Our new home!

I swore I would never do it, and we didn't know we had done it when we did it....but we bought a "fixer-upper"!

JD and I closed on our new house December 14th. It has been a little over a month and tons of work later.  We have had every repair-person out imaginable -- fireplace repair, plumbers, flooring, garage door guy, remodeling guy, radon people.... Too much for us to do by ourselves.

The house is just about under control now.  We can go back to saving money (for future problems!).   Here are some pictures of it:

We bought one of those cool ladders that changes shapes and sizes. JD says he wants to put up a climbing wall here.  I did say no to that.  

With the blue painting tape and orange walls -- someone said it was a "Bronco's Kitchen."

This is the living room/dining room and the walls were a periwinkle blue.  But not all the way up into the vaulted ceiling. Just half way. Weird.  We painted over everything a cream  color for the time being.

The taller balcony is our bedroom area.  We call this the "Juliet Balcony."

We have a big yard by Denver standards.  There is no fence though.  I guess we'll have to put that in, too.

JD and I love color.  We actually painted over the original yellow paint with burnt orange.  We like it!

I love all the windows in the house.

We have a deck that won't be in direct sunlight!  We can also sit out on it without roasting or smelling our neighbor's cigarette smoke!  (That is something we DON'T miss about our old place.)

The Nativity

The Nativity by Brian Kershisnik (click on it for a larger image)

I saw this painting recently in the BYU Alumni magazine.  I loved it!  When I initially saw it, I had just quickly glanced at it.  I thought it was the birth of a baby -- any baby -- into the arms of loving parents. I didn't notice the man (Joseph) -- just the woman, the baby and all the angels rejoicing.  I thought of our ancestors and the excitement they feel when a spirit enters his/her body and comes down to earth.  I like to think of my own relatives who have passed on, and that they would be nearby when a child comes to our family -- whether it is a new niece or nephew -- or one of our own one day.

It wasn't until I was Visiting Teaching that I pulled out the magazine to show my friend when I realized that it was entitled "The Nativity" and depicted the birth of Jesus Christ.  I read a commentary on a blog about the painting (not from the artist).  He noted that Joseph looked interesting.  He thought Joseph was either exhausted from the birth or was over-whelmed at what this Event meant for the world.  The blogger also noticed that the angels' eyes could not stop looking at the Child -- that the angels continued moving on -- as if they were ready to get out there and share the Good News!

Adios 9020

About 2 weeks ago, JD and I moved out of our house.  We sold the house and began the wait for a short sale to go through on a house we liked in Littleton.  It was odd clearing out our house and seeing it bare.  We had many, many good memories in that house.

• This was the house I was living in when I first started to date JD!
• We once caught 13 mice in it. (Most being babies, because who knew -- mice get pregnant.) That was a scary time for me.  (We also paid an exterminator for that one!)
• JD ripped out the same bathroom twice and re-did it, twice. 
• JD left his mark on the house -- he pretty much remodeled every square foot he could in that house.  He did it very lovingly...
• JD scared the daylights out of me when we were dating. I had accidentally locked him out of his apartment when we were dating and drove home without knowing he couldn't get back in and he didn't have his cell phone on him.  He then walked more than a mile at 1 am, and started to ring my doorbell!  I thought it was a killer at my door.  (One good thing from that experience -- he found a rake on the side of road and picked it up. We still have it!)
• We weathered many a snow-storm in the house and would walk to the nearby Village Inn to eat when we had a snow day.
• Lots of BBQing, hanging out with friends and family, Superbowl parties...
• We hated the new carpet we bought after it was installed.  We also hated the turquoise wall we painted in our bedroom at first.  Then they both grew on us!  We loved them both!
• Speaking of paint colors -- we have experimented with many colors. Our walls have been painted the following (though some didn't last very long at all):  2 shades of yellow, lavender, dark blue, red, turquoise, sage, another kind of green, and many creams and off-whites.

Our realtor was awesome!  Highly recommend her!

JD worked really hard the week we moved out!

Now on to a new house -- "our" first house we are buying together. There will be lots of projects for JD to do!  

Good bye red kitchen!

