We’ve got the kids in their Easter outfits and some shots of tulips. Not everything has bloomed yet, so we’ll have more to come.

Tulip depth

Kids in their Easter outfits

In the midst of the rain on Friday, the weather cleared up long enough for us to get some rainbow shots. These pics were kind of on the end of the rainbows, as I had to run and get the camera.  But we did get some nice shots anyway!

Click here to see the rest of the pictures.

OK, so if you’re one of the few, the proud, who visits any of our online stuff (blog, Flickr, YouTube), you’ll know we’ve been slacking off lately. And we keep generating digital information, so I had to do something about it. I decided to publish some of our backlog of photos, starting with a set titled “Winter Fun 2008″. Just some photos of the kids having fun in our Winter Wonderland.

Click here to see the rest of the set!

I love fall, and I love the colors, but I hate the leaves. This big pile was the fifth pile we cleaned up that day. We cleaned up a total of 58 30-gallon leaf bags, for a total of 1740 gallons of leaves. This was the 2nd time (out of 3 times) we had to clean up leaves.  The other times we only had between 18-20 bags each time.  The only reason this is fun is so the kids can play in the leaves. The piles were so big they jumped off a step stool.

There’s also a very small window to get pictures of the fall colors. One day after getting the kids off to school, Kate and I ran around and took pictures of the fall leaves by the lake and by the trestle.

Click here to see our set of fall photos!

Kitchen – Before	Kitchen – After
Dining area – Before	Dining area – After

It’s been a couple weeks since we posted. That’s because we’ve been occupied doing a quick makeover of the kitchen and surrounding areas. Our house hasn’t been updated since it was built. You can see this in the “Before” picture. Same linoleum and wallpaper as the house had in 1986, “rustic country” wood flooring that was splintery and nasty, and a doorway into the dining room that is not used. Also, there was no room for Steph’s buffet and hutch, where most of our dishes and the like are kept.

So we decided to do a number of quick things to make the kitchen and dining area nicer and a little more updated, but nothing too expensive or crazy, since we’re planning a full kitchen update in 3-5 years. So we figured that we would get the walls where we want them, put in a laminate floor, and do some painting. Pretty easy, right? Yeah, seems simple, but there was a little more to do than we thought.

Demolition was easy. Sheetrocking and prepping the sheetrock for paint was easy. Moving the wiring for the thermometer and phone was easy, but took time. Moving the central vac point was not too bad. Getting the laminate down seemed easy, but there were a couple of sections that were complicated, like the kitchen and laundry room. Apparently if you haven’t done this before, you should start in a nice square room. It took us a little time, but all of the linoleum is covered, the gross wood floor is gone, and the laminate is down. Some new mouldings and paint were added, and the kitchen is almost done. One wall is left to paint, and that’s due to the wood windows and trim that need to be refinished and painted.

Click here to view a full set of photos from both demolition and construction.

UPDATE: It’s done!  The kitchen and dining area are finished.  Some painting is left in the laundry room, but it can wait.

Happy Birthday and Happy Mother’s Day to Stephanie!

This little project has taken a back seat to some of the outdoor projects since the weather turned nice. However, the weather got a little too nice this last weekend, so we hid out in the cool basement and worked on Stephanie’s craft room. This is the new and improved scrapbooking corner of Steph’s craft room. Lots of drawer space for small stuff and room for all of the machines (some of which came along on our anniversary this year).

We also built a little carpentry project too. Stephanie wanted a little magnet board. I was not satisfied with the tiny ones you can buy, so we built our own with some poplar pieces, a 24×48 sheet of steel, and some smoke, sawdust, and sweat. We haven’t tried anything like this before, but it turned out OK. Nobody lost any fingers, and it looks pretty good for a first attempt.

The next steps are to add some more shelves, and to get Steph an art table with a built-in light box.

While we were out watering our new plants on Saturday, we found a little surprise in one of our impatiens baskets hanging from the porch. A bird flew out of it, and when we looked in, there were a bunch of little eggs in there. The mama bird was protecting the eggs, and there was also a male flying around as well. We thought that was pretty cool, but then we went back to look a little later, and one of the eggs had hatched! A little mouth popped up when it heard our voices, looking for food. We’ve had to put a ban on everyone going out to look so the other eggs can hatch and the parents don’t kick the babies out. We’ll post more pictures if we can get some.

Me and Chris have a little addiction to plants, especially beautiful flowers. This is a picture of some clematis growing in our neighbor’s yard. The flowers are about 4 inches across and the whole vine is about 5 feet tall and the entire trellis is covered with these blossoms. I have never seen a clematis like it before. It is so beautiful here in New York. You can grow so many different kinds of plants. After living here for more then a year, I realize that Utah really is a desert. It is so green here in the spring, and even the grass on the sides of the road will stay green all summer long. I know it was green in Washington but there was not enough sun (imagine that) for some kinds of plants. We were so busy moving last year that we were unable to fulfill our planting urges, so we have gone kind of crazy planting the last few weeks. We have been moving and removing some of the old bushes to make way for some more color. Admittedly, we are having a little too much fun. Every time we get done planting one set of plants we swear we are done, then the next thing you know we find more cool things to plant. Right now I have 4 or 5 plants sitting on the porch waiting to be planted when the rain stops. We also made a spot for a little garden for tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. We were never successful growing a vegetable garden outside of Utah and I have missed having the fresh vegetables. Tomatoes are supposed to do well here if we can keep the critters out. I can’t wait for fresh tomatoes, it has been way too long. We will post pictures of the yard when some of it starts to fill in. We just hope the deer don’t eat anything in the meantime.

We’ve taken some other pictures around the garden – click here to view more photos from the set.