• Book Reviews

    by  • May 6, 2012 • 0 Comments

    It’s been a while! I haven’t been in as much of a reading mood over the last few months, and have had this review sitting here with two books in it for quite some time.  I finally made it through a couple more and have several others sitting on my nightstand.  I have a feeling that the bigger I get, the less I’ll want to do but sit around, relax, and read!

     

    Lost DecemberLost December by Richard Paul Evans

    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    This was not my favorite RPE novel. The good thing about his books is that they can be read in no more than a day or two, so the misery ended quickly.

    This is a modern-day re-telling of the Prodigal Son, so it made sense to me that the main character, Luke, behaved so poorly, but it really grated on my nerves for the first half of the book. I wanted to shout, “REALLY?!? HOW STUPID ARE YOU?”….and then he would go on and do something even more stupid.

    Once Luke screwed his head on straight, the story was more enjoyable for me. I suppose that, once in a while, I like books that wrap themselves up in pretty little package and Lost December eventually did just that. Am I glad I read it? Of course….what kind of a RPE fan would I be If I didn’t? Will I read it again? Probably not.

    SisterSister by Rosamund Lupton

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    For as long as it took me to get through this book, you’d think I hated it. Truth was, I just wasn’t in the mood to read much. But once I finally committed to finish it, I sailed through.

    While the premise of the book is a pretty big downer (murder), the path that the author takes you down to uncover the truth of what happened was really intriguing to me. I liked the way that it was written from one sister to the other and the way the mystery slowly unfolded.

    I did figure out who the culprit was before it was divulged, but I did not see the big twist coming at the end…it was as though I had a bunch of puzzle pieces in my hands that I knew would fit together, but the picture they would create didn’t come into clear view until the last piece was in place.

    If you can handle the dark subject matter, and enjoy a little literary sluething, this one is worth picking up.

    Heaven Is Here: An incredible story of hope, triumph, and everyday joyHeaven Is Here: An incredible story of hope, triumph, and everyday joy by Stephanie Nielson

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    I picked this book up to read while travelling to visit my sister in Washington DC. Then, I decided maybe it wasn’t the best choice, as I have a bit of anxiety over flying and this book involves a plane crash. Thankfully I was able to put that aside and continue reading because this book was wonderful. I’ve read Nie’s blog for years, so I already knew much of the story, but she goes into the deeper emotions and pain that she experienced while recovering from her injuries and it’s simply heartbreaking…..and then triumphant as you see her rise from the depression and make the choice to embrace the life she’s been given. I loved this book!

    Matched (Matched, #1)Matched by Ally Condie

    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    Matched is another of those young adult novels that I’ve heard about at every turn and figured I needed to see what all the fuss was about. The hold list at the library has been long for quite some time, so I was surprised when I found a copy on the shelf last week. I didn’t even read the summary on the dust jacket, so I really had no idea what it was about and just dived in. Turns out, the society in which the characters live is straight out of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, and the love story is awfully reminiscent of Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series. Since I enjoyed both of those books, I won’t necessarily say that’s a bad thing, just not very original. There’s really not much substance in Matched, but it’s an easy read worthy of being deemed a somewhat enjoyable time-waster.

    View all my reviews

    House Update

    by  • May 2, 2012 • 0 Comments

    I wish that the last 5 or 6 weeks since my last basement update was full of wonderful progress.  But it’s not really.  All of the demo and clearing out is complete and two weeks ago the company putting in the drainage system showed up to get to work.  And then they realized that our foundation is different than the norm (go figure…what about this house has turned out to be normal?) and they wouldn’t be able to proceed with things as planned.  They’d still be able to put in a drainage system, but it would be more complicated (ie, more expensive) and the supplies they needed aren’t something they keep in stock (because this type of foundation is rather rare for a basement) so we’d have to wait to order them in.  Because they couldn’t dig their trench yet, the plumbers couldn’t get started on the laundry room….and the dominoes started to fall and things have been at somewhat of a standstill.

    Joseph was able to do some electrical work during that time (which resulted in me coming home from Washington DC to find a freezer full of thawed food in the garage, from a breaker that tripped and was never reset) and he has purchased the wood he needs to start framing and a bunch of insulation.  Assuming nothing else goes wrong, the drainage system will be started tomorrow.  Today I will do 100 loads of laundry, in anticipation of something going wrong and not having access to a washer and dryer for an extended period of time.  Boy, I hope not!

    Here are a few pictures of the “progress”, including one of the infamous bathroom door. For reference, a standard door is approx. 30″ wide, give or take a bit. This bathroom door was a whopping 15″ wide! This was the master bathroom for the previous owners and they were not the smallest people….I’m really not sure how they got in and out of that bathroom on a daily basis!

