Almost there

One week from today we will close on the house.  We are so excited!  In some ways it feels like it has gone so fast and in other ways it feels like it has been years in the making.  Here's a few more pics of the progress:

The stucco color proved to be quite an ordeal.  We were told that it usually ends up looking darker on the house than it did on the sample, so we were cautious to choose what we thought was an inbetween shade.  The garage doors weren't yet up, so we were kind of guessing on what would match  The end result is not really what I wanted.  It is so much lighter than we hand in mind and I don't love how brown it looks compared to the garage but...it is what it is!  I will have to learn to love the color.  It has already grown on me a little since it first went up, but I still don't love it. 

I do, however, LOVE my kitchen island!  That island alone has three times the counter space as our Clinton house did and the best part is that I will have a surface to cover cakes on where I won't be banging my head into the cabinets.  Yeah!

Here's the crew earlier today working on the rock wall in the back yard.  It scared Brook to death to be that close to be that close to the big trucks and machinery.  I thought it was pretty fun to watch though.  There are gong to be several sage brush buried under our yard, and no shortage of rocks in our soil!

For those of you that didn't see my post on Facebook, this is another upholstery project Drew and I did for Brooke's new room.  This proved to be about 10 times more difficult than the chair and has put an end to my upholstering kick.  Someone said they liked the before fabric better than the after.  That person must be a little nutty because that fuzzy multicolored fabric was dirty and disgusting.  And you can't go wrong with a little tufting, am I right?

 

And now we reach today's event of the first day of school.  I took the picture of them loading up in the van this morning because Brooke insisted on wearing her backpack like the big girls.  The school that the girls are now attending is, let me just say, a little wackado!  The classrooms are all different strange shapes and sizes.  Some are wide and narrow and others are long and skinny and angular.  Abbie's class doesn't even have a door to the interior of the building.  She has to walk around behind the school and enter from an exterior door.  Weird!  I was really nervous and little upset to just leave them this morning to stand at the doors and wait for the bell to ring with a crowd of kids they don't know.  I don't know how they feel since I had the good fortune of never having to move when I was little and I was worried about them.  But the reports were all good when I picked them up and they are going to do just fine. 

Cast a Vote

Ah summer!  I thought I would be able to get more accomplished during the days this summer now that I'm not shuttling kids to and from school, but alas, it has not turned out that way.  The days are filled with activities and outings and busy as ever.  Here are a few of our adventures:

 A picnic with the cousins to a park along the Weber River where we dipped out toes and threw in some rocks. 

 

My sweet little Nephew Logan dresses in Spiderman and Superman clothing on a regular basis.  I couldn't help but snap this shot of his little cape blowing in the breeze as he overlooked the river.  Too cute!

 The girls and I took advantage of the free admission day at This is the Place State Park and took in a few pioneer sites.

  

 Enjoying the Fourth of July parade in West Point

 

And all the while the house has been coming along.  We had a day where we went out with the builder and chose the majority of our finishes and I've had my share of anxiety over whether we've chosen wisely or not.  Hopefully it all turns out in the end.  We've only got about 40 days to go now and we can't wait!

This has also been a summer full of yard sale shopping for me.  Just about every Saturday I get out of bed around 7 AM and head out to find treasures.  A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a little chair and decided I would try my hand at reupholstering.  I wasn't quite prepared for how dirty a job it would be taking off the old fabric.  When I took off the bottom I discovered not one but two mud wasp hives along with various insect bodies and skeletons.  Pretty grotty stuff! 

Somehow I wrangled Drew into the project.  I spent $10 on the chair, $17 on fabric, and $6 on upholstery supplies.  The end result turned out pretty cute and will hopefully find a place in our new home soon.

 Let's just get it over with and go through the cakes of the past few weeks.  (You knew it was coming, right?)

 Lorax cake and mustache cookies

 Green Bay Packers cake for our good friend Matt

 A vintage carnival cake and smash cake for a first birthday

 And a girly carnival cake

And now we reach the "interactive" portion of this blog post.  I need your help choosing which family pic I ought to have printed on canvas for our wall.  I have had my eye on these beautiful rolling hills for over six years now.  They on the stretch of highway between Tremonton and Logan.  The problem is that I usually don't think of taking family pictures until the fall and by then the wheat has been harvested.  So this year we headed up early and although the field I originally hand in mind is in on it's "off" year, meaning it was not planted with anything and was nothing but dirt as far as the eye could see, we found a pretty good backup.  And we also timed it just right with a beautiful stormy sky.  

Please keep in mind that we did these ourselves, so basically it was our camera propped up on a folding chair (the tripod is packed deep in the recesses of the storage unit...go figure!) so getting the kids to look at the camera and smile was a slim chance.  So which should it be?  Be sure to cast your vote!

