Briggs - 15 Months

A little update on my Briggs-y Boy

• He finally started walking about a month ago. It's the CUTEST little walk ever. I could watch him walk all. day. long.
• This is one of my favorite stages with Briggs. He is learning so much every day.
• He is starting to talk! Jenson better watch out because Briggs is right behind him with words! He says
• Mom
• Dad
• Hi Dad
• All gone
• Kitty
• Deer
• Book
• He fakes sleep and snores and likes to mimic anyone who sneezes.
• He throws fits like his brother and  will just scream at you when he doesn't his way. It's crazy how much he picks up from Jenson!
• He's obsessed with outside and wants to be outside every second of every day.
• He is a great napper! He takes two naps a day lasting at least two hours each. And he goes right to sleep when I lay him down. He's an angel baby when it comes to naps.💓
• He is kind of hit and miss with sleeping at night. He wakes up REALLY early, like 3-4am, and poops and then talks to himself for awhile before going back to sleep. I really wish we could change his pooping schedule...😠 He is also a SUPER light sleeper. He still sleeps in our bedroom and oh goodness are Alek and I ready to kick him out as soon as we move!!! Seriously, he will wake up with us just tip toeing around the bedroom as we get ready for bed. And then it takes FOREVER for him to go back to sleep. He's an awful roommate. 😉
• He's got 8 teeth and working on his first set of Molars. Some days he is fine and then others he is completely miserable! 
• Briggs has a weird obsession with textures. He loves feeling soft/new textures with his hands and then lays his cheek onto it. 
• He eats SOOO much. Like..... 3 times the amount of food that Jenson eats. Unlike Jenson, Briggs doesn't seem to picky and eats most everything. So, that's good! But, I seriously I can't keep that kid full! I swear he is constantly grabbing things in the pantry and bring them to me. 
• His favorite foods are bananas, blueberries, and smoothies!  
• He has the BEST deep, low belly laugh. It is the best sound ever!

Jenson- 2 1/2

Okay I've been wanting to do a little post on my sweet little Jenson for awhile now. He is saying and doing the funniest things and I never want to forget them!

• He's is talking more and more but is still behind for his age. He definitely has his own language that only close family can understand and he acts out a lot of things he is trying to say. It's like a 24/7 game of charades. Some of my favorite things he says right now are:
• "Me boom down."- he fell down.
• "Papa air"- Grandpa Lar
• He recently just started calling me "Mama" Which I LOVE!!! He says it in his sweet little soft voice. Definitely a good change from the "Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom!" That I was use to hearing all day long....
• He calls Alek, "Daddy"
• He is famous for the way he says 'All Aboard!'
• Alek asked him to say 'Piggy Back' and he said, "Oink oink, back." But, actually snorting like a pig.... I can't really spell that out.😉
• The way he says 'Back' or any thing ending with a 'K' sound, he says it with a very impressive German accent. It's hilarious! 
• He knows most of his animals but only calls them by the sound they make. 
• The way he says 'Wuv you Mama' completely melts me in to a giant puddle. 💓
• He is still obsessed with Santa, Reindeer, and the Polar Express. He knows that movie by heart and asks to listen to the "Choo Choo" song and "deer" song every time we are in the car. I also have to sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to him every time before he goes to sleep. 
• He loves playing trains and always wants us to follow him around the house in a train formation. Also, he likes to set the chairs up in a line and have everyone take a seat so we can 'go see Santa.'
• He got his first hair cut about a month ago. 
• Jenson is the most picky eater EVER!  He eats oatmeal, apple sauce, goldfish, milk, and cheese.... That's about it. 😅 It's seriously a fight every single night to get him to eat dinner. 
• He asks to go see 'Daddy' and the 'Big Vroom' every single day. He loves his dad and being with him! 
• I love him sooo much. He is the one that made me a Mom and for that I will forever be thankful.

House update

It's been awhile since I've done an update on our house! A lot has happened since my last post. For one... it actually looks like a house now! 😂 It's all framed and enclosed. We got that done just in time for the snow. And I mean literally just in time.

