The Challenge is Over

Last year I blogged about the Cruise Lifestyle Challenge we were doing with my family and X's mom for a year. The challenge officially ended October 1st, and everyone had a good amount of success with completing their goals.

I ended up losing 55 of the 60 pounds I wanted to lose! Unfortunately I couldn't find a "before" picture (not sure if I even took one), so I figure an "after" picture won't be worth much without something to compare it to. Instead, here's a picture of 5 lbs. of fat, so you can just imagine what it looks like (and feels like) to lose 11 of these :)

I also successfully completed a year without sweets (minus the once-in-a-lifetime desserts I was able to try in Israel, Egypt, and Jordan). I had hoped it would be relatively easy to stay away from sweets after a whole year without them, but unfortunately Halloween proved this to be incorrect. At least I feel like I'm eating a lot LESS than I used to! Here's to keeping it all off - until the cruise at least!

Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza 2011

NOTE: For the most satisfying viewing pleasure, please read this blog directly from my website (not from Google Reader or another RSS feed). The before/after images won't work otherwise.

This year for Halloween we were in San Francisco for "Nevada Day", so we didn't have a lot of time to carve our pumpkins, but we still had a fun time picking them out at the local pumpkin farm and furiously trying to complete them before our trip. Here are our results! (Reminder: hover over the pictures to see the before/after images)

"Nightmare Before Christmas" Jack Skellington Pumpkin

"Despicable Me" Minion Pumpkin

Unfortunately when we got back from SF on Halloween Eve, our pumpkins were a little wrinkly, but nothing that a quick bleach bath couldn't fix!

While in SF, we went to a 49ers game, which was AWESOME! Check "Professional Football Game" off of my bucket list!

As a side note, if you have ever wanted to find out what it is like to eat a meal as a blind person, try out Opaque - Dining in the Dark. It is a "Blind Dining" experience where you basically get to eat a full 3-course meal in a pitch-black room! It was totally the most unique experience! They have locations in San Francisco, L.A., San Diego, NYC, and Dallas.

New Callings

Now that X has gotten settled into the area, the bishopric decided that it was time to put her to work. They were going to try to give her a calling that she could do remotely (calling for visiting teaching reports maybe?), but it didn't end up happening. Now that she's back we've heard that all the auxiliaries have been "fighting" to get her, but she ended up with the young womens. Here's the new YW 1st Counselor:

I've been the Elder's Quorum secretary for about a year now. The EQ President that called me had been in for about a year. A few weeks ago X and I were asked to meet with someone in the stake presidency (we weren't familiar enough with the presidency to know if it was the president or one of his counselors), but it ended up being the president! We weren't sure if it was going to be a new calling for X or me (it really could've been for either of us - it didn't matter that she was just called as a YW's counselor), but it ended up being for me. Prior to the meeting X teased me that I was going to be called as a bishop (there have been rumors about splitting the wards out here for some time now), and I was fairly sure I wouldn't be called as the EQ President since our current President has been in for less than 2 years. So any guesses?

I'm the new EQ President!

We both are a little overwhelmed with our new responsibilities, but I guess we got what we were looking for when we decided to get outside the Utah bubble and find opportunities to serve!

Stay tuned next time - we're getting our new furniture delivered this week and finally feel like we can show off our home!

Our New House

BIRD-House that is! We've had this plain, old, log/post sitting out in our front yard ever since we moved in and we've been looking for something to put on it. We were pretty sure we wanted to do a birdhouse of some kind, but none of the ones we found had the right "look" that we were after. But on our bike ride yesterday after a work picnic/carnival, we spotted a bunch of birdhouses for sale and found the perfect one. Here's the final installed product!

There's a tiny little broom leaned up against the door

Sitting atop the log/post

50 Down... 10 to go!

After 9 months I am almost at my cruise goal to lose 60 pounds! I still have 3 months left for the last 10, but I definitely feel like I have plateaued and it is going to be quite a struggle to go this last little bit. It is definitely easier though to resist sweets after all this time! I'll definitely post before/after pictures after the challenge is over.

The Honeymoon

I stumbled across some pictures from our Honeymoon back in 2009 and realized that I hadn't ever posted about them. Since I'm still dragging my feet on sorting through all the pictures from Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, I figure posting these might be a good stalling tactic for this week! :)

X and I were married on May 20th, 2009 in the Salt Lake Temple. We decided to do our reception the night before (at "The Point" at Huntsman Cancer Institute) which made things SO much easier - the day of our wedding was tons less hectic, and we were able to leave right after the ceremony and luncheon. Definitely the way to do it in my opinion! We decided to do a smaller honeymoon up in Park City for a week, and then for our first anniversary we'd do something bigger and better.