4 Birthdays

JD and I flew from San Juan to Omaha on Thanksgiving day!  My whole family was there with the exception of my brother and his family.  We stayed at my sister Staci's house and it was great. There were 8 kids running around!  We even did a little "Black Friday" shopping but we -- okay, me -- I  do NOT wake up at 4am.  Not even to save money.  We were out of the house by 7. That's kinda reasonable.

Friday night of that weekend we celebrated 4 birthdays: Amy, Staci, my dad, and niece Anna.  They all have birthdays within 2 weeks of each other.  Our nieces Kennedy and Delaney put on a magic show for us that night and JD was a guest performer for the evening. Who knew that he could make balloon animals!!!?  He also just made crazy hats.  I am not sure if I really knew this.  It was fun evening!

On Sunday JD and I drove to the Winter Quarters temple in Nebraska to look around.  We walked through the Visitor's Center and walked around the pioneer cemetery across the street -- which shares space with the temple. We learned that the early Saints of the Church buried their dead there. Luckily they made a map of the area indicating where each body was laid.  This was a very good (inspired) idea because years later people started burying other people all over it -- and the Saint's gravestones all became lost.  There is only 1 visible gravestone left from the pioneers.  It is that of a woman and her two sons.  So, we have a map of each Saints' name and where they are located -- though there are no gravestones. There was probably a hundred or more people on the map -- 2 of them being JD's relatives.

We are standing in the cemetery.  It was actually really pretty, especially with the temple.

A warm Thanksgiving!

At the beginning of each school year, I always forget how hard the first 6 weeks are.  It is during this time that I always tell JD that we need to plan a vacation for my Thanksgiving break!  So this past September we decided that we'd go to Puerto Rico for the week that I have off!  It was an awesome vacation.

 A few points of interest:  Puerto Rico is hot and humid.  We asked our taxi driver what the heck the summer was like if it feels like this in November.  His reply, "Oh, it's humid in the summer."  Okay, it feels like 99% humidity right now!   This leads me to another point -- taxi drivers.  A good idea. We rented a car for a little more than a day and that was enough to send me over the edge.  The driving reminded me of driving in Mexico, but not quite as bad.  Still....people don't merge, or yield or even use their horns.  And they turn whenever they please.  

Well, we thought the people of Puerto Rico were very nice and our hotel and area were fun to explore.  The grassy area around the pool warned us of the  little hermit crabs that climb around. We didn't see any, until we were barefoot on a strip of grass 200 yards from any way to get out.  The strip of grass had a fence on one side and a cliff on the other.  I had stopped walking and out of the corner of my eye I saw many little things moving by my feet. The crabs were everywhere. Ick. We walked gingerly back to the hotel trying not to hear or feel a crunch beneath our feet.

Of course there were some funny signs in english around.  My favorite was in our hotel pool area.  They wanted to keep people from "saving" their lawn chairs all day. So the sign posted said, "If your towel is left unattended on your chair for more than 30 minutes or for an hour, it will be removed."  Okay.

We went into Old San Juan and saw 2 Spanish Forts built in the 1600s up from the beach. They were used to protect their trade routes.  Very cool to see.

Basement Demolition

This is JD, figured I'd take some of the blogging load off of Amanda this time around and tell you about last weekend.  So my parents' basement flooded not too long ago.  Fortunately they caught it before it turned into the engine room from the Titanic.  Also fortunately most of the damage was done to the one room in the basement they haven't completely ripped out and refinished - my old bedroom.  And yes, it had pink-ish carpet.  Seriously, who puts in pink carpet?

Anyway, I had some free time on Saturday and went over to help finish tearing out walls, floor, ceiling and whatever else we could find in that general area.  I had a great time!  Would it look bad if I put on my Facebook page under hobbies "tear stuff apart" and "house demolition"?

After a breakfast of - yep - bacon and pancakes (don't worry, they're whole wheat!) we got to work.  I love working on houses in any capacity, but when the tools for the job include a crowbar, sledge hammer, and sturdy gloves it just does something good for your psyche.

At the end of the day we'd removed all but one wall and had come up with some good plans to re-create the space in a more efficient way (walk-in closet, pocket door, shorter bathroom vanity).

Super yummy!

Here is a recipe I have made 2 times now, and it is delicious!  And super easy. Click on the link below for the recipe:

Chicken Cordon Bleu in the Crock Pot!