 Pouring the garage floor

Conference weekend (October) laying all the floor trusses and putting our main floor on!

 Starting the main floor walls

Date night!❤

Front porch 

Back porch/walk out basement 

 Garage Trusses✅

Side view 

 Back view with most of the Trussses finished.

 Starting our deck

 Deck finished✅

Underneath the deck (walk out basement)

Front view.
This is pretty much what it still looks like.. except no snow on the roof and it now has shingles! Very disappointed in Al's choice of his trailer placement because it makes it impossible to get a decent pick of the house. 😉😄

 The back view

By looking at the pictures you probably noticed that the house is built out of steel instead of  traditional wood studs and it's a long story as to why. Alek is the one to ask for all the details but, I can definitely give you the short version. We compared prices and found steel to be cheaper. It is also 10x more sturdy, everything is perfectly straight, and it's fire resistant. Again, Alek is the one that knows way more about this. The house itself has a main floor and a basement. 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, and an open floor plan. I was very picky about the floor plan and changed my mind almost daily. But, now that it is framed, I am very happy with the way things have turned out. In my opinion, it is completely perfect. I tell Alek probably 80 times a day how much I love our house. I'm a little bit obsessed.💓

January was a rough month. Especially for me! Our house was stuck at a standstill forever and I felt like nothing was progressing. It was so depressing!! We needed to pass our 4 -way (framing, electrical, plumbing, and hvac) inspection by the County. They were not used to dealing with steel framed houses. It took a lot of paperwork, phone calls, meetings with engineers, and 3 different inspections with 4 different inspectors counting. every. single, screw in the house. 😖😖 I was getting so frustrated and started to lose hope that the house would ever be finished.

But, FINALLY last Wednesday (2/15/17) they passed us ✅ It was the happiest day!!! We had everything ready to be pushed forward. Now, we are flying! Insulation came the next day and sheet rockers came the day after that. The whole main floor should be completely sheet rocked by Thursday. The exterior siding should be here anytime this week!

Originally, we were hoping to have it done by March but, OBVIOUSLY that isn't going to happen. Now, I'm hoping for the end of April. (Fingers crossed.)

This has been the most stressful project we have done. But, even though is has been stressful, I can't help but be grateful for all the memories we have created. Especially with the boys. Jenson loves to go help dad and asks to go up to help almost daily. I love that both Jenson and Briggs get to grow up seeing our house be built and that they are learning that hard work is important. They have the best role model in their life. Their dad is the hardest worker I know. He's super smart and talented at everything he does. I am forever grateful for him for building our family a home. It's definitely going to be weird when it's all done.... what are we going to do with all of our free time? 😁

I am getting more and more excited and it gets closer and closer to being finished. We have been so blessed and we are so thankful for all the help we have received.💗

Here are some pretty sweet drone pictures of all the different angels of the house.

 Hopefully, the next time I post an update, the house will be all finished! 😁😁 Wish us luck!

Bitter Sweet

Instead of just focusing on my house and getting in there as fast as possible... this week I've been trying to changed my perspective.I've been coming up with things I am really going to miss about living with my parents. Here's a few things I've come up with:

• Adult interaction: Al leaves before me and the boys get up and usually doesn't get home until 6-7pm at night. That's a LONG time for me to only be talking to a 1 and 2 1/2 year old. It's been nice to have my dad there in the mornings and Syd and my mom there in the afternoon. Gives me a chance to feel like an adult. ;)
• The ward. Although I don't know much about the ward we are moving into... I am really going to miss going to the Nibley 3rd ward. I love going to Sunday school with Alek and then Relief Society with my mom. I love that my family entertains my kids during sacrament meeting, and helps try to get Briggs to sleep. Plus, I'm really worried about transitioning Jenson to a brand new nursery.😟Hopefully it will be about the time Briggs will be going into nursery and they can have each other for a little while.
• I'm going to miss the big grassy yard. I'm afraid we won't have grass for awhile in our yard, so it's going to be a lot harder to go relax outside during the summer.
• I'm going to  miss wearing Syd's shoes, jewelry, having her do my hair. 😁
• I'm definitely going to miss not having to worry about dinner every single night. Haha
• I'm going to miss having another female in the house to make sure my outfit looks good. 😉
• Having other people there to help play and entertain my boys.
• Always having a babysitter when Alek and I decide we want to get out of the house last minute.
• Having the grocery store, Ridley's, 2 seconds from our house for all those last minute needed items.
• Also, having a few different parks all within 5 minutes from us.
• The cool canyon breeze in the summer.
• The river in the backyard.

