Friday, October 31, 2008

Happy Halloween

Since we are being boring this Halloween night (we went to the gym and now we are hanging out like any other night), I thought that I would post some pictures from Halloweens past.


Melynda being some sort of crazy school class officer and me being a gypsy.


David is a bleeding patient, Tony as a ghoul, Lane as a vampire, and me as an unenthused something.



*Love* this. Shane (firefighter) and Dad.
Shane is just too cute, I hate missing him on days like today.


My Mina as a fairy.


Jeff as a pumpkin and Curt as the devil.


Me as a little ghost.


Curt as a cute superman.



Me as a witch (again, too cool to smile), Lane as a girl, Melynda as a really fun gypsy, and David as a pumpkin.

Well, I hope you all have a fun Halloween!
Maybe next year we'll be doing something to at least put us in the Halloweeny mood as we will have a house.


Sunday, October 26, 2008

Sunday Stroll

This morning we had a lovely stake conference and then this afternoon we were able to go on a lovely walk.












Silly us.



Saturday, October 25, 2008

paint + gutters




This week they added some exterior architectural pieces (above the upper left window and in the peak of each gable end). The gutters and downspouts were also installed.


On Tuesday it looked like this...



...and today it looks like this.


Yeah, one of the things that they have done differently than in the construction schedules I have been used to is to postpone the painting until now. In my experience, usually the painting happens after the trim package installation but before installing cabinets and any of the electrical and plumbing fixtures.
From a builder standpoint, postponing the painting till now is a pain because taping off all the installed items is very labor and time intensive. But from a home buyer standpoint it gives you a better product. Why? Because in the "normal" schedule the drywall gets dinged from the installations, then you need drywall patches, then paint touch up. Paint touch up on an already painted surface is very difficult to get perfect, you can almost always see where it happened, thus an imperfect product. The way Centex has done our house, all the dings and such happened on just primed walls, so they were able to go and do drywall touch up before paint, giving us a much better chance at having great, perfectionist approved walls.


So far they have finished the high gloss paint on all of the doors and trim.
Next up, taping off the trim and painting the walls a flat, antique white paint.
As I've mentioned before, not much of the builder wall color will be left in the house when I'm done with it, so I'm OK with them doing flat paint because it will be a good priming for each of the paint treatments I will be doing (I usually don't like a flat paint finish because it is hard to clean).




See what I mean about taping everything off, it takes forever to do a good job, which they did.


Excuse my just out of bed look, we were heading to the gym so I wasn't really caring.
Curt looks shnazzy. I wish my hair was perfect when waking up.


It was a beautiful morning. Our house is on the far right.


Remember those neighboring lots that were getting foundation walls?
Well here they are this morning.




Ahhh, pretty trees. Have I mentioned how much I love the trees here...now if we could only grow some mountains it would be perfect. (Nah, I really can appreciate things for how they are).

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Happy Birthday Dad! (tomorrow)

I know you don't check this too often, but hopefully this is a nice surprise for the next time that you do. Hope you have a happy birthday, here are some pictures I've got that I thought would be nice to post.
Look at all that hair! That's more than I've got and I haven't even had any kids yet...look out!




Good times! Happy Birthday!

S.L.Y.

Fall drive













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