It's like this,

I have a million excuses why I haven't blogged in a long time, you know work and house and stuff, and I feel like I have been aloof lately on our blog- so I will show you a few of the wonderful people we saw this summer.

We finally made it out to Utah in July and even made it down to Cedar City after a year and a half of being away. We love Ohio but I missed my family so much.

One of the main reasons for making the trip was to meet my two new nieces!

I didn't ever think we'd get two at once, but here is heaven on earth.

We met up with some of my long lost cousins who now have kids of their own and had a bbq at Carolyn's house.

Matt and I have the most amazing grandparents. We got to go down to Delta to see my dad's parents (it's been since our wedding) and it was so good to see them.

Did you know my grandpa is the handiest man alive? He built a barn a few years ago the size of a football field... almost.

Did you know my dad plays the banjo? He does, and he's really good, even after taking a break for a while.

We also went to see Matt's grandparents in Logan and Lehi. It was so good to see them and we had a great time visiting after such a long time of being away.

This is one of the strongest, happiest girls I have ever met in my life. And I love her and miss her. We're best friends, can you tell?

Matt and I both got to visit good friends from home that we haven't seen in a long time which was so nice. (See post below for Matt's venture with Arthur)

While we were down in Cedar City my family all went camping.

Can you believe this red rock? I can't believe that I took it for granted for so long. I miss the look of Southern Utah. Can you believe how big my nieces and nephews are?! I miss them so much.

We also had a birthday party for Ryan and Rosa.

I want to kiss them all! I worked really hard to maintain the favorite aunt status,

but I think Matt is winning on favorite.

3 weeks - 3 Rides

The last three weeks have been especially good for Nicole and I. The last weekend in June, we took a break from all the house stuff and went camping. We decided to go out near Rio Grande, Oh to the Bob Evan's homestead. They have some camping and even more important, some mountain biking trails. The weather was nice and sunny, however, in the morning, everything was foggy.

On Saturday we got up early to ride before breakfast, and before we had even made it 50 feet, I broke my chain. Luckily I had another chain to use. We went for a short ride for about 35 min just to get warmed up. Then we took a break and went to breakfast at the origianl Bob Evans restaurant. It sounds charming, but it was about as exciting as all of the other Bob Evans' in the world. But it was still a good hearty breakfast.

After we got done, we went for another ride. There is some nice single track up there.

The following weekend, we left for UT. We were out in the mother land for about 10 days. While there, my brother-in-law and I decided to rent bikes up at Brian Head. This was a pretty exciting venture because Brian Head is significantly steeper than just about anything I have ridden before. Thankfully we rented some burly bikes. The picture below is me with my bike and then James with his bike.

Below, is a steep section that James was supposed to photograph my awesomeness on.

Here's a better close-up of all that awesomeness:
That's about as graceful as I get unfortunately. We rode for about 5 hours. Which doesn't sound like a lot when you get to take the lift to the top and gravity does the rest. But we were both beat by the end, and decided to call it a day while neither of us had yet required an ER trip. I was surprised the next day how sore my upper body was. That downhill stuff is a lot of work.

Then to top it off, on Mon, I got to ride with my best friend from high school up in Corner Canyon in Draper. This was more of a traditional cross country ride. It had a long climb at the beginning...a really long climb. It was especially difficult since I've been living almost at sea level for the last year. But the downhill was worth it. I didn't get to take any pictures of us riding because I left the camera in the truck, but here's a good one out of the archives from the glory days for your imaginations.

Here are some of the updates on our house.

We pulled out the hideous bush weeds in front of our house that were overtaking our sidewalk.

First we tried tying it up to our truck, which worked fairly well.

But that almost ripped off our rusty bumper so our neighbor brought over his huge van and did this.

This was our bush that Matt's mom helped us prune down to a little stick bush. It's growing back quite nicely.

Our flowers are blooming and our lawn is doing better (thanks to bi-monthly treatments and lots of watering).

My sister and her family came to visit us a couple weeks ago so I worked like crazy to clean up our house so that her kids didn't hurt themselves with sharp objects, uncovered floor vents, uncovered outlets, or fall down our basement stairs due to no doors in our house. I unpacked and sorted and organized everything we own. It looked much like a real house when I was finished.

So we are completely unpacked.

And we got a couch.

But no counter-tops yet.

While my sister was here we had a party,

went to a Columbus Clippers game,

and became famous.

(Look closely.)

Oh, it's Master Matt, if you don't mind

It's true.

He is no longer a student.

He's all grown up and fully assimilated into the business world.

(And I can host your next birthday party.)

I'm so proud!

And he only makes me call him Master sometimes.

The move

Well today is officially our first full day in the new house. We moved all of our stuff yesterday. We had people from church show up to help us move in which was a great help. It took about 1 hour to get it out of the truck and into our living room. It should now only take us three weeks to get it out of our living room to a more permanent location.

In general though, we've been moving along. We put the appliances in and had the cabinets and carpet installed this week.

We put in some new lighting fixtures in various locations in the house. Yesterday we also had some friends come through town that have been planning to stay with us for some time. That really added to our urgency to make the house livable. Livable included things like put some doors on the bedrooms and bathrooms, get a shower curtain up, get a light in the bathroom, put blinds on windows, etc. We got a lot of it done but not quite as much as we had been planning. One example is the doors. We were planning on putting up white doors. Unfortunately there just wasn't time to paint the doors, so for now, they just had to go back up. Because we're lucky, we got the the laundry room door on our room-complete with a hole for the cat door.

Turns out, somewhere in the home renovation, we lost a 30 in X 80 in door. How do you lose a 30x80 door? I'm still not entirely sure but I am sure that we have no idea where it is and that our room is not private to cats, children or small burglars.

Latest News

Well things have been pretty crazy around here. What have we been doing? Well, what haven't we been doing? Well we haven't been sleeping, eating properly, showering, brushing our teeth, doing our homework, traveling, playing frisbee at the park, going on walks, and most tragically, riding our bikes. Pretty much all we have been doing is working on the house.

Thankfully, it's almost over. This week we have some new cabinets coming Tuesday, then we have new carpet coming on Weds. Then we have a few more finishing touches to put on before moving on Fri. It's none too soon either. Besides the fact that we would go crazy and probably light the place on fire if it dragged on much longer, we have good friends from Virginia that are coming into town on Sat and are staying with us. (Bryant and Kristy, if you're reading this, we'll at least have a door on the bathroom by the time you get here.)

Anyway, the last two days have been much better because we've started finishing things. Yesterday we finished the half bath downstairs...with the exception of the toilet and the sink. We also have all of the trim painted and back up except for in the kitchen. We still have a nice long list of things to get done, but it's nice to finally start finishing things.

The trim is now all up except in the kitchen. That was a big task and required a lot of leg work; it would go something like this. 1. Go upstairs. 2. Measure new trim piece. 3. Go downstairs to garage and cut trim piece on saw. 3. Go back upstairs and fit trim piece and realize it it still too long. 4. Go back downstairs to garage and cut piece again on miter saw. 5. Go back upstairs to re-fit trim piece. 6. Realize you cut too much off trim piece and it is now too short. 7. Try not to curse. 8. Start over.

We also have all of the walls painted except for the bathroom upstairs and the touch-up work that needs to be done. Note: the walls are not as green as they look. In fact oddly enough, even though both rooms were painted from the same can, they constantly look different shades from one another.

Anyway, Friday's the big move and we're exited. I can't wait to unload the truck, lay down on our new soft carpet and take a nap.