Gahhh.. There's just a few reasons... :) My family seriously helps us out so much! We are so grateful for their patience and for everything they do for us. It's definitely going to be weird when we move out on our own. But, I'm sure they are looking forward to not tripping on toys all the time, the house being a little more quiet, and being able to sleep in on Saturday morning. Heck, maybe I'll just stay?! 😉

Will you be mine?

Valentines Day.... This is going to be mine and Al's 8th Valentines since our dating days. Crazy right? I've been thinking a lot about our first Valentines day and wanted to share it. I have already written a post about it a couple years ago so, you can just click the link here to read it. Even though I wasn't totally crushing on him at this point, it's fun to think about that Sweet hearts dance. It was one of the funnest dances I ever went too because I was completely myself. I wasn't worried about what Alek was thinking and was very comfortable with him. It allowed Alek and I to become best friends and created a perfect foundation for our eternal relationship. I love thinking about our high school dating days and all the memories we had. I wish we could go back and re-live them. 💗 Happy Valentines Day!

 

Dreaming

So.... I currently have a saved draft that is an update on our house. I've been needing to do an update for awhile now since the last one I did was in the summer. But.... with so much going on (or not going on) on our house... I'm just not in the mood to finish that post quite yet. When I get frustrated or depressed because it seems like my house is taking FOREVER, I always go to my pinterest board and look at all the pictures of what my house is going to be like. It gives me a little boost of energy to keep on keepin' on. Because, someday all this hard work will be worth it. So.... I figured I would just do a blog post about it and post all my pinterest pictures here so, me and you can dream about my house together. :)

I really am not talented when it comes to interior design. Honestly I just go off of pictures and copy things that I love. Hopefully my house will be similar to a lot of these following images. *** All pictures came from my Pinterest board- House on a hill.

  For the outside of our home we are wanting to do a dark greyish hardie board, white trim, and dark. brown door and beams for accents. Someday, we would love to add rock too.

 

 In our entry way, there is the stair case that leads down stairs and I would LOVE to do something like this. I love the vertical gas pipe look. 

 Family room: dark hardwood floors, light grey walls, and a fire place that looks exactly like this. 😁 I think its beautiful!! I have yet to find brick tile because I am being very picky.... I really do want it to look just like this. Yes, the cabinets will be on the sides too.

 I am most excited about my kitchen! Literally, I might just cry the day my cabinets are installed. Oh, what a happy day that will be. I'm sticking with the traditional white cabinets and white/greyish counter tops. The island will be dk. brown. We have black stainless steel appliances to give it a nice pop. I'm super excited to see how it turns out!

I am even getting a stainless steel farm house sink too! Found an awesome deal on amazon! sooooo excited!

I would LOVE a pantry door very similar to this.

 I have a little bump out in the kitchen with a huge window that over looks the whole valley. We plan on doing something like these pictures for our dining area.

Next to our kitchen is an office area. I literally showed our cabinet guy this picture, so hopefully it will look very similar to this. 😍

 I also showed both of these pictures (↕) to our cabinet guy. One thing I made sure of, when I was deciding on a floor plan, was to make sure we had a ton of storage space. These lockers in my mudroom will be perrrrfect! Plus, how cute is that bench???

Since barn wood doors are sooo expensive, this is something that we won't be able to get right away. But, it is apart of the house plan going from our master bedroom into our bath. I can't wait until we can one day afford it and install it in!