One

Two

Three

Run.....run.....run....Splat!

It's been a crazy few weeks around here.  As I was looking at the pictures I need to post, it was a little overwhelming.  Goodness, I haven't even posted Easter yet!  Ugh.  So let's start out with a barrage of photos to get us up to date. 

 Decorating eggs

 

The Annual Maxfield Family Egg Hunt

 

 This next one is a little tough.  As I posted earlier, we had to give Pogo away.  It's been pretty sad but the good thing is that his new owner loves him and sends us a text every once in a while to let us know how he is doing.  He describes him as a very obedient dog who goes everywhere with him.  This is not the dog we knew, which tells me that he is actually better off with his new family.  We are happy that he is in a good home and doing well. 

 Oh...and did I mention that there was a move in the midst of all these other activities?  Here's Brooke with a look that describes pretty well how I felt. 

 Little Brooke had a birthday in April.  She is just so stinkin' cute!

 Savannah graduated from preschool.  It's off to kindergarten for this girl.

 She also celebrated her 5th birthday Lalaloopsy style.

 

 Here are her pics.  Can you tell I'm diggin' the rule of thirds lately?

 

 

 After what seemed like a bit of a whirlwind of looking at various builders and trying to find lots we could AFFORD in Davis County, we ended up going with a lot in beautiful North Ogden.  Now you may be saying to yourself Doesn't Drew work in Salt Lake? or Aren't they crazy to move further north?  These things are true, but I like to say that the mountains spoke to us.  It is just so darned pretty there and I know that if we would have found a similar lot in the benches of the mountains in Davis County it would have easily cost twice as much.  So we are excited.  The first pic is the hole after it was dug and the next two (excuse the crappy quality of my camera phone) are the foundation in progress as of yesterday. 

And then there were cakes.  There are always cakes!  But wait....there is an excellent story to follow so stay tuned....

 

An adoption cake

 

A shark eating a mermaid for our nephew Ben

 

A Jazz cake

  

Another Angry Birds

 

 And another ruffle tutu (excuse the camera phone again)

A petal cake

 

 A graduation cake

 

A buzzard for a surprise 50th birthday

 

A fox cake for Brooke

 

And another Mario cake

 

A Lalaloopsy cake for Savannah

And now for the cake with the story like I promised.  This happened just this weekend on Friday and ranks up there as one of the worst. days. ever.  I'd been working on the cake all week.  Probably spent 12-15 hours on the roses and then another 3-4 baking, filling, trimming, and stacking the cakes.  I needed a few extra things on Friday afternoon but when I headed out to the car I discovered that Savannah had locked the keys in the car.  Uh oh numero uno.  So we had a neighbor come over and work on getting it open.  Meanwhile Linda offers to drive me to the store to get what I need to finish up the cake.  We get in and I look at the car and uh oh number 2...the girls just got out of school and I forgot to pick them up.  So we zip out to Clinton to pick them up, albeit a little late.  By this time it is 2:15 and the cake is due at 4:00.  We get the stuff at the store and get home and working on the cake.  Fortunately I have a fantastic mother-in-law who helped me get the cake stacked and put together.  It looked awesome!  The fondant was nice and smooth, the flowers turned out beautiful, the pearls looked nice.  I was all set.  Drew didn't get home from work until 4:30 so I decided I could handle the three minute drive down the street to the reception center on my own.  Big mistake.  About 100 yards down the street from my destination I watched in horror as the cake TIPPED OVER!  Holy crap....I just ruined someone's wedding day.  I felt absolute panic.  I pulled over and reached back to prop up the cake with my hands.  It would not straighten out.   The whole bottom tier had collapsed on one side and smashed in.  I had to hold it, all the while my hands smashing into the fondant and ruining it all the more.  I was so stupid.  Why did I drive the dumb thing stacked?  And why did I think it was supported well enough internally when it clearly was not?  I frantically called Drew in tears and fortunately he was in Layton and came within  a couple of minutes.  He helped me lift the top two tiers off the center dowel and I held it in my hands while he drove us to the reception center.  I just felt so sick to my stomach and absolutely embarrassed.  I honestly did not want to even get out of the car and show my face.  It was awful.  Luckily my client was amazing and understanding and so nice about everything.  The reception center had some tools for me to use and Drew ran to Sam's Club to buy new cakes and my in-laws rushed over my left over fondant and ribbon.  So in an hour and a half we were able to throw together another cake.  It turned out okay in the end, but it still wasn't the cake she asked for and it wasn't the cake I had spent well over 20 hours working on.  I don't think I'll be doing wedding cakes any more.

Here's the original cake before uh oh number three:

 

 And here's what she ended up with.  Fortunately the flowers were all intact.

But this is what was waiting for me when I got home....