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I think it is about time I put up a post with some pictures of the toddler I watch (hope Mom and Dad don't mind). I have been watching her for over a year and she is such a joy! Lately her personality has really begun to emerge and it is funnier than anything!

One of my favorite Natalie moments happened while I was sitting in a chair on our screen porch. She came out and climbed up on my lap. We were just leaning back enjoying the newly budding trees and gentle breeze, oh so calming. Well, Natalie, in a very serious way, mind you, wanted to put in her two cents, about the whole situation. What do you think she said? Woof-Woof, sort of half heartedly and then nothing more! -Deep thoughts from Natalie! Gotta love it.

Here are some of my favorite pictures:



Wow I hardly recognize this baby! Except that she has a magazine in her hands, this is quintessential Natalie behavior, she loves a good magazine or catalog!




Natalie used to make the greatest scowling faces at you for no reason, although I haven't seen her do it for a while. This is the best one I got of it, and mind you it is not as good as she can make, but it will have to do!

The other picture cracks me up. Natalie loves to hang out on the screen porch when it is open to her. But this picture shows one of the main reasons she loves being out there, if you care to look in the top left corner you will see the back half of Buddy! She loves to chase him and scream as loud as she can as soon as she gets close enough to touch. The cats are grateful for her built in Natalie warning system.




Natalie is very loving! She loves to give big hugs and just recently has been loving to give kisses! Here she is hugging and rocking one of her teddy bears. Notice in the second picture the bear is pinned upside down. We'll have to work on that!




We have a special time of day that usually involves Justin coming home and handing over a small cup of Cheerios for Natalie to carry as she teeters around and eats them. Of course I have to give Justin a small cup for him too, but I tell him not to fill up on the antipasto! I happen to know for a fact that Justin enjoys his Cheerios just as much as Natalie, I guess some things never change!




I just love these pictures! My favorite picture is the one on the right, I think she though I was a little crazy, but I think they turned out cute!

Cooking up some fun

We have been working like mad on the kitchen the last few weekends. We wanted to have the upper cabinets done before we leave for Utah in June, but I really don't think we are going to have the time.

We still need to fill some holes, sand, add another stile to the cabinets (this is your basic building term for the vertical supports in a cabinets door, etc This will help it not look so boring) you can see what I mean in my little renderings that I drew really fast one day while Natalie, was napping.

I am really hoping to get this done by the end of the summer for sure. But who knows!

Here is one of the renderings, the line drawing then the semi-colored version. I used a photograph to get started so it was hard to get the colors right, but in the end we are planning on white cabinets, ether concrete or marble tile counter tops and a robin egg blue glass backsplash.

We are also planning on installing wood floors. There is a company called Lumber Liquidators that has an unfinished, slightly lower grade oak. Lower grade, meaning there are knots and some more waste or just plain bad pieces. But, I love the floors with a bit more character, so I am happy to pay less and get what I want.

In this rendering, I remembered to move the dishwasher into its future home on the left of the sink. The problem with its current location is that you can't be cooking and loading the dishwasher, so by moving it to the other side, I can cook dinner, while Justin cleans all the dishes I'm making - creating a perfect world, our own little Zion if you will.

We took out the cabinet above the microwave and rebuilt it. Now not only can I fit all my spices, but I can also store the tall bottles of balsamic vinegar and what not! This change also adds a nice bit of dimension, especially for the crown molding! All these seemingly small changes, with I am sorry to say a lot of work for my sweet husband, definitely makes a huge difference and equals a happy wife.

So, more recently, within the last four weeks to be exact, I saw a picture of a beautiful kitchen with display boxes above. Of course we could not afford the custom cabinets in the photograph. In fact, we cannot afford any new cabinets at all. So, of course, we just get creative.

Our church building is being remodeled, so we talked to the man in charge and he let us salvage some old, perfectly good window casings. We have already used the wood for several different projects, but my favorite project by far has to be the new display boxes Justin built for above the cabinets. It brings your eye up and helps me to store all my many, (maybe too many, but I won't admit that again) dishes! In a few weeks we will putty and paint the entire cabinet so that you can't tell they ever lived apart.

These show what happened it seems all at once. Justin cut all the boxes outside (I did help a little). then he brought them in and had a bulk of it done in about an hour. Then he finished the other side the next day or two and within a few days he had the crown put up perfectly without any gaps at all! What a MAN! Thank you honey!

This last picture is just the shelves rearranged a bit,
now that a few more things have had to be moved.

Falling for you...

This Memorial day post is dedicated to my brother Josh! Thank you so much for being willing to serve our country! To serve us each individually, to give us the freedom to live and enjoy our beautiful country free from fear and oppression! We love you and honor you! Thanks to all our friends that have served for us as well.

We decided this Memorial day to enjoy the beautiful outdoors. We took a day trip to the Dupont Forest. The are a ton of water falls located there. We saw 3 and really loved how nice it was to take the little hike to see each. We had a picnic at triple falls. It was fabulous eating sugar snap peas and fried chicken with the mist from the water coming in waves to cool us off. We brought Alex along. She was a good trooper and didn't complain at all, accept at the end when she started to curse all hills!

After our hike we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie and thought it was pretty much as good as The Last Crusade which was my favorite.

Hooker Falls ----------------------------------------------- Us ------------------------------------------------------



Alex and me----------------------------------------------- Triple Falls -----------------------------------------------



Lunch break at the falls------------------------------------- Looking up at the falls ------------------------------------



Trees, and Flowers------------------------------------------ and Ferns oh my! ---------------------------------------



Covered Bridge View --------------------------------------- High Falls --------------------------------------------------

Late Bloomers

We have a few more lovely plants to showcase.
My favorite is from our tulip tree.
This is the first year we've seen it bloom and they are incredible.

Tulip Tree Blossoms

Rhodo.
This is the fist time this has ever bloomed!

Not really sure!

Hostas

Mail Call

I am sure you are all getting sick of the random projects on our blog, but hey it's our blog right?
I just painted our mailbox, it looked so bad before. And for a mere $2.96 it's brand new yet again!

Happy Anniversary

We had our 7th anniversary last weekend. Technically we didn't even get to hang out, it was a bit of a bummer. I was in a stake play, and had a women's conference all morning then we got to hang out for a mere two hours and it was back for another performance. Thank heaven I finally have some free time. It was really frustrating on our anniversary because we wanted to go out and have a nice late lunch/early dinner at a new restaurant downtown. We walked around for about 30 minutes and everyplace we passed by was closed from 2:30 - 5:00 (we were together from 3:00 to 5:00). So we went to Mellow Mushroom, which was delicious, but not that exotic. We took some pictures of ourselves to commemorate the day.

Spring Has Finally Sprung

We have been busily taking pictures of our ever changing yard. Actually this month alone we have taken well over 200 pictures of the misc. plants in our yard. We had to really narrow these pictures down to find some of our very favorites. Justin has really done a great job getting these. So without further adu, here are just some of the reasons we love Western North Carolina, and our new yard!

The front yard

Rain soaked azaleas

Flowering Dogwood

Ajuga among the grass

Pink Rhododendrons

The vines sucking the life out of our trees.... English and Poison Ivy

Even the weeds are prettier here ;-)

Sweet smelling lilac,
seriously though, our entire yard was full of their wonderful scent.

Newly transplanted ferns