Since I have been deciding a lot of thing with the house, Alek was very determined to design the Master shower himself. Luckily, I have loved every decision he has made. The greatest thing is that it is a nice walk-in shower, which means no nasty glass door that I have to clean! :)

At first, I was totally against having a kitchen in my basement.. because it seemed sooo impractical and I didn't want to have to clean two kitchens!!! But, then I decided to do something very small like this picture. So, we added a place in the plan to have a few cabinets, sink and a mini fridge for Alek to store all his drinks in. That way we can still use it when we are having a movie night but it's not huge so cleaning it won't be so bad. 😀

I picked out tile very similar to this for the Laundry room. Isn't it dreamy? 😍😍 With dark grey cabinets to match. Maybe, it will help make doing laundry a little more fun. 😉

Well... I think that's about it for now. How's that for a little sneak peak of my future house?😆 Someday it will be done right? But, for now I'll just keep scrolling through these pictures, dreaming.

January Ramblings

One of my News Years goals was to write in my blog once a week this year. Whoa! Really challenging myself huh? Pretty sure I wrote in it a total of 6 times last year.😁 So... to go from 6 to 52 hahaha! We will see how this goes. Considering it's January 12th and I'm just getting around to my first post.... well I am already slacking.
😞
Anyways, as I sit here, both kids asleep (win!) I can't really find anything specific to talk about sooo.... I guess today it will just be me rambling with whatever comes to my mind.

January is always a pretty awful month. Everything is frozen and there's not much to do. If I was a good mom I'd probably get us all dressed and go pull the boys around in the sled. But, man, that sounds like a lot of work. Plus, playing outside is always a lot more fun with dad! I'm not a big fan of snow. For reals though, cabin fever and kicked in on it's highest level. Can't it just be summer already so we can get out of the house and go play at the park?

You know how you have good weeks and then like... not so good weeks. Where one week you just feel like super mom and the house is clean, kids are happy, and everything goes good? And then every once in awhile you get stuck in a little rut where you are tired and don't want to do anything and feel like your failing as a mom? Ya, I think this week has been a "stuck in a rut" week for me. Sigh....that's alright though! As long as I'm  trying my best right??

On a completely different note... I started a workout plan this week and well... some might call it a diet but I just want to look at it as a lifestyle change (hahaha) because I really hate diets and don't believe in them. So... I'm hoping that these better food choices I am making are going to last. ;) Anyways, I started the BBG girls by Kayla Itsines It's a 12 week program and embarrassingly enough I started with the 4 week pre-program first. I have done a few of her workouts before and they are INTENSE! So, I figured, why not just start from the very beginning? I guess, technically I will begin the actual program in 4 weeks once I finish the pre-training. But, so far.. so good! I knew the eating healthy would be the hard part for me. But, so far I haven't eaten anything I have absolutely hated, it's actually been quite tasty! It's crazy all the recipes that are out there that don't include processed food and are jammed packed with vegetables! The workouts have also been good! Monday we did legs and cardio, Tuesday we ran, and Yesterday (Wednesday) we did a arm and abs workout. I'm still sore from Mondays workout! I feel great and hopefully I can keep up with it and start seeing results soon! Swimsuit season here I come! 😉

Another reason why I think that this week I've been stuck in a rut (wow I'm jumping all over the place with topics! Welcome to Lindsie's brain...) is because we have received lots of bad news regarding our house. Things that I don't need to bore you with in this post... I'll save that for my house update post. I swear things are always just getting pushed back and not going as fast as I would like. I get my hopes up when I hear how fast things could happen but, obviously things NEVER go according to plan when your building a house. So.... here we will stay at my parents house forever it seems like. Gosh dang those city workers!!!

Anyways... I just stopped typing to look for a cute picture to post of my kids... but I just had to switch phones a few days ago and currently don't have a single picture on my phone.... so lucky you... you get to see a current seflie 😉

Also, I was super pumped to find out blogspot added emojis because I use those things a lot when I'm writing so now I get to add them into my blogs! Yay! 😃