Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Home Sweet Home


Our house is pretty much all framed up. I went up this morning to take some pictures while we had a break in the weather (in between storms). They are planning on having the roof sheeted by the end of the day today. The picture of the house is obviously without the garage. They are waiting to get the concrete slab poured first before building the garage. It is exciting to see some progress. They didn't work on the house for a few weeks because it was too cold (day after day of negative degree temperatures), but the weather has warmed up and they got her built. Yay!

This is looking at the kitchen and kitchen window. The space to the right will be the sliding glass door off of the dining area. The room to the left on the other side of the wall is the girls room.

This is part of the living room. The big window is our front window. Our wood burning stove will in the corner next to the window. The room on the other side of the wall is the master bedroom.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Ornaments 2008


These are our ornaments we made this year. Sierra's is the one with the blue bow. She chose the white glitter for the base and the blue bow. Then she carefully picked out each jewel and exactly where she wanted each one. She is pretty proud of it. I made the other two. Maddie's ornament is the gold one and mine is the silver one. I think they turned out pretty cute.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Forecast

-10 is our high for today. -3 for tomorrow. It looks like it might hit 13 later this week!

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Three Forks

We just thought that we would post a few pictures to show what the landscape is around the house. There are lots of rolling hills and open space, but we also have some awesome views of the surrounding mountains. We are up on top of a hill and we can almost see Bozeman from where we are at (Bozeman is about 30 miles away).




Three Forks is a pretty small town with about 2,000 people. They have a few resturants, a grocery store, a hardware store, and a few other little shops. It is so small that they still have a great school system which is really important to us for the kids. Three Forks can be a windy place but where we are building we don't really get too much wind. The wind comes out of the canyon and hits the valley below. I think we got pretty lucky to have the opportunity to live in such a beautiful place.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Hair Cut #2

Well, Maddie's first hair cut quickly became hair cut #2. Sierra did a great job chopping off Maddie's hair. You can kind of see in the picture where Sierra cut her hair. She cut the front and top along her part. This picture doesn't show it very well, but there are several times during the day that she looks like a little boy. I did think that Sierra looked like she was watching Megan a little too close the other day.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

By Sierra

Papa and Sister


Mama and Baby

First


Maddie had her first hair cut yesterday. She did pretty good. She moved around a lot, but Megan got the job done. As you can see, Sierra was right there watching every move. She didn't take her eyes off Megan the whole time. I wouldn't be surprised if Sierra became a cosmetologists some day. She thinks Auntie Meggie is the coolest and I'm sure wants to be just like her someday. It's pretty cute.

Below is a picture Sierra drew. She has just recently learned how to draw curly hair, the dots in the eyes and eyebrows. Sierra loves to draw. She loves to draw people and ladybugs. She also likes to pretend to write. She would much rather draw than color. Maddie loves to draw too (probably because she copies everything Sierra does). I love finding random pieces of paper around the house with people and ladybugs drawn on them.


Saturday, December 6, 2008

Well, We're Doing It


We are building a house!!! This decision was not an easy one for me to make. I thought and thought about it non stop for a few months - and talked and talked about it to anyone that would listen - and this is the conclusion. Just do it! They dug the hole for the foundation yesterday. They are going to try and get it framed next week. The goal is to get it done in 2 months! The best part is - Jake is getting paid to build it! The company he works for is building it and giving us a smoking deal!!! I am sooo excited! It is a three bedroom two bathroom house w/garage. We are on about 1.4 acres in Three Forks Montana - about 30 miles west of Bozeman. Beautiful!!!! The mountains you see in the picture is what we will be looking at out of our back door. The kids love it up there. We love it up there. It is definatley exactly what we have been waiting for. Keep coming back over the weeks to see updates and progress as we build our new house!!!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Sing Song



Maddie is very much into Baby Signing Time these days. She constantly wants to watch the videos. She has learned the theme song (sort of) and sings it all the time. Here is a taste of her singing.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

What a Cute Table


Megan moved out - found herself a cute basement apartment - so Jake wanted to make something just for her. He made her a cute kitchen table. He customized the size so it would fit perfectly in the space. He wanted to personalize it for her so he painted it purple (her favorite color) and painted some cute flowers and swirls in the corners. He then sanded it down to make it look antique. It turned out super cute. I think Megan likes it a lot. I still haven't seen it in her kitchen yet - but I hear it looks great!

Saturday, November 15, 2008

My Auntie Does My Hair


Megan got Sierra this cute new shirt. It says " My Auntie does my hair". For those of you who don't know, Megan is a cosmetologist. Sierra loves her new shirt. She was so excited to wear it today. Thanks Auntie Megan!

Just a cute pic of the girls

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Halloween


The holidays keep getting more and more fun as the girls get older. Sierra and Maddie had so much fun Trick-or-Treating. Sierra was a cute little Care Bear and Maddie was a cute little Pumpkin. My mom made both of these costumes when I was little. She has pictures of me wearing the pumpkin costume when I was about Maddie's age - and I'm pretty sure I was the same Care Bear at some point too. It was fun to dress the girls in costumes that I wore.
Jake and Megan had the cutest "couple" costume. Jake was a hunter and Megan was a deer. Very clever on Megan's part - she came up with the whole thing. We spent the first part of the night Trick-or-Treating at the mall (the thing to do with little kids), but it was boring. It was an unusually warm Halloween night so we decided to take advantage of it. We found a nice neighborhood and did some real Trick-or-Treating.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Sierra is 3!