    Ryan has been a big help!  Joseph bought him some work gloves at Home Depot and they make him feel so special that he’ll work for hours doing little jobs.  We finally had to get a pair for Owen as well so that he can help with some of the small stuff.

     

    We actually did find some insulation down there!

    Spring Break and Easter Weekend

    by  • May 2, 2012 • 1 Comment

    I was chastised over the weekend (which was actually several weekends ago….it’s taken me that long to finish this post) for not posting very much anymore.  Whoops.  It seems to take an awful lot of motivation these days for me to get pictures off the camera and take the time to sort through them.  I’ll try to do better :)

    The kids were out of school a few weeks ago for Spring Break.  We stayed close to home this year, but still had fun.  Mel and Dave brought their kids down on Wednesday and we rode the train downtown and spent a few hours at Discovery Gateway and Temple Square.  We love living close to the commuter rail….just riding the train is a fun activity for the kids!

    There were several school groups at the museum in the morning when we arrived, making it SUPER crowded.  The kids still had fun, but they all wanted to go in different directions and it was hard to keep track of them.  We decided to have lunch and go to Temple Square for a bit, hoping that when we came back to the museum the groups would have gone and we’d have more space to play.

    Attempting to get pictures of all of the kids together was pretty much a bust.

    When we got back to the museum, things were much more calm.  Owen was so proud of writing his name and Emmy could have spent all day working in the grocery store!

    Grandma came up on Wednesday night to spend a couple of days.  The kids always love when she comes to visit and we love it because rather than getting in bed with us at the crack of dawn, they get in bed with her.  Saturday we headed down to Spanish Fork for our annual Easter Egg hunt with the Hassinger side of the family, which is something the kids always look forward to.  It snowed the night before, making the egg hunt a bit soggy, but the kids never mind getting a little wet!

    A Ryan funny

    by  • March 16, 2012 • 0 Comments

    We were at the Just Between Friends consignment sale yesterday and while in line to pay for our things, Ryan started talking to a little boy behind us in line.  The boy had a toy carseat and pack ‘n play and so Ryan asked him “Are you having a boy or a girl?”.  The little boy’s mom got such a kick out it!

    What’s behind wall #1?

    by  • March 15, 2012 • 4 Comments

    Nothing!  No big surprise.  I wasn’t kidding when I said we enjoy sub-arctic temps in the basement year round, and this is a big reason why.

    However, futher down the wall, we did find this little bit of insulation…

    And then along the next wall, we found this bit of insulation, which was missing two chunks eerily similar in size to those we found on the other wall.  Oh, what I would give to be able to ask the previous owner what the logic behind all of this was!

    We have found insulation on the walls between rooms….just nothing along the outside walls.  You know, the ones where all of the cold from being underground comes from.

    And the flooring.  Me, oh my….the flooring.  We’re gussing that in an effort to provide extra insulation (how ironic) between the concrete and the carpet, he nailed down sheets of wood.  In some places, he glued them down.  And, if there was an issue with a seam, just slap a little mud down on it….that should take care of the problem.

    Remember that we have water issues in the basement?  Water + wood on the floor = MESS!  Look how nasty it was under the carpet.

    Plus, the wood provided a perfect environment for mold to grow…..thankfully that problem wasn’t too terribly extensive and can be cleaned up fairly easily.

    Joseph worked up a pretty good blister scraping off the parts of the floor that were glued down.  As far as we know, this is the only room with “wood floors”, so hopefully the worst is over in that department.

    The next installment will feature our infamous downstairs bathroom door.  Your assignement between now and then?  Make a guess as to how wide it is!

     

    Embarking!

    by  • March 12, 2012 • 3 Comments

    Do you remember the Great Remodel of 2008?  Welcome now to the Great Remodel of 2012!  The closer we get to the arrival of this baby (about halfway there now!), the more stressed I’ve become about where we’ll put her (still getting used to calling her a her!).  Emmy’s room is simply too small for both her twin bed and a crib.  Aside from putting baby in our room (which is really too small for that as well), the only option was to move Emmy in with the boys.  Not impossible, but not entirely desirable either, especially as they are getting to the age where privacy is becoming more of an issue.  Re-finishing the basement has always been in our plans for this house, and after putting together some budgets and getting quotes on one of the bigger jobs needing to be tackled, we decided that now is the time.  Once it’s complete, the boys will move downstairs, Emmy will move into the larger upstairs bedroom (whichs she’ll later share with Quincy), and the small upstairs bedroom will be the nursery.

