Dude, our house is stoned!

The stucco and rock on the outside of our house went up recently and much of the inside is done as well! It's painted, carpeted, cabinet-ed, and it's looking pretty decent. Just a matter of a few weeks before we move in. Now we need furniture to fill the thing with. Anybody out there have furniture hook-ups? Here are a few pictures we took today.

Trip to Canada

We finally took a vacation out of the country! All the way to Canada. We were excited to go with Grandma and Grandpa Tracy to Telegraph Cove, British Columbia for a week of fishing and sight-seeing. We spent just over a week up there and it was lots of fun. We traveled with my brother Jeff, his wife Julie, and his two daughters Kaylie and Ashley. Kaleb loved having friends to play with the entire vacation.

Right after we arrived in Telegraph Cove, Kaleb and Kaylie headed out to find Paca's boat.



Grandma and Paca with the kids on the boat.


No more than an hour after arriving we found a mother bear and her 2 cubs, here is some video I took while Joelle and I were less than 50 feet away. We left the kids back with Paca for obvious reasons.



Kaleb found all sorts of cool sea creatures, here we are with a star fish.


Early one morning, Joelle and I went out crabbing, this was so fun, you just take your stick, poke it in the seaweed or mud and if you are lucky up will pop a ticked off crab!

Joelle has crabs! :0


...and now we both do. (that does NOT sound right)


Sometimes we'd see Dall's Porpoises and if we got near them, they'd come over to our boat and play. It was amazing to watch, here is some awesome video I got of them flying all around us.



We would also frequently see Killer Whales and sometimes they'd pop up very close to the boat so we had to be very careful. Here are a couple of pictures of the Orcas.




The fishing was a bit slow, but we still had a good time catching the fish that we did. Here I am with a 20 pound halibut I caught.


Kaleb loved being on the boat.


The scenery was amazing.




There was a rusty old truck on the boardwalk that Kaleb thought was Mater from the movie Cars. He loved talking to it, but it never talked back.


Here we are at the little General Store in Telegraph Cove.


Eventually it was time to head home. We drove to the south end of Victoria island, took the ferry boat back to the mainland and drove back to Seattle. While crossing the border Kaleb wanted to take a picture by the flag made out of flowers.


That night we stayed in Seattle and decided to go to a Mariners game! Kaleb learned a good lesson on the way to the game. We parked in a lot near the stadium that was behind a warehouse. While walking to the stadium a seagull walked about 10 feet in front of us all the way around the building. He kept looking back to see if we were there and he refused to fly away. As we approached the cross-walk he wandered out toward the road, a car saw it and honked, the bird was startled and ran into the next lane over and it was then that we witnessed the best hit of the night. It wasn't by a baseball player, but by a black Acura. Did you know that when seagulls are run over by a car they pop like a balloon? Poor seagull. Kaleb stood there not knowing what to think, so we used it as a teaching opportunity, Never run into the street or you end up like the seagull.

On to the stadium! Safeco Field is beautiful, here we are out front.


Kaleb met the mascot Moose.


The next day we flew home from Seattle and we stopped in to see the progress on our house. The prep work for the stucco was done and the dry-wall was in. It's coming along quickly. The picture below is with the stucco wire on the house, I drove by today and the gray layer of stucco is on the house, but I didn't have the camera.



Anyway, it was a fun and very much needed trip. We had a great time in a beautiful place and saw some amazing things.

Furniture show results

So I got back home from the furniture show in Vegas on Saturday at 4:30 in the morning. It turned out to be not as great as we had expected. 6 months ago the building we spent most of our time in wasn't finished so many of the exhibitors were outside in tents in temporary booth spaces. With the new building being finished the exhibitors mostly had permanent store fronts in the building so they weren't looking to unload all their furniture before they headed back to China and India. This made it more difficult to find the temporary booths, there were basically only 2 floors of these and I didn't find any large furniture pieces that I wanted to get.