Since our reception was the night before, no one ended up decorating our car. Luckily my car was dirty enough for us to manage it ourselves!

We stayed our first night at the Stein Erikson Lodge, and had dinner at the Glitretind Restaurant. Since dinner was included in our Honeymoon package, we decided to be adventurous and try new and expensive things we wouldn't have tried otherwise. Our 3-course meals included raw elk (sliced paper-thin), foie gras (duck liver), quail, peanut butter and banana crème brûlée, and the most random flavors of chocolate truffles - including curry!

We spent one afternoon at the Utah Olympic Park. We found out they give free upgrades on ride passes if you are on your honeymoon! :)

X practices her form on the luge

I couldn't bear to watch

X enjoying a ride down the mountain

I'm not sure if I was enjoying this or not...

Before going down the zip-lines

Waiting for the gates to open

I smiled to trick X into thinking I was going to let her win in our race down the lines

Of course we couldn't leave out the "Alpine Slides". We'll never forget the little girl in front of us on our first run who rode the brakes the whole way down. We would literally wait a few minutes in hopes she'd be at the bottom by then, and then catch up to her in like 10 seconds! Fortunately they let us ride again for free.

I snapped this shot when we were waiting for the slow-poke

Wanna Come For a Visit?

We had our good friends Mike and Suzanne out from Utah for Memorial Day Weekend and we had a blast being good hosts for them. You can read about all we did in their very complimentary recap of the weekend. So if you've ever thought about coming out but didn't know if it would be worth it, see what you think after reading what they had to say!

Preparing for X's Return

I had a lot of work to do before X got home last week. I had secretly turned the house into my own personal bachelor pad (I had lots to hide up in the attic and down in the crawlspace), and there was lots of yard- and house-work I wanted to take care of prior to her return so she wouldn't have much to worry about. Here's what I've been working on the last few months to spruce the place up a bit:

Weeding

Oh the joys of owning your own home! Part of our yard is just rocks, so I was sure that was going to be weed-free; oh how wrong I was!

Our weedy side-driveway

We had LOTS of these in the grass

Even since X has been home there has still been a lot to do for the both of us! Maybe we need to get busy on that having kids thing... Luckily I heard about this stuff called Casoron, which is an herbicide that prevents seeds from germinating. So I've applied a bunch of that this year and will do more next year before anything starts to grow and hopefully we'll see a dramatic reduction in weeds.

Sandbox and Grass Seed

The previous owners had a large sandbox with a huge playhouse build into it, but they dug it out and took it with them when they left! But they didn't dig out all the toys, garbage, and other crap that was left behind in the sand. So I had to dig out all the junk left behind and make it look nice again. I also tried my best to grade the sand also since it was really shallow in some places, but really deep back by the fence. The playhouse also had a slide that went right into the grass so there was a big dirt spot where the kids would slide into the grass, so I seeded in that spot and a few others. The grass is already filling in nicely!

You can see the missing grass in this picture, and also the dark line on the fence where the sand used to be

Sprinklers & Broken Pipes

This year when I turned on the water in the backyard, I was confused when suddenly ALL of the sprinklers turned on simultaneously. Turns out all of the sprinkler valves in the backyard were bad and I had to replace them all! We also have a pair of those old-timey water pumps in our backyard, and one of those had burst during the winter so I had to dig that out and cap off the pipe. Unfortunately for me that one was tied directly to the water main (so who knows how long that was leaking?) and there was no way to turn off the water completely unless I shut off the water to the house. No fun.

After digging the hole

Looking down into the abyss

Finished result

X is back home now and I am glad I have a lot of these big projects out of the way so I can enjoy the free time with her! :)

Floor Repair

Our house has nice hardwood floors in all the rooms except the bedrooms and bathrooms, but unfortunately the movers didn't understand the concept of moving pads and left some nice scratches in the floor when they moved us in last year.

