not sure when. we'll just make a long weekend of it. I've been dying to see the redwoods for some time now so we'll make it happen this year.)
• Europe (perhaps, we'll see what deals we find)
• Moab (probably. it wouldn't be a summer if we didn't go.)
• Zion's (if we can fit it in)

And I'm sure we'll find ways to have much fun no matter what we do.

La domestica

I'm starting a new blog. I'll still update this occasionally and let you know what's going on in our lives but i just felt the need to help myself feel motivated to work on some talents of mine. Feel free to follow me if you want if not no worries. http://sarah-ladomestica.blogspot.com/

Recently...

We have been enjoying a beautiful warm spring. This past weekend it has be 70+ degrees and we have used it to work in our garden. We planted our tomatoes and pepper plants. I read up a little on gardening and it said to plant tomatoes and peppers about 2 weeks before the last frost date so we're trying it out. Hopefully it works out well.

Our raspberry plants aren't dead!!!

Baby shower throwing. Very successful.

Playing with the cute puppy.

Enjoying flowers we didn't know we had. Tulips :)