When Anna Comes to Town, She Gets...

ATTACKED WITH KISSES!

Thayne loves his Auntie Anna

Christmas!

We had such an awesome Christmas break. Can life get any better than 2 weeks spent with family? I submit not. We flew up with my mom on Monday and were surprised by how well the 3 hour layover in Boise worked out. Thayne slept from Salt Lake to Boise, played in the airport:

And slept again from Boise to Spokane.

We started off the break at the Miller's, and Thayne started pulling out new tricks the night we got there. He was looking at my Dad, and all the sudden he started clapping! He was really proud of his new trick, and we loved it too.

We loved spending time with our Miller parents, my little sisters, and the Sagens. Thursday we headed to Southwick's and were so happy to see our Southwick parents, and Chris & Siri. This picture is really blurry, but it's the only one I snapped of Thayne playing piano with Grandma Jana. He loved it

Taylor, Martha, and Nelli came Christmas Eve and it was so good to see them again. That night we made Christmas Eve homemade personal pizzas, opened our Christmas Jammies and listened to the Christmas story. During our stay we played lots of games, watched good movies, played at the pool, rode aboard the Ceour D' Alene Christmas Cruise to the North Pole, made it to Edwin and Andrea's wedding reception, puzzled, went on bike rides/runs, ate lots of good food, and had a ton of fun with family. Here are the pictures from the break:

Thayne LOVES his Auntie Siri

Daddies and their babies

They took many relaxing naps with Grandpa in that chair

Sweet, sweet girl

Siri's helpers

Siri's AMAZING dinner

Stopping to give Thayne loves

Twins in their twin outfits and twin hats 

My dream house will have a laundry sink/perfect baby tub

And more Grandpa loves:

At the end of our two weeks, we drove to the Spokane airport around 11 for our 12:40 flight back to Utah. Spencer and Allison were planning on picking us up around 4, but due to a minor plane malfunction we didn't end up leaving Spokane until 6 PM. They gave us vouchers for $200 each, sooo we didn't mind too much. Thayne loved it: there were an unlimited number of people to smile at and dote upon him. We made so many new friends and got to see a lot of my old friends as we all waited to get back to Utah. 

Cousins

Photoshoot. Four kiddos, and and five adults to make it happen

 Thayne was really hamming it up whenever he saw the camera

 And a quick look behind the scenes:

Lessons Learned the Hard Way

On Monday, I gave Thayne a small child-proof bottle of Ibuprofen to shake and play with while I got some things done in the kitchen. I was going through the mail and turned when I heard something drop on the floor. There was Thayne shaking the empty bottle above his head, with pills spread all over his highchair tray, and pills scattered on the floor. I rushed over and pulled him out of the chair and swiped the pill out of his mouth that he was starting to choke on. I frantically counted all the pills I could find, including the one rescued from his mouth, and let out an audible sigh of relief when I found all the pills, except the 2 doses I had taken, were accounted for.

No more pill bottles for toys- check

Yesterday, I was getting