1096 Days & Counting...

In honor of our 3 year anniversary today, I thought I'd post one of my favorite wedding pictures! Can you guess why its one of my favorites? Think Harry Potter... think the tree in the background... starting to look familiar? Yup, its Temple Square's very own Whomping Willow!!!

Officially Gradumacated!

Well, while I'm at posting all these pictures I'll go ahead and actually post a really important one! Ben graduated on Friday! He received his MBA from Oklahoma City University and here we are after the commencement. By the way, whoever invented those ridiculous hoods (that are impossible to put on correctly, by the way!) must've been smoking something... Oh and on a funny note, when Ben got his Bachelor degree his tassel was pink, and well... what guy wants a pink tassel, right? This time around he was excited because he thought his tassel would be blue, like at BYU... well, not so blue, huh? For the life of us we could not figure out what to call it... copper...peach...tan? Well, while we were sitting in the audotorium and waiting for the commencement to start I began flipping through the program and lo and behold, there was a guide in the back that told all the colors and their respective degrees. As I scanned for "Business" I grew more and more excited... finally the mystery would be solved and this ugly color would have a name! And then I saw it... Ben had gone from "pink" to "drab." No kidding...

SuperSirius

So we've been cleaning out closets and geting the house ready for my mom and we stumbled upon Sirius's old Halloween costume. He never liked it back then and well... as you can see, it still has not grown on him!

Here it is!

Ok, so here are some pictures of this whole ordeal... First, we have the hole... there it is in all its smoldering glory!
And here we are pulling up the carpet... that foamy insulation thing was SUCH a pain to rip up because it had been glued down to the floorboard...

Once all the stuff was ripped up and the floorboards scraped cleaned, we proceeded to lay down a layer of mortar and then over that went these cement backerboards. At the seams more mortar was applied and they were secured with some special screws.

Here Ben is skillfully laying down the mortar with his trusty trowel. My job was to place those little white spacers!

Yay for cleaning nasty grout off tiles until 2am!!! Despite my smile, I was really not enjoying this step...
And after all that hard work and so many sleepless night... TADA!!! Here is the finished product!!! That wood floor transition/ trim was cut and stained by Ben as well. Also featured in this picture is Sirius's lovely butt!

Step 4: Make An Even Bigger Mess!

Wow, I thought mortar was messy? Watch out for grout! We started shmearing the stuff all over the tiles last night and what was supposed to be the easiest part turned out to be the hugest pain ever! It doesn't help that it stinks too! Kind of reminded me of the smell of the stuff dentists fill cavities with. Basically you spread it all over and into the spaces between the tiles and then you have to clean it all up (but careful not to wipe off TOO much b/c then it won't fill the gaps right) before it dries and hardens. Man, it was awful... but its done now and curing so we should be able to give it one last clean and then Saturday morning we seal. If all goes well, we'll have our living room back in order by Sunday evening!