    If you’ve ever seen our basement, you know that it’s in sore need of some updating.  The previous owner “finished” it sometime after the house was built.  I use the term “finished” quite loosely, as there are some incredibly interesting things going on behind the scenes down there.  I’ll be sure to photograph them for your viewing pleasure throughout the project.

    Here’s what’s on the to-do list for the next several months:

    • Reconfingure the layout of the back half of the basement.  This will include re-locating the entrances of the two bedrooms and the bathroom, as well as creating a storage area.  Right now, one bedroom has a huge closet, the other room has none….at the end of the project, they will both have decent-sized closets and you won’t have to go through a maze to find the door to the second bedroom.  One room will be used for the boys, the other will be the guest room.  The storage room will feed into the cold storage room, which will hopefully eventually be fit to actually put cold storage in.
    • Fix the bathroom.  This one is a bit scary, as we have no idea what we’ll find when we tear the existing shower out.  It is currently raised up off the ground and we’re not sure why.  The toilet is also placed too close to the wall, making it impossible for the lid to stay up without being held.  The best part of the bathroom is the doorway.  You’ll get a real hoot out of that when I get around to taking a picture.
    • Re-locate the laundry room.  It is currently in the utility room with the water heater and furnace and is awkard to work in.  We’ll move it to a space next to the stairs that currently houses toy cabinets.  This will require having a plumber come in and add some new drainage.
    • Speaking of drainage, one big project needing done–and the biggest one we’ll hire out–is the installation of a drainage system.  This house has some water issues that need taking care of before we can ever sell it and this is part of the reason we decided to embark on this project now.  We’d rather pour the money into it while we still have years ahead of us in the house and can enjoy a nicely finished basement than wait until we’re ready to sell and have to shell out the money then.  I was terrified over what the quote to fix it all would come back at, but was pleasantly surprised at the number.  It will be well worth the money spent to have someone else do this part of the project for us!
    • The main family room doesn’t need major work.  We will tear the walls out and start from scratch there, as the existing sheetrock was very poorly done, but aside from new walls and flooring, work on that room will be fairly minimal.
    • Insulation.  The entire basement needs insulation.  We currently enjoy sub-arctic temperatures down there year-round, but would prefer not to have to bundle up and pile on blankets just to watch a movie.
    • New ceiling and lighting.  Currently, the basement has drop-down ceilings and flourescent lighting.  Replacing the ceiling with sheetrock will give us much higher ceilings and we’ll install recessed lighting.

    The plan right now is to hire out the drainage system, at least part of the plumbing, sheetrocking, and flooring.  Joseph will tackle the remainder and I’ll take care of telling him how I want it to look when it’s done and expect him to figure out how to achieve that.

    Wish us luck and pray that we’re done by July, just in case we have an early arrival!

    9 years today

    by  • March 5, 2012 • 2 Comments

    This year for Zoey’s birthday, I decided to make and donate some diapers to the Share chapter that served us in our time of need.  They are such a simple project and I had fun working on them.  I decided to go with plain white and do colored top-stitching so that they would match whatever clothing they already had in stock to use.  I was able to complete 50 diapers–25 large and 25 small–for both boys and girls.

    We spent the weekend in P-town and took flowers and balloons to the cemetary on Saturday.  It was cold and windy, but at least we didn’t have snow to deal with this year.  I also forgot my camera, so all pictures came from my phone, and none of them were very good.  The silver lining to our weekend was finding out that another little girl will be joining our family in the summer!

    Most romantic Valentine’s Day ever!

    by  • February 28, 2012 • 2 Comments

    While I was in the midst of not taking pictures of all the fun things my sister sent in her surprise box that I said I would post about throughout the month, our microwave died.  Actually, it was while preparing popcorn for the kids to eat while they watched the final surprise item on Valentine’s Day–a video–that it died.  Put the popcorn in, pushed start, and 10 seconds later…..gone.  Dead as a doornail.

    So, we spent our Valentine’s evening shopping for a new microwave.  We went everywhere and nothing really jumped out at us.  20 minutes before closing time, we decided to try RC Willey.  If you ever wanted a selection of microwaves to choose from, that’s the place to go!  We opted for a similar model to what we had, because it was the right price and we knew that we liked it.

    However, when we got home, we discovered that, while similar, it was lacking most of the features that we loved most about the old microwave.  So, we put it back in the box and returned the next day for one twice the price, but also twice as pretty.  The best thing about it?  It melts my butter without exploding all over the inside of the microwave!  That was worth the extra money all by itself!

    Here’s to hoping we have many more oh-so-romantic Valentine’s Days ahead!

    5×2=FUN!

    by  • February 24, 2012 • 4 Comments

    Yes, I know I’m a slacker with a capital S when it comes to blogging these days….but, give me a break. I’m in the process of growing a human being, which is a lot of work, and that dictates what goes on around here most days. I’m doing good to get the dishes and laundry done anymore.

