I started the ketogenic diet and going to the gym 3x a week with Dave; it will be 2 weeks on Monday and so far I've lost 9 pounds. This is the first diet I've been on where I'm not hungry. It is a pretty amazing thing. So that is going well. The kitchen reno, however... I called to see where the cabinets were since the website said 8 days to delivery. Well, that is only the case if they aren't assembling them, which they are, so we have to wait till the 2nd or 3rd week of august to get them :/ I'm so done with living like this. Boxes and stuff everywhere. I don't know where anything is and I am not doing tile until after the cabinets, so there's just stuff, tile, and more stuff everywhere!

New picture!

We went to a young womans fundraiser auction tonight and won a picture of the Timpanogos temple. The cool thing, other than that being where we got married, is that when you get up close to the picture, you see it is made up up thousands of tiny temples. It's really a one-of-a-kind piece and we both love it.

We live in a somewhat small neighborhood, about 50 homes. So today we went to the 11th annual neighborhood bbq. It was pretty nice. Out of those 50 houses, there are only 10 that aren't members, so it seemed like a church activity, but our non-active neighbors were there too. I think it's pretty cool to be a part of such a close neighborhood. We are trying to get ready for our trip, so not much is happening with the house. We did do a bit of painting today and I let the kids help. They were excited at first and after a while declared it was boring. haha I've been feeling down about myself lately, buying clothes in sizes I never thought I'd have to. For a long time I just wouldn't buy clothes and would stretch out my other, so now that I decided I needed to get past my pride and get clothes that fit, I am several sizes larger :( I have my endo appt Monday to go over my results, not that I think it's going to point to anything. I did manage to get an appt. with Dr. Brown while I'm in Texas, but think I might cancel it. I don't want to waste hundreds of dollars if it doesn't give me the results I hope for. I have gotten Dave to agree to do the eat to live thing when our house is not boxes and we actually have a kitchen, but I know he doesn't want to and he will cheat when he's out of the house. lol Sometimes I wish I could just leave for a couple of months and go to a fat camp or something and come back 50 pounds lighter. I really hate complaining about this, but it's really weighing on me - no pun intended...

Tea party

Tea party with my girl.

It's the little things

I had high hopes of having the front room tiled before vacation. Day after day I sort, piece by piece, all 1140 tiles. I still have almost a whole pallet left to do and I'm running out of places to stack them. Realistically, it will take 3 more days for me to finish, so I'm not so sure any tiling will get done before we leave. Because it is slate tile, I have to go through and sort each color into its own stack so when I tile can mix them up and won't have one area be mostly grey and another area mostly maroon or another color. I didn't think it would matter, but the last pallet has a lot of dark green ones and the other pallets had none, so I guess I'm glad I followed their advice. The tiles are beautiful though. I can hardly wait to have everything done. Dave cut up one of the pallets and we had our first bonfire in the backyard. It was nice because it gets a little cool in the evenings. We made the neighborhood smell wonderful ;) The kids have been playing outside daily for the first time in their lives pretty much, since we finally have a backyard and a kid-friendly neighborhood. It is so cute to have Will and Maddy ask if they can play at people's houses. Anyway, the point of me bringing this up is, I have noticed Will is better behaved all of the sudden and the only thing I can think of is he is out in the sun - not cooped up every day. One day last week I was looking out the front door and saw a hummingbird, so the next time I went to the store I got a cheap little feeder. I made the "nectar" and put it by the front door and have been seeing hummingbirds quite frequently. In fact, in the last day or 2, they have drank over a cup of what was in there. I was excited and told Dave, "It's the little things that make me happy." He rolled his eyes and said, "The little things, huh... Expensive kitchens and tile floors..." lol well, he got me there, but honestly, the kitchen is a fraction of the cost it could have been because I shop around and we are doing most of it ourselves. Here's some pictures of some tile and in case you missed on fb the master bath I spruced up.

So a couple of weeks ago we got another dog. It was my cousin's dog and they were moving and couldn't take her. I never have liked dog hair, and this dog happens to be extremely fluffy. There is hair everywhere, so I have to block her off from the tv room and the bedrooms. Once we get tile downstairs, the neato vacuum will be able to pick it up daily and it won't be an issue. The neato works great on the linoleum in the kitchen, but doesn't do anything for the long hairs on the carpet except flatten them down. For some reason, I just felt like we were the ones that should take her. She's old and probably only has a couple of years left, but she'll be a good match for Max since he has hip problems and can't play well with younger dogs. Random news: -Dave got called to be Webelos Den Leader assistant. They sure do have an awful lot of meetings... -I started decorating & painting our master bath and on a whim decided to do the flooring too. So I went to Lowes and found the perfect thing for 88 cents a sq ft. I started installing the vinyl wood planks last night. It's gonna look great! Going for the spa feel! -I have gone my whole life not learning how to play chess. Will has learned and is teaching me so he can play with someone. Only for him... :) -Speaking of Will, yesterday we were at Cafe Rio picking up dinner and someone had their bag of food on the floor. Some spilled out (still in the food boxes) and Will immediately went over and said, "Oh, let me help" and put the box back in the bag. It was so sweet to see him do that. The people, however, didn't even say thank you to him :/ -Joshua took his first step without holding on to anything the other day and promptly fell over. He took a few more single steps after as well.

Things seem to be going so good this week. I have been so busy, but I have gotten a lot done. I signed Maddy up for a preschool that is right across the street. It's just out of a lady's home in our ward. The lady that a year and a half ago had her husband divorce her and marry the lady who used to live in this house who had divorced her husband. Yes. The couples divorced within weeks of each other and just decided they liked their neighbor's spouses more. I don't know what I'd do if after 11 years of marriage my husband just left. The girl is very sweet though. I hope she finds someone better soon. I have been getting samples together for our kitchen reno. We are closing on the Orem house this Wednesday, earlier than expected, and then we will proceed with getting a new kitchen! I can't wait to unpack the kitchen boxes finally. I had a lot more to say, but got distracted with feeding the baby and now I forgot.