I did get a dining room table and chairs and a sitting area table with 2 chairs. That was all I ended up with. Our friend Zane got a bed, a dresser, and some art work. So it wasn't a total bust, we got good deals on what we did purchase, the biggest problem was taking the stuff to the vehicle. I would estimate that we had to carry each piece of furniture nearly 1/3 of a mile to the truck. In the Vegas heat of 109 degrees, THAT SUCKED!!! We started taking items out of the building at 4 p.m. and finished around 9 p.m.

So, I think I may go back in the future but only for home accessories and decorations, it's just too big a hassle to get the big ticket furniture and get it back home. Zane and I were seriously dying after several trips carrying furniture a really, really long way.

On a different note, we went to check out the new house and on the way back we saw something kind of funny. It's frequent to see welcome home signs on highway overpasses made from plastic cups stuck between the holes in the fence, typically it's something like "Welcome home Elder Johnson", well today we saw one that was a little different.

Almost done framing

It appears that the framing at the new house is almost done and of course we took pictures. As promised in the previous post, these pictures are a little more interesting.

Roof framed and garage doors arched

Other side of the front

Kaleb rockin his new room

Kaleb seriously rockin the kitchen

Kaleb doing his best asian teen impersonation, peacing in the living room.

Kaleb pondering the size of our 3-car garage and what toys he'll fill it with.

Enjoying the future back yard

Throwing rocks at the neighbors

One of the basement "rooms"

I don't know why they call it cold storage, it was 97 degrees in there.

Future BAND ROOM! (don't tell Joelle)

ARCHES!

So thats what we've got for now, it seems like the house sprung up out of nowhere, but that makes it exciting. Tomorrow Joelle is trusting me to go with our friend Zane to Vegas and shop my butt off for furniture. Wish me luck!

More Wood!

It looks as if the new place will start to quickly take shape and actually start looking like more than a box. Here are a few recent pictures and I'm sure there will be more in a day or so.

Front view


Front corner view of garages


Entrance


Master bedroom


Kaleb's room


I promise the next set of pictures will be much more interesting. Well, at least I'm hoping so.

Our house has wood.

Framing has begun at our new place. It started early this week and will probably finish up next week at some point.

Front of the house.

Back corner of the house.

I guess it looks good to me, I don't know enough about framing to form an opinion on it so as long as there are holes where the windows need to be then it's all I can hope for.

Enough about the house. We went to watch the American Fork fireworks the other night with Joe and Jen and the gang and Kaleb loved it. The fireworks were good, but he enjoyed having other kids to run around with. We were at AF high school and he was wrestling with the other kids and having a good ol' time.

I'm pretty boring this week, but I promise to get some more pictures taken and more information up soon. I should have all sorts of information to put up in about a week so stay tuned.

Foundation and a Crock Pot

We went to check out the progress on our new place today and it's moving along rather nicely. Our foundation has been poured, window wells installed, and some of the basement plumbing has been put in. From what I can tell, the next steps will be to finish the plumbing in the basement, then pour the basement floor. Here are a couple of pictures of the progress:






Now, lets party! It's Joelle's Birthday today. She isn't one for anything elaborate, so we had dinner at her parents house and cake and ice cream with her family. So, what do you get somebody that you have no idea what to get them most of the time? The item they've been dropping hints at for the last 2 months. A CROCK POT!!! I think the comment that sealed the deal came when we were having a normal everyday conversation and in mid-sentence Joelle says "I was just thinking how nice it would be to have a crock pot." I realize that cooking items aren't exactly the best birthday present, I guess they don't send the best message, but with completely random hints I didn't have a choice. I think we're going to get a wii as a combo gift, so the crock pot doesn't end up the only think I got her (yes, she wants a wii, it's not me trying to get another gaming system! although it will be fun)

So with that said, Happy Birthday Joelle! Kaleb and I love you very much! You don't look a day over 48. It's true, she doesn't. :)