4th of July

We spent the 4th of July in Spanish Fork with Marc's Aunt Linda. Her neighbors had a huge fireworks show honoring Uncle Terry (Linda's husband) who was killed in an accident back in September. It was the most amazing, close up fireworks show I have ever seen. It was incredible! We spent the day visiting, going on walks, jumping on the trampoline--I can still do back flips! and enjoying a barbeque with the neighborhood. It was a great day!

This is my brother-in-law Ryan. He has a faux painting business and currently his project is the room pictured here. It's an extra room in his house. He added the paneling and then he is going to texture and paint the top half of the wall. Marc and I have decided to do that in our extra room. We have the paneling up and Marc got a free work bench out of the deal on craigslist. After the paneling is painted Ryan is going to come and texture and paint the top half. We will post pictures when it's done!

More Rodeo Pictures

Here is the whole family picture. It was such a fun group of people, I felt like a Moench! I even got to hold little Evelyn for a little bit of the rodeo. I think she wins the cutest little girl in the world award.

Thanks Ade for the pictures. I should have taken off my glasses so they didn't glare so much and my haircut disaster is still growing out. I am going to get it fixed today (cross my fingers), Hope it turns out a little more normal. It's been like this for months now.

Oakley Rodeo

We went to Kamas to my aunt's cabin for the 3rd of July. We had a delicious dinner of lamburgers and turkey burgers, amazing corn and feta salad and a fruit salad with mint, honey and lemon juice and a cherry cobbler. What an incredible meal it was. After we went to the Oakley rodeo and watched a mexican fighting bull, bucking broncos and a huge fireworks show. We had an amazing time and it was so fun to be with family!
(I will add more pictures when I get the others from my cousin).

Marc also fixed Adrienne's AC. It made a funny thud sound when it was on high. It took about ten minutes to unscrew the three screws and dump out a dead mouse from the motor. It was pretty funny. I guess that happens to her a lot because the mice get cold in the winter and try to find a nice warm place to sleep.

Fun With Foods in Mimi's Kitchen

My mom came here the end of June and did a fun cooking class with my nieces Michelle and Emily. It was a lot of fun. We made smashed potatoes, meat loaf, salad and cheesecake balls and fudge for dessert. It was messy, but we had a lot of fun. My mom is the best! Notice the little kids aprons?

All done with the knife!

I took the knife blade with me to Ephraim to show my Grandpa because my mom told me to. I showed it to him and he then showed me some wood that he had made a few things out of called "Iron wood" that he picked up years ago visiting family in Arizona. I decided to use it instead of mahogany because it has so much more figure and character. Anyway, here it is all finished. On to the next project...The spare bedroom makeover!!!

Marc's Kukri Knife

Here's a picture of my new knife, all ready for the handle. Don't worry, you won't be able to see all the holes that I drilled to cut down on the weight of the thing (It's just over 1/4" thick, high carbon steel) so ya, it's heavy. I've got a couple pieces of african mahogany cut out for the handle. It's a work in progress.

Here are a couple pictures of me recreating how I would slay Aloysius if I had my new knife I've been making from a Ford super Duty truck leaf spring. It sure would've been a lot easier than dropping out of a tree during a jackalope stampede, grabbing the biggest one by the antlers and snapping his neck. You know that's how I got this big scar on my hand, right? I got gored by a jackalope. True story.

I've been slowly making this knife at work, It's called a Gurkha knife or a Kukri. They're from Nepal. When it's slow at work, I've been pulling out my grinders and making this thing. It's been fun, very dirty and challenging. The dirt and oil will just wipe off and it's hard to damage so out of all the things that I could do at work with spare time, I thought it seemed like a good idea. It's almost impossible to do homework in the shop and be able to drop it at any moment to go work on a car, plus the paper gets dirty and it's hard to think with all the noise. Poor excuse, I know, but I guess I'm still a little kid that want's to play army. (Dave at work found these helmets at a costume store that was going out of business! Sweet huh?)

I think I'll try to make a flame thrower for my next project...

Busy Month

We had a very busy month of May. Here are some random pictures of things we have been doing.
1. Baby Matthew's blessing in California.




















2. Drigg's Idaho to play with Dave and Evelyn and to meet baby Charlie. Adrienne and Brian have the most beautiful home. I didn't get many pictures, but I'm lucky I got these two. The view is from Ade's driveway. I got to go back the next week with Martha and spend some more time with Adrienne and her adorable kids. We had such an incredible time!






















3. Marc is making a kukri knife with a leaf spring he found in the junk pile at work. It looks even more incredible now that he has sharpened and polished it. More pictures to come. He has so many hidden talents including......




4. Lifting his geo. Unfortunately we just sold his geo metro to Reggie. I have fond memories of climbing over the driver's seat since the passenger one is smashed in. The first day Marc got this 54 miles to the gallon car he said look what I can do...and he picked it up. It's a great little rig--we will miss white lightening.

5. We toured the garden on the top of the conference center. I have lived downtown for two years and had never been. It is as beautiful as they say. Unfortunately we couldn't get a decent picture. Either I have my eyes closed or Marc's are closed. Oh well. Maybe some day we will get some real pictures taken.

6. We finally hung the mirror Marc made that has been sitting on our bedroom floor for a year. Marc used the level to make sure everything was set right. When it was hung it wasn't straight. Marc put the level on the closet door frame and found out the door frame isn't level. (Not a huge surprise since we have had so many problems with our condo!) We decided to take the mirror down and hang it according to the closet frame and not the level. Marc is getting the fine woodworking magazines and it's fun to see what he ends up making. I like his new hobbies. You can also see the step stool he made for me to get into bed reflected in the mirror. I'm currently working on finding hobbies for me. I have signed up for a quilting class and I have been inspired by Liz to try new recipes. My next cooking project is going to be cakepops.