Imagine this, but ALL OVER

Luckily we were able to get the moving company to fully cover the cost of repairs (after 10 months of hard work and many, MANY follow-up calls). Apparently the guys who put the floor in originally didn't really know what they were doing and neglected to let the wood acclimate to the dryness here, and so there were gaps EVERYWHERE where the boards had shrunk (see below for examples). We've been really worried about spilling any kind of liquid down there and ruining the boards from underneath, but luckily for us the floor repair guy said those gaps would have to be filled in order to do the repair, so we were able to kill two birds with one stone! I knew there was going to be a period of time when we couldn't walk on the floors while it was drying, so I made sure to get it all done before X came home. Here's a picture journal of the entire process:

DAY 0 - "Before" Pictures

Here's what the floors looked like before - we also decided to do it right and take off the baseboards so that we could get right up against the wall

Here's a good example of a gap in the boards

Some of the gaps were almost 1/4" big!

We kept the fridge plugged in and kept it in the front entryway so I could get food without walking on the floors

All of our stuff got crammed into the bedrooms

I didn't really get to cook at all during this process - good thing I like cereal!

DAY 1 - Initial Sanding

The first pass from the sander - the natural floor color was lighter than I expected!

Finished sanding

DAY 2 - Hand-Troweling the Filler

After the first round of filler - when I showed X this picture she freaked out cause she thought our floors were ruined :)

The sander - it was so heavy he had to wear a weight lifting belt to make sure he didn't hurt his back!

DAY 3 - Sealer

After sanding the filler away - the wood has so much character - the floor guy didn't know what it was for sure, but guessed it is a mix of light and dark Brazilian Teak

The sealer brought a lot of color back to the wood - luckily it dried in a few hours so I could walk on it right after work

DAY 4 - First Coat of "Glossy" Finish

The finish needs a slightly rough surface to adhere to, so they had to "scratch" the surface before applying the first coat of finish

The applicator - aptly described as looking like a "sheep's bottom"

Applying the first coat

VERY glossy! Fortunately only the last coat influences how the floor ends up looking so he used the glossy (stronger) finishes for the other coats

Look at the difference between the glossy finish and the satin sealer!

DAY 5 - Second Coat

After the second coat had dried - each coat took 24 hours to dry so I had to go out the back bedroom door and around the house to go anywhere!

DAY 6 - Final Coat

We had them do a satin finish for the final coat since the floor was so dark - that will help keep it from showing dirt as much, and overall it looks much nicer!

The finished floor - It looks so great we couldn't have hoped for better!

It took a couple days for the final coat to completely cure before we could move any of the furniture back out, but we got everything put back before X came home, so all in all it was a huge success! The floors look GREAT! And it is so nice to have a completely smooth, flat floor now and no concerns about spilling foods and liquids into any cracks. Now all we have to do is put up some new baseboards (X insisted I wait so she could help with that part), and it'll feel like a brand new house!

She's Home!

9 months ago I posted about X leaving and going back to school in Utah while I stayed in Nevada to work. It was definitely one of the hardest things we've ever done, but it doesn't matter any more since SHE'S BACK!

Last weekend I drove out to Logan for her graduation, we loaded up her car and said a more permanent "goodbye" to everyone, and then drove back out to Nevada. X said it felt weird to be driving "home" since she has only spent a couple of months out here since we moved in and it doesn't really feel like home yet, but hopefully we can get that changed in the coming weeks.

Good work babe!

The day we drove home was Mother's day, so X was kind of bummed to spend the whole day in the car, but I made it up to her by letting her cut off my beard when we got home. I have to admit it was getting pretty nasty, but I wanted to see how long I could get it before she came home.

It was getting long enough to braid!

Ain't she a beauty? My chin feels so naked!

I also got X a set of Cutco knives for graduation. Both our moms had these knives growing up and they had been an item on our "want" list for some time (the knives we had previously were pretty cheap). For a while I've been telling X they were too expensive and it would be something for much later in the future, so she was quite surprised to open a box and find a whole set of her own!

Last night we were invited over for dinner at a neighbor's in our ward. I am home teaching companions with the husband and the wife is X's visiting teacher. What X didn't know is that the "dinner" was actually a surprise graduation party for her! We'd been planning it for weeks, and it was perfect because X was out of town so there really wasn't any way for her to find out about it! (X is notorious for finding out secrets). She was really surprised and happy to see so many people wishing her congratulations and happy to see her home. Now all we have to see is how long it takes for her to get called to speak in sacrament and also to receive a calling! So good to have you home babe!

For more on X's graduation keep an eye out on her blog. Supposedly she's going to try and get caught up on her blog and she'll write more about her big day.