Salt Flat Fun!

Every year our family gets together for our biannual Salt Flats Motorbike Ride in May and September. So this last Saturday we enjoyed a nice sunny day. I do have to admit that we were a little worried about it being to muddy but almost nothing can keep us away from some motorbiking fun. After getting to the entrance of the Salt Flats we thought that we would try to make it out to our usual parking place, well to keep a long story short we did not make it we got STUCK! This story does end well though, we unloaded all the bikes and after cleaning out the trailer tires twice we got back to the dry place and got ready for a day of fun.

Addie and Quinn with Tyson. Addie was so excited to see Quinn and it was great to see how big they were both growing.

This is how we do lunch at the Salt Flats, we do not bring tables we just put a blanket in the back of the trailer and do a buffet of sandwiches, chips, salads, and lots of goodies.

Becca, Tyson and Quinn going on a four-wheeler ride. Somehow we did not get a picture of Addie taking a ride also, so just picture Addie in Quinn's place, Aaron in Tyson's place, and Me in Becca's place and you will get the picture of what our little family would look like.

Emilee is great on the motorbike. I have to admit that it has taken her a little bit of time to get up the nerve to jump; but did so well that she even got up the nerve to jump over a ravine.

Each year we have to one up the last year of jumping. During previous years we have had just one person jumping, then two people jumping at the same time, then three people jumping, so this year Tyson and Brandon did the jump over the ravine. I guess we will have to see what we come up with in September.

Bryce and Tyler even got into the fun of jumping double over the ravine.

Here is Nate on the little 70 jumping over the ravine.

Matthew getting some awesome air.

Tyson and Brandon are such great brothers they share there bikes with us younger sibling, challenging us to get better and better on bikes that have more power. I think pretty soon we might all need 450s.

Emilee getting some awesome air.

Nate getting some air.

I do have to take credit for this picture, I think that I am getting pretty good at getting the timing just right to get an awesome picture. Here is Brandon on his KTM.

Alyssa having some fun on the jump.

Yes that is ME getting some air. It's taken me a year to get the nerve back into my system for the big jumps, but this last trip did the trick. I was so excited that I probably did this jump 20 times. If you look at Brandon's picture above you will see about how high I am jumping.

Kent on his favorite bike. Just kidding, Nate's bike was acting up so Kent rode it back to the trailer.

One of Addie's favorite things to do is push her stroller around. Thank you Mom for bring it up she is loving it.

Addie still pushing her stroller. You can also see how much fun Matthew had in the mud with the four-wheeler, I think for the next 6 months there will be mud falling off it even after cleaning it with the pressure sprayer. Oh the joys of having a blast.

After a day full of fun we take the bikes to the wash and get them sprayed off. Addie and Quinn are enjoying the rocks by the road. You also have to love my socks. They are my special motorbiking socks that I wear each year, they go up to my knees so I don't get any blisters with my high boots and they are so bright that I never loose them. Therefore I love wearing my awesome socks.

Remodel of Bathroom, Kitchen and Living/Dining Rooms

Remodel of the Guest Bathroom

This is the before picture of our guest bathroom. It was all pink (an ugly pink I might add) the vanity, mirror, toilet, bathtub and floor were this pink color.

Demolition! It is really amazing to see what is under all that gross stuff but it was truly rewarding to finally start the process of making it look beautiful.

After a lot of prep work we finally got the cement board on the floor, the tub installed, and the cement board on the walls in the shower.

Brandon laid the tile while I did the cutting. I truly have great brothers, thank you Brandon for your help I truly believe we would still be working on all of our projects without your help.

Brandon and I tiling the shower.

After one night of working on the shower this is what we accomplished (Note: this is on a weeknight after work so we only worked about 2 hours).

I am proud to say after working on two walls in the shower with Brandon, Aaron and I did the third all by ourselves.

The completion of the shower tile without grout.

Finally done with the bathroom.

Remodel of the Kitchen

This is the before pictures of what it used to look like. There is now a wall all the way across with the kitchen on the other side.

This is the old kitchen with the original 1957 cupboards and appliances. Where the fridge is we now have a pantry and computer nook.

We decided to tear out the wall between the kitchen and living room and put a 16 foot 6 inch beam. In order to do this we had to do put two temporary support walls because the wall we were taking out was a load bearing wall.

With the supporting walls up.

Middle view

Start of the demolition.

Brick by brick it came down.

The beam!!!!! Thank you family and friends for helping lift this huge thing into place.

The beam without the walls. We were a little leary taking the support walls down, but it held. Thank Goodness!

The demolition of the kitchen. This wall was connected to the ceiling hanging cabinets and nothing else so we had to take it down.

The view from front to back with out the wall.

Putting up the new wall.

We decide to put up new sheet rock on the outside wall and we discovered some pretty brick. Due to not having any isolation and not being able to hang the cabinets to brick we decided we not the leave the brick exposed.

Putting up the planks to hang the dry wall to the wall.

Dry wall completed. This is were our new kitchen is going to be.

The Cabinets arrive!!

One wall of upper cabinets done. You just have to love Aaron's facial expressions.

Wall cabinets installed.

Fridge space and cabinets.

We had to install the island cabinets in one night to meet the deadline for the counter fitters who were coming in the morning. It seems to have turned out all right.

This picture shows just how crazy were. Aaron and I did not want to be with out a kitchen for two months so slowly we tore down the old kitchen while building the new one. You'll notice that the wall holding the back end of the sink had been removed. But since we needed it still we had a 2x4 holding it up in the back. This was the day we moved the fridge into our addition so it would be out of the way.

Final demolition of the old kitchen.

The counter tops Installed and the chandelier hung! After looking for a 2 1/2 months, through Lowes, Home Depot and 3 other lighting places and hundreds of chandeliers online we had finally settled on a chandelier that was close, but when we went to pick it up Home Depot had finally gotten this one. With the help of Aaron's family & our own bank account we got it installed

We were finally moved over to our new kitchen.

The before pictures of where the computer nook and pantry will be.

Framing and dry walling of the pantry.

After its all mudded.

Beginning of installing the tile in the kitchen.

This is a better picture of tile pattern.

This is the pantry and computer nook all done except the trim around the door and base boards.

Completion of the tile.


Remodel of the Living Room

Before Picture

Before Picture different angle

Be gone paneling with no insulation.

We found some interesting things about our house. One was that we had a fire in our house by the fireplace. The previous owners fixed the beams and put fire proof insulation in the ceiling so we did the same. Although we have not used the fireplace until we can get it inspected.

Aaron and I get a kick out of what they have done with the house on some parts. They had a tile ceiling in the living room and I guess because of laziness they did not want to take it down and then put up sheet rock, so the just put the sheet rock on top with nails. Aaron pulled one sheet of sheet rock and the whole row came off also.

Goodbye you old door.

The room after sheet rocking and mudding. Thanks again Brandon for helping me sheet rock.

Our new fire proof insulated door.

After painting the living room.

We had to plug our fridge in the dining room while we tiled the kitchen.

Completed to a livable space. All we have to do now is trimming around the window and door and the base boards.

This is our completed dinning area.