Yea! I finally have the internet back! While we were in the process of moving we lost our internet due to our computer stuff being at the new house and our internet connection still running to the old house. But our wonderful phone/internet company came Friday afternoon and got us all hooked up. We called them on Thursday afternoon and they said they could be here Monday, but then they were in the area and just decided to stop by real quick. Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my camera somewhere in the move. so when I find it I will post some pictures. Also, as of today we are actually living her legally so that is a good thing too. We are still waiting on our water heater because the shipment was “delayed” due to “weather conditions” blah blah blah.  This means that although all our stuff is here and we are living (sleeping, eating, etc.) here, we still have to go back to our rental house to take a shower. It kind of sucks but it could definitely be worse so I will take what I can get. The county inspector finally gave in and gave us a thirty day temporary permit so hopefully it will be here before then! A big thank you to my family who came down and helped us move all our stuff into the “big house” as Ethan calls it. It was very much appreciated since we seem to have a lot of furniture that isn’t what you would call light. And also thanks to Jake’s parents (especially his dad) who put in a lot of weekends down here helping us build the house. I can’t believe we are finally in, even if it isn’t quite done. Yea!!!

Most of these were taken between May 30th and June 8th. Aunty Em came down to stay with us for about a week and helped us out with the house. Mostly she helped me paint since she is such a professional painter woman these days. We painted the little bathroom and the computer room and touched up all the windowsills. The bathroom is a light bluish color, and we have had people tell us the computer room color is green or blue or gray or teal. The actual color is called tavistock green but it definitely looks different throughout the day.

I think Emily got a little bored working on the house because she walked around taking pictures of random things. This one is a self portrait, I am not sure what that look on her face is for…

We wanted to make sure our jetted tub worked before we tiled it all in so we pluged it in and filled it up. Ethan was very excited and willing to help, mostly because he thought he was going to get to take a bath in it.

Then the weekend after Emily was here, Jake’s dad came down and brought Brandon (Jake’s cousin) with him. They tiled all weekend and their hands were totally raw by the time they left, but they got all the tiling including grout and everything done in one weekend.

 Ethan and Jake tiling the master bathroom shower…

 Jake’s dad grouting the master bathroom tiles…

 Brandon sponging the excess grout off the tiles.

And finally a cute one of Ethan playing in the cupboards. He had been hopping in an out of the bigger cabinets all day and then he came to the little twelve inch cabinet at the end of our counter. I told him that is was too small and he probably wasn’t going to fit because he is too tall. So what does he do but promptly open the door, slide right in, and tell me to shut the door. Obviously he proved me wrong!

I just wanted everyone else to be able to see just how much Ethan loves his pudding!

    We finally got the majority of the house painted and most of the cabinets up in the kitchen.  My visiting teacher and her family were looking for something they could do as a family service project and decided they would come help us out one afternoon.  They started by sweeping up all the leftover sheetrock dust and scraping up the big mud splatters. Then they hauled a bunch of garbage out to their truck to take to the dump for us. Then they even helped us finish priming so we could start the final painting. It was very much appreciated! Here are a few pictures I took over Memorial Day weekend. Hopefully someday our vacations will be spent doing something other than working on the house…

 Here is the living room after we just got done painting it. Sorry about all the spots on the camera, I think the lens must have been a little dusty.

Jake retaping off the entry windows and doors. Don’t you just love the ring around his face where the mask usually covers!

Inside view of the kitchen area

  View into the kitchen from the living room

 Ethan being the “supervisor”

Ethan after I told him I was going to take his picture!

And saving the best for last, no your eyes do not decieve you, yes the walls are orange! After all orange is my favorite color and I had to have at least one room in my house orange so I picked the room I figured Jake would use the least and asked if we could paint the laundry room orange. It is by far the most awesome laundry room ever. In case you were wondering the wall you can see with the window is darker and the rest are a little lighter (Behr brand aurora orange, and marmalade at Home Depot if you care). the white cabinets even it out so it is not overly strong. And yes if you couldn’t tell, I Love It!! Maybe this will make me want to do the laundry more often (or maybe not). 

The day after my birthday it was really warm and we had been working on the house all afternoon. Ethan was being such a good kid that when I went home to start getting dinner ready I decided to get out his pool for the first swim of the summer. Our high temp for that day was 104 and when these pictures were taken around six thirty or seven it was probably still in the high 80’s or low 90’s

 My parents got this slide for Ethan for Christmas and he loves it so much that we decided it would be fun to put it into his pool so he could have his own “waterslide”. This was his first plunge of the night…

 Needless to say he loved it so much that he did it over and over and over. I had to post this picture because I just love the look on his face!

This is what Jake was doing while Ethan played and I took pictures. I figure if I’m not going to eat any barbecued chicken then I should just let him cook it how he wants it, right? And no this is definitely not our first barbecue of the summer. You could practically barbecue year around in Panaca, in fact we’ve probably barbecued something at least once every month as long as I can remember.

 He usually likes to slide on his belly when he is just playing on his slide in the grass, but it took a little convincing for him to try it into the pool…

 Even though he got water all over his face and came up sputtering he wanted to keep going on his belly too!

 It stayed hot for a few days (19th-104, 20th-101) but amazingly by Friday our high temp was only 61 and we got rain and hail. We had dropped over forty degrees in a less than a week. Sometimes the desert weather can drive me crazy! Happy Summer (although not officially yet)!!!