Front Entryway Remodel picture overview of the process

Feb 23rd: Start of demo, say goodbye to awkward front door location/level, and super tiny and tall stairs to the loft. They've already leveled some of the unevenness in the floors in this picture.

March 27th: Removed window, put header in for new front door, and halfway thru knocking out the wall.

March 10th Exterior: New front porch roof finished (and missing corner of the roof filled in) and bricks cut to make way for the new front door.

March 10th Interior: new stairs built and entry way floor level raised

March 12th: front porch cement poured, and old front porch foundation raised a bit to faciliate closet that will be built there.

 March 27th: Drywall and new front door installed.

 (view from old front door)

 April 6th: Walls painted and closet door on!

April 19th: Front entryway tile, hardwood and stair tops finished

June 8 and 9: Chris finishes up the stair railings by installing newel posts.

June 11th: Chris and I stain the front door and install a real lock/ handle and July 8th I finish painting the exterior trim.

first photo again for reference:

Kitchen Remodel picture overview of the process

Feb. 21st: Start moving out of the kitchen. 

Feb. 22nd: First day of demo

February 23rd: mostly done with wall demo. 

Feb. 24th: tile and ceiling ripped up

March 10th: new walls framed in ready for drywall

March 27th: Dry wall up and mudded.

March 31st: Kids help paint the new pantry (3 sets of missionaries came to help prime and paint the kitchen walls. I do the rest.

April 6th: final coats on all walls complete.

April 10th: Day 2 of Cabinets install (both kitchen and desk area)

April 11th: Cabinets finished, Chris mounts suspended seat hardware.

April 19th: 2nd day of floors being installed!

 April 24th: Floors are finished!

May 3rd: Counters come in!

May 27th: All moved in and pretty much done! (just some trim painting left)

First photo again for reference:

NASA robotic Mining Competition

The MSU team this year did really well despite having their robot start smoking during a practice run and their first official run being an accidental disaster.   They stayed up really late after the smoking run and re-wired things. Then the next day for their official run they had problems booting up the system. With 7 minuets left, it completed the boot up and in their excitement and haste to get the program running, the driver accidentally issued a shut down command. And... so that was it for that run.  The people funding them had told them if they didn't qualify this year (mining at least 10 kg of the mars dirt/sand stuff) they wouldn't be funded for next year. So the pressure was on to make their final official run a good one. They practiced the set up many many times to make sure they had the flow just right and figured out how to minimize the boot up time.  Chris had been updating us (both the Betteridge and the Archibald families) through our Slack app throughout the whole week. So when it was time for his final run, many of us were watching the live stream and cheering him and his team on across the country. It was so fun to read the comments from our family members as they came in live during the run. Technology is amazing! They ended up having a GREAT run and mined more than 20 kg!  They came in 9th place out of over 40 teams. Pretty cool.

First Week of Summer!

We started summer off with a long play date with Alec's good friend Twain and a lego party. The kids built some pretty cool landscapes with hidden entrances to secret areas like inside caves or behind waterfalls. Gwen built a cool castle.  We had to make things as fun as we can by ourselves since Chris was gone in Florida this week.  My pregnancy brain wanted lots of junk food so we had little debbie cakes, cheetohs and ice cream sandwiches.

The second day of summer we went to Lake Tiako'Khata with Audra and Dash.  I'm so glad Audra gets me out of the house to do fun things like this.

Whatever kind of Lilly these flowers are finally bloomed in one of our pots on the deck. This was left over from the people who lived in the house before us and was a total surprise to me when it popped up and started growing amongst the other flowers I had planted a few years ago. I'm glad I didn't weed it out as a weed that first year. I love it for the week or so that it stays bloomed.

Yay for no school uniform/dress code! I loved seeing Gwen sport one of my favorite shirts from when I was a little girl.  Best Reunion Shirt Ever.