Sierra had so much fun opening her presents. She was so excited to see what was inside. She had a beautiful Cinderella castle cake and almost blew out all the candles in one breath. It was fun to watch her have so much excitement. I can already tell this is going to be a fun Christmas.


Friday, October 3, 2008

Festive

I decided to be festive this year. I saw these cute pumpkin shirts in the Family Fun magazine and knew I just had to make them. I figured that I already know how to tie dye and I already have the dye - so why not? I cut the pumpkin faces out of felt and ironed them on. I think the shirts turned out so cute. I dressed the girls up and took them outside for a few festive pics.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Bee Sting


Poor little Maddie got stung by a bee yesterday. It got her on the inside of her lip ( I guess she was trying to eat it) . She came running over to me crying with the stinger still in her lip. It was pretty swollen. It happened sometime yesterday evening, and this morning her lip was still a little swollen -but it's all better now.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

gone


My beloved Bozeman Hot Springs is gone. It caught on fire yesterday,and a good chunk of it is destroyed. What wasn't burnt was severely damaged from the smoke. I am pretty bummed about the whole thing. I worked there for over 2 years. Long enough to become the supervisor for the night crew. I met most of my good friends from working there. Now they have to tear part of it down, if not the whole thing. I really hope they rebuild someday.
It was a pretty exciting day yesterday - I was on the phone all day talking to person after person about the whole situation. I had 52 phone calls and 20 texts in about an 8 hour period. That is a ton for me! I guess it is good because now I can go to bed at a decent hour (I usually worked until about 1-2 am).
Here is link to the newspaper article in the local paper if anybody is interested in reading it. I am trying to find video footage from the news station. I had heard that they had some really good footage of the building in flames. If I find it, I will post it.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Same


I had never realized how much Sierra and Maddie look alike until I took this picture. I have always thought they look so different, but you can definitely tell they are sisters.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Furniture Galore

Jake has been busy making more furniture. He made this new table top this last weekend. He kept the table legs from our old table and just made a new top. It only cost about $30 to make! It looks so great in our kitchen. Our old table was mostly white, so this dark table really adds a lot to the space. He made the bench too. He made that a while ago when Megan first moved here when we needed more seats around the table. It really works out great. He stained the table top to match the bench. They are a great pair.



Next we have a little end table (or night stand). It was made using leftover tiles from his work. It is so cute. This is one of my favorite things that Jake has made. Everytime I look at it I just think "Wow, that really looks nice."


After Jake made our new bed, we needed a new thing for our TV to go on. We needed something tall since our bed is so tall now. Jake just whipped this up real fast. It is exactly what we needed. I love having custom furniture made. Can't get any better than that! Now if he could make us a new couch...

Friday, August 15, 2008

Tie Dye!

We had a party yesterday. A Tie Dye party! I love tie dying. I haven't done it in probably 4 years. I told my friends to buy white and come over. We all bought cute little white dresses for our girls, but I am too afraid to dye mine. I want them to turn out perfect - so I guess the best way to make sure they turn out perfect is to not dye them at all - right? I am glad I didn't though. A few of the color schemes turned out different than I thought they would. Now I have a better idea of what I want. I guess I just needed a little practice first. I knew this would be a messy project, especially with kids, but the mess pretty much stayed on the tarp. I am thankful for that. I was afraid someone would walk through the dye then walk into the house. That would be a disaster! It turned out to be really fun. After the kids squirted the dye for a minute they got bored then ran off and played with the hose the rest of the time. Which was nice because it left us to do the real tie dying. Everybody's stuff turned out very cute and colorful. Now I just need to get the courage and dye those little white dresses.

A few of the items. Megan's tank top. A couple pillow cases (Sierra did the pink/orange swirl pillow case). Sierra's panties and a shirt I did. Cute eh?


Part of the crew doing some tie dying.

Friday, August 8, 2008

The Artist


Yesterday during quiet time (in my room), Sierra got into my markers and colored. She colored all over herself, on the carpet, my bed spread, the new bed frame Jake built and on the dog. When I walked into my room there were purple and blue scribbles everywhere. It was kind of cute. Luckily it all came off.

I like her toenail painting job.


If you look closely you can see she colored on Daisy's eye.

Friday, August 1, 2008

The New Bed

Last weekend Jake decided he was going to build a bed for us (It's about time). Our old bed was just on blocks of wood with a makeshift headboard. He had it built within a few hours, but it took almost a week to complete with all the different steps it takes to get the finish he wanted. He did a little each night after work, let it dry over night, then did a little more the next night after work. Luckily it didn't rain the whole week. Just when we were ready to put it in the house a storm started to blow through. We got it in the house just in time. I looks great. Sierra thinks it is the coolest new toy ever. Megan that we have a parent bed now. I am super excited. It looks awesome!!!


Just built


We put on Jake's Secret Aging Concoction then sanded most of it off. This gives it a black weathered undertone.


The finished product.


Another angle

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

I bet your jealous

Because I have three pretty princesses living at my house.


Sunday, July 27, 2008

Nevada City, Montana



My dad and Lael came up to visit us this weekend. On Saturday we all went to explore an old mining ghost town. We drove down to Virginia City and hopped the no. 12 steam train to Nevada City. Sierra loved riding the train. She said it was her train. It was fun to see the old buildings. A few of them had furniture and cool antiques in them. Some of the houses and buildings were set up how they were back then. The girls had fun (and were surprisingly good even in the heat). We all had a fun time.


I believe this was Brewery Street


This is a two story outhouse. It was for the hotel.


Taking a Break