Baby Clayton Lance Fischer

I absolutely love being an aunt! And now I have another new nephew to love and buy presents for!

Clayton Lance Fischer was born to Lance and Kendra on May 3, 2014 at 2:35 AM. He was a TINY 5 pounds, 12 ounces, and 19 inches long.

Kendra is my hero. She has had two wild deliveries in the past 15 months. I pray every day that my babies will be as healthy as hers, but that I won't have her deliveries! Love you Ken!

I love all that dark hair! Kendra sent us this picture on their way home from the hospital.

We didn't get to see Clayton until Mother's Day, a week after he was born, and he was still sooooo small!  He actually only weighed 5 pounds, 5 ounces then!

Our friends Nate and Kim Christensen live next to Diet and Myrna. Kim had her first baby within a few days of Regan being born, and had her second baby within a week or so of Kendra's new baby. They brought baby Hopelyn (I'm not sure if I spelled that right) over to compare tiny baby sizes. Clayton has a little smaller features, but weight and length are almost the same! Aren't they soooo cute!?

The Real Update

Ok, so my post a few days ago was really not the most recent update. Here is the real update, current as of today!

We finished the mudroom! I LOVE IT! As you can see, I'm already using it. We have one outlet to put in and the vent cover on this side left. On the other side, we just need the cabinets to be installed (this week!) and put in the washer and dryer (in the basement) and then we're done!

My crown shelf Matt made me. More places to put our crap.

Matt put in the fans and my mom put in all the light casings! My mom is a freaking champ! A week or so ago, she came up and saved my life! I was super stressed about our room and car and everything being a total disaster and she came up and cleaned my disgusting bathroom, did all of our dishes and cleaned the kitchen, washed my sheets on our bed, and cleaned out my car! AND THEN she came over to the house and put in a billion light casings! We got so much done that day and it was sooo nice to go home to a clean room and drive a clean car! THANK YOU MOM!

All the trim (except where we will have cabinets) is in! Doesn't it make a difference?

The closets are all officially done too! Matt and I installed all the hanging bars, so we are ready to go! Matt worked on a house that is just getting finished (in fact, the people have already started moving in) and they have NOTHING in their closets. No shelves, bars, nothing. I am so happy that ours are done and ready to go.

Smoke detectors and light fixtures are all installed inside (we still have to do the outside lights, but we are waiting for the house to get painted).

Our tool closet! Actually, this is our pantry. It is going to be a battle to get Matt's tools out of there so I can fill it with food sometime soon!

Matt and I worked like crazy on Saturday to get all the rock finished. When I say finished, I mean put on the house. We still need to grout, clean, and seal, but it's all on.

The garage got fire-taped and mudded today! Yay! Now we can paint in there and then we can put in the finish electrical and the garage door!

Holy crap! The panel is all tied in! Remember what it used to look like?

February

Last week!! We had our inspection on Friday and passed, so now we can get our power connected TOMORROW! I can't wait to turn all the lights on and see everything the way it is supposed to look!

We are getting ready to finish up all the tile. I talked Matt into doing some glass tile accents in the showers and am happy to finally get my way! This is what $500 dollars looks like:

I got the joyous job of painting on the "Aqua Guard" where Matt will put tile. I had to do three coats, and I ended up with splashes of the stuff all over me! This is the guest bathroom:

Master tub (or as Reagan and Harrison say, "Towie's tub")

Master shower

This is what the grout looks like wet... we'll see what it looks like tomorrow when it's dry.

Our new friend and neighbor, Blake, is doing our soffit and facia. He has been working Saturdays and nights at the house with us to finish, but here's a sneak peek at the porch! He will be done tomorrow!

Phew! We've been super busy, but we're starting to get to the part that other people will finish for us! We can call the painter to come back and paint the outside, we can call someone to come and start building the rock wall and leveling the lot, we already have the insulation guy coming to insulate the attic, the power is getting turned on tomorrow, the CABINETS ARE GETTING INSTALLED THIS WEEK, and we can start doing tile in the showers and then we can carpet and oh my gosh we are getting so close! There is still a lot to do, but we are soooo close! I'm not going to count down (like I am at school- 8 more days if anyone's counting), but it is so nice to have stuff getting done and to know that there aren't too many things that will be really time consuming! YAYAYAYAYAYAY!

Flooring!

Matt and I have been working so hard and we are getting so close to the end! Everyone who comes in always says that we are so close! I wish! It still feels forever away. There are so many little things left, but I do have to celebrate the little things we get done!

The hardwood floor looks more beautiful that I could have imagined. It is soooo filthy and I can't wait for all the carpet to go in so we stop kicking up dust! Matt was a champion. He put most of the flooring down in one day. He was a major perfectionist too! All the seams had to be just right and if the piece chipped when he cut it, he would cut another. I am glad though because it really looks so amazing!

The mudroom is sooo close to being done! We got the tile done in the mudroom and just need to finish the shelving and put on the baseboard and finish electrical.

View from mudroom into the kitchen. Matt chipped one tile while he was putting in the hardwood and had to rip it out. He'll fix it when we start doing shower tile.

Finished tile in the guest bathroom.

Finished tile in the master bathroom.

