Melissa, Andy and the kids' Blog

As in most things creative in our lives, Melissa is the driving force behind Halloween costumes.  If left to me I would dress up as; A Pharmacist, A Sleepy Guy, or Andy most Halloweens.  2013 Melissa decided on Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and much to my relief she let me be Clark Kent.    We went to a friend's Halloween party a few days early.  They really know how to bring people together and had at least 20 couple over for food and games. They even had a foosball tournament, and Melissa and I actually won one round.   On Halloween night Melissa helped run the ward Truck or Treat.  She made a big batch of homemade chili, which we still have in the freezer. (Cooked from scratch, but it never made it onto the table as so many extra people prepared food). After the ward trunk or treat we passed out candy to the few kids who came by our house.  Melissa's costume idea won me first place at Montezum...

After all the busy nights and weekends working on the basement Melissa and I decided we needed some time to relax.  I decided we'd spend a few days with Melissa's Grandma Flick at the cabin in Payson, AZ. My plans were to sleep, eat, play bored games, sit on the porch, hike, sleep, eat and sit some more, then repeat X 3 days. The weather ended up a little cold so we went to Grandma's house in Dewey, AZ instead and just took a day trip up to the cabin. Zoe and I were excited to just wander, no projects or tools, just peace and quiet. We even ended up sitting in the screened porch looking at the trees while almost falling asleep for an hour or two. Grandma, Melissa and Zoe as we were getting ready to leave. Melissa and I   Melissa's Uncle Dale and most of his kids live near Grandma so we got together for dinner after church on Sunday.  This was a whole section of Melissa's family I hadn't met before, but they build custom par...

When we decided to buy our house in Blanding, Melissa had the idea to make a rental apartment in the basement.  During the mortgage paperwork we mentioned Melissa's idea to the woman helping with the loan, mostly to justify why the two of us were buying a 5600 sqft home, and didn't think anything more of it.  A few weeks after we closed on the house that same woman called to tell us she had found a tenant for our apartment.  The only problem was we didn't have an apartment, we had a basement missing its ceiling and without a kitchen.  We met with the tenant, decided we wanted him in our apartment and signed a lease... giving us ~4 weeks to finish the basement. It took 6 weeks... because the walls aren't straight which meant the guy doing the ceiling had to measure three times and cut four times for each piece of sound proofing and sheet rock.   With only two windows in the entire basement, Melissa wanted to bring in as much natural light as possible and rep...

For the second year in a row Melissa was able to play hummingbird nurse.  Something about our garage attracts exhausted hummingbirds.  She is feeding it some nectar after it decided to land on her head.   It ended up peeing in her eye later this evening, spent the night in the garage drinking nectar and flew away the next day.      We were in the garage that night for a reason, besides wildlife rescue, this was the first evening of cabinet building. This is the Ikea kitchen we bought July 4th weekend (yup we bought the basement kitchen 3 weeks before we bought the house).    Melissa decided a white front door was silly, so... now it is coral!  All of her friends love it and have asked her how to do it. I think they meant, "How do you get your husband to agree to a pink door?" Well, the answer to that question is you have to be beautiful, smart, wonderful, and have him wrapped around your little finger. ...