    In spite of that, the calendar continues to move and on February 13th, Owen and Emmy turned 5!! That’s kind of a milestone age, if you ask me. Owen was sure that as soon as he turned five, he would quit going to preschool and start kindergarten. I’m glad there are a few more months before that transition will happen, because it means I have to decide if they should be in the same class or different ones. But, I digress…

    We didn’t do a party this year. Owen’s latest obsession is penguins and I thought it would be fun instead to take the kids to the aquarium to check out the penguin exhibit. It was INSANELY busy (I’ll never go on a Saturday afternoon again), but the kids had fun and the penguins were a lot of fun to watch. I was sad that we aren’t rich, because if we were we’d have bought tickets to the Penguin Encounter, where you have a chance to interact up close and personal with the penguins. Since we’re not rich, we crammed in front of the window to the exhibit along with 5,000 other people and watched them dive, swim, and chase each other. It really was a lot of fun to see. I think we’ll go back again sometime, on a weekday, when there will maybe only be 3,000 people to share the penguin window with.

    Isn’t Emmy’s outfit cute?  We bought it on the way, after she threw up while traveling 75 miles down the freeway.  She had been to a birthday party that morning and eaten something that didn’t agree with her (hot dogs, we think) and her tummy decided to revolt at the most inopportune time.  Thank you Old Navy, for having such good sales so that I could replace her entire outfit, jacket included, for just $22.

    Afterward, we headed to Joseph’s office to let them open presents from Grandma Dart, Auntie Em and Uncle Nick, and Aunt Kristen and Uncle Matthew.  Grandma got Owen some K’Nex and Ryan was green with envy over them.  It was really kind of funny to see his reaction!  Once presents were opened, we headed across the parking lot to one of their favorite places to eat–Brick Oven!  Yum!

    Since we were having dinner with friends on Sunday night, we decided to do birthday cakes with them. When you have twins, you wind up with a LOT of birthday cake….we thought it best to share with a few more mouths. Making these cakes was quite the fiasco (another story for another day), but we got them done and they turned out great. I did Emmy’s and Joseph did Owen’s. When Emmy told me she wanted a kitty cake, I wasn’t very excited. It’s not easy to muster up the excitement to make a cake of an animal that makes you sneeze just to think about, even if it’s for someone you love. Then I had the idea to do Hello Kitty. I can handle that kind of cat. She loved it. And I thought Joseph’s name for the robot was brilliant: OE5. Thanks to Halloween 2010, you all know why the robot is pink.

    Monday was their birthday and it was a pretty low-key day.  They opened presents and had some leftover cake.  They were excited to get mail from Grandma and Grandpa Z, which was a certificate to go out for ice cream and shopping for a present.  They got to redeem those earlier this week and both came home with chocolate-stained faces and new books.

    The two favorite presents this year were the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads (bought in Disneyland last year and stashed away) and new scooters.  They got to extend their special day into Tuesday, as that’s when they celebrated at preschool.  I should have taken a picture of how cute the little treats they took for their class turned out….but I was pretty frazzled by that point (still had Ryan’s class Valentine party to help with that afternoon).  They came home wearing birthday crowns and feeling pretty important.  Which they were entitled to because they ARE pretty important!  We can’t imagine our family without them!

    A Valentine Surprise

    by  • February 2, 2012 • 2 Comments

    My sister is such a fun aunt.  Even though she lives across the country, she’s always doing fun things for the kids.  Today when I got home from dropping the twins off at preschool, there was a box at the door.  I knew who it would be from as soon as I saw it when I pulled into the driveway.  I was confused though, because Valentine’s day is still a couple of weeks away.  So I sent Ryan to get the rest of the mail from the mailbox (he’s been out of school early all week) and while he was gone I peeked inside the box to make sure it could be opened by the kids right away….and it could…and I knew they’d be super excited when they saw what was inside.  I hurried and taped it back up and left it on the countertop for the twins to get home.

    They were in awe when they finally opened the box.  Inside was a short note explaining that there was something fun for each day leading up to Valentine’s Day, with lots of little numbered packages inside.  They wanted to open them all right away!

    #1 (which was technically for yesterday, since today is the 2nd) was a pink balloon with hearts on it, with instructions not to let it touch the ground.  The next hour or so was filled with lots of running around and hitting that balloon…which did touch the ground many times!

    We’ll combine days two and three tomorrow…..day two is some Valentine’s cookies, which got packed as a snack in each of their lunches.  Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks to find out what other fun things will come out of our box!  Thanks Auntie Em!