Now that flooring is done, we can get the cabinets installed! Hopefully they get finished soon! We can also finish the baseboard, start finish electrical, get the power tied up and turned on, finish the tile in the two showers, finish the rock outside, get the outside painted after the soffit and facia get done... and so on and so on and so on. Really we are close! Keep posted for more!

Turkey Success!

Matt has been turkey hunting for four years now. He started right after we got married and has increasingly become more and more obsessed with turkey hunting each year. He has also had NO SUCCESS. Finally, this year, the busiest we have ever been and with the least amount of scouting, Matt finally shot his turkey! He sent me this picture when I got to work. He got up soooo early every day to go hunt and then would go to work after hunting. On this day, he was hunting alone. He was sad that no one was there to give him a high-five, but he said everyone on the mountain could hear him whooping and hollering after he shot it!

 

That night, Matt and Jenny (okay, mostly Jenny) cooked Matt's turkey and they had a Thanksgiving dinner! I was at my class so I missed the whole thing. However, I did hear that the turkey meat was "the best turkey" Matt had ever eaten. He said it was super moist and didn't taste gamey at all.

A few days later, Brad's youth hunt started. On opening morning, Matt, Randy, Nate and Brad went up to look for turkeys. Matt had pretty much figured out where the turkeys were roosting, so he got them all into the right spot. Matt said Brad was super loud walking around, which is bad because turkeys have really good hearing and eyesight. Matt was worried Brad was going to scare all the turkeys away. Once they got settled, Matt started calling the turkeys and three walked right up to them! To Brad's credit, he took this tom with a single shot! Matt said he threw his gun on the ground and ran down to see his prize! He was one happy camper! They picked up Jenny, Jenni and the little kids and all went out to breakfast at L.D.s in Richmond. Of course, I was at work! I miss everything!

Brad's Birthday

This year for Brad's birthday, Matt and I bought him a ticket to an RSL game. Everyone accused us of using Brad's birthday as an opportunity to go to an RSL game, and they were right. We drove down to Salt Lake on Saturday, April 19, for the game. Brad was soooo excited. He was asking questions a mile-a-minute. He has never been to a soccer game before and has never played so he wasn't sure what everything was. Lucky for us, it was a great game! We had some shots on our goal, and the game-winning shot was right there in front of us! Brad joined in all the high-fiving with strangers when they scored! It was a really fun night!

Quick Updates

I've been thinking about it all day and have come to the realization that we are too busy. We have spent a whole six-eight hours at home awake this week. From Monday to Thursday, a whopping 6-8 hours. We are both up early to go to work, home from work only to run over to the house to start work, and back home between 9 and 10 every night. Needless to say, everything is a disaster. I have loads of laundry in a basket that have been sitting untouched since they were dried on Sunday. The dishes just sit filthy in the sink until they start to smell. The garbage cans are all overflowing. My car is a complete disaster zone. Even my purse is literally hanging by a thread. Any day now it is just going to rip and spill all my stuff out. I am exhausted. Matt is exhausted. He is so exhausted, he doesn't have the energy to hang the new toilet paper roll, so he just sets it on the counter. We have several days worth of dirty clothes on the bathroom floor. Yes. We are disgusting. I have zero energy to do any of that stuff when I get home. I need my house to be done! Not just want. No. NEED.

Here are a few updates from the past week:

I love paying people to do things. It means that stuff gets done and Matt and I don't have to do it! This week our new friend Blake started the soffit and facia. He is also going to finish the siding that isn't done (that we don't have the time, energy, materials, equipment, etc. to do ourselves). Then we can call our other neighbor Dan to come by and paint the outside.

Matt and I have been slowly working away at the rock. We are almost done. Just the post, one wall, and one side of the garage. Then we get to grout the whole thing! Gah. The nice thing is that this is pretty much the last thing we'll have to do ourselves outside. We are paying someone to pour the driveway, and paying another guy to build the rock wall and level the lot. We will have to put in lights and outlets when we do finish electrical, but that's pretty much it outside. Oh, and we need to buy a garage door. 

We started working on tile this week. We are going to do all the tile floors, then move on to the hardwood floors so the cabinets can get installed soon. We are in a bit of a rush because we decided to do granite countertops, which apparently take three weeks to make AFTER they measure your installed cabinets! We were hoping to be ready to close the first week of June, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. It's looking more like the third or fourth week of June if we're lucky.

This is the small bathroom that we started last night (technically we started prepping for tile on Monday, but did the tile work last night). Tonight we got about a third of the way through the master bath. Matt is going to work tomorrow and finish the master bath. In the evening, I will start grouting and Matt will finish laying tile in the mudroom. We're hoping to be able to have me grout all day on Saturday and Matt start hardwood. Phew. We'll see if it actually happens! I can't wait to see what the tile looks like after it is grouted and we put on the baseboard.

So there is the quick update. I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining, because I know that I am the luckiest person ever! I am soooo happy with our house. Everything is coming together even better than I thought it would and I love that we are building it ourselves and that I get to be a big part of that. I love that I know what it takes to build a house and that Matt trusts me to help him. I love that I get to make all the decisions and get exactly what I want! I am sooooo lucky. Just tired.