Book reviews

Well, I decided to start giving my two cents about some of the books I've read (I go through them pretty quick), but Carmen thinks my reviews are a little lengthy. So...if you want to find out what I've been reading and what I like, check out my new blog at curtslibrary.blogspot.com. I read at least one book per week, and hopefully I will provide commentary on each of them.

Carmen's B-Day...Last Month

So we're a little slow at getting things up on the blog...but eventually it makes it. For my birthday on May 31st we had a little shin dig at our house with my family. Curt made me a cake and got me a lovely table saw (see second picture: as you can see by the coating of saw dust, I have used it a lot already). I got this other beautiful tool from my family. It's a Dewalt miter saw, isn't it pretty. I almost didn't want to put it out in the garage. I also got calls from Grandma and Grandpa Hogie, Shauna and Ron, and Uncle Brent. All in all, a great day.

Another weekend project...

We were busy this weekend to say the least. Saturday, we went and got a car load of stones and starting building a retaining wall in the backyard. Our 4Runner was riding pretty low with 50 blocks in the back (about 20 pounds each!), but she got them here just fine. We still need a few more loads of stone before the wall is done, so no pictures yet.

The project that is complete is in our master bedroom. On Memorial day, we drained our waterbed and got it out of the way to paint the wall behind it. Now that it is done, here are some pictures. The only thing left in our bedroom is to finish the baseboards (we did the wall behind the bed while it was out of the way) and replace the light fixture with something brighter and not so ugly. Enjoy the pictures! (Sorry if they look blurry, I guess the lens got dirty. I'll take care of it for future pictures)

Baseboards

I guess Carmen decided which project will be next. I think I was setting up the Wii, reading or something, when she decided to start ripping out the old baseboards in the living room. I spent a while the other night painting the new baseboard all the same color, and the next day, we started cutting and nailing it in place. Finally, Carmen gets to use the nail gun she got for Christmas!

In addition to seeing the new baseboards, in the last picture you will see the results of one our first projects. I don't know if the family we
bought this house from was color blind or just didn't care, but it seemed that all of the electric
outlets and light switches were different colors. We even have one spot where there were three different colors on a panel of four switches, with a face plate in yet another non-matching panel. It was a fairly easy fix to replace them all with white ones, but it makes a BIG difference.

One funny story that goes along with the electrical outlet/switch changing project is how we couldn't find the circuit breaker. We obviously didn't want to be changing any outlets with the power still on, but we just couldn't find the
breaker. We checked all the normal spots (garage, basement, closets, etc) and nothing.
Thanks to my wife, the handy-ma'am, she was able to realize that she need only to follow the conduit from the central A/C unit through the attic and onto the other side of the house where we found the breaker on the outside of the house. Who would have thought it would be on the outside? I can already see some punk kid (Andrew...Tony, maybe?) come by in the summer time to flip the switch while we are sleeping so we wake up in a sweat with no A/C.

Keep posted for more home improvement projects. We don't know what is next, but it will either be a retaining wall for our backyard tiered
planters, or painting an accent wall in our master bedroom.

Anniversary Trip

This weekend was our 1st wedding anniversary (May 12th if you've forgotten...). To celebrate, we took a long weekend down to St. George and went hiking in Zion National Park.

If you haven't visited Zion's before, we strongly recommend it. We picked a good time of year to go. In August, it's way too hot. It got up to 97 degrees while we were there! Make sure to drink lots of water.

We went on a couple of different hikes, including one called Emerald Pools, which is a series of 3
levels of pools and waterfalls. It was about 3 miles round trip, with a bit of uphill climbing. We also went to a place called weeping rock. At weeping rock, water is spouting from the side of the mountain. It isn't a stream, or anything, just water that has been soaked into the sandstone and has taken a long time (they said 1200 years) to get down to the bottom of the layer of sandstone. It's hard to tell from the picture, but it is pretty neat.
















All in all, it was a great weekend. It was nice to get away and spend time together. Now that we are back home, it is time to get started on home projects, check later posts for updates in that department.

We got a Wii!!!! (not "We gotta wee")

If you've never played on the new Nintendo Wii, you have to come over and try it out. It is the only video game system that Carmen actually enjoys playing. The games are easy to figure out, but still hard to perfect. The coolest thing is the controller. You actually have to move the controller to make it work. It's like when little kids play race car games, they think they will steer better if they twist the controller. With the Wii, that's exactly how it works! We have the sports games, and I'm getting good at bowling. My golf skills are improving too, I sunk a putt and won a prize at work thanks to the practice on the Wii.

Home sweet home

For those of you who haven't been here yet, here is a picture of our new house. We moved in here in the beginning of February, and we are finally settled in and ready to start some projects (check future postings). We are excited to have something to work on. So far, the only things we've done were to paint our kitchen and change electrical outlets to be all white instead of tan/black/white. Sorry, we don't have any before and after pictures. When we moved in, the kitchen was bright pink/orange. We painted before we even got our refrigerator in place. It was especially tricky where the ceiling is vaulted, but we got it done and it looks much better. We don't know what we will do next, but Carmen has big plans. It will either be redoing a bathroom, hanging a chandelier in our bedroom, painting our bedroom, putting a retaining wall in the backyard, redoing kitchen countertops, redoing the old baseboards, or painting/redecorating the guest bedroom/office. Like I said, she has a lot of plans. I will just keep mowing the lawn each week and carrying stuff for her projects when it's too heavy for her.