A Change

While at BYU, I (repeatedly) said that I never ever wanted to live in Utah. Views like this out my front door might be enough to change my mind.

Seeing as how these pictures came from my less-than-stellar camera phone, you can only imagine how gorgeous it is in person. 

Flashback: 2007

I am still loving re-archiving our old pictures. Apparently we had a lot of fun in 2007--a trip to NYC and Connecticut, visits from friends, lots of fun with our house, lots of trips to downtown Chicago, etc. I also rediscovered the beautiful flowers we had in our backyard (yes, we had a backyard once) and a favorite skirt that no longer fits me.

I think my favorite thing to look at were our pictures from the Illinois Railway Museum. We enjoyed it at the time, but knowing how much a certain toddler that I love (and often refer to as Bubba) would love to go, it makes me excited to plan a return outing in the future!

Tomorrow it's time for a flashback of another kind: roadtrip! Pray the boys and I survive. 

Unconquerable

That's what the laundry becomes when 3 of the 4 members of your household have had a stomach virus for the better (actually, worse) part of the last 4 days.

6 loads down, several more to go....

Dear Dad

Remember that router you gave us years ago? I'm ashamed to admit that up until a few weeks ago, we hadn't used it, but I'm pretty sure we (and when I say "we," I mean my husband) made up for lost time. Behold B's first creation:

He made this out of 2x4s and some pickets. Noticed how every single piece of wood was routed and fit together perfectly.

You might be asking yourself, what is this contraption? Well, it's the homemade version of this:

We needed one for a project and since we couldn't afford the "real" one, B looked at it and said, "I can make that." And he did. It boggles my mind how he fitted all those boards and clamps and brackets and who-knows-what-else into one perfectly functioning table, but he did. That table, combined with this crazy homemade heating tube (that he also just figured out how to make on his own... in the words of my sister-in-law, he's "some kind of genius")

a homemade version of this $5,000 machine

are going to allow us to take these

to make a deck. So just think, your router is going to allow us to build this:

Kinda crazy, huh?

P.S. So it turns out that the downside to either our heater or the commercially-sold version is that they get overheated easily, which is obviously a problem in the summer. Because last night was cool, B and I pulled an all-nighter to do some board bending. I got home at 4:45 this morning and he got home even later. So today I maybe don't love your router quite as much as I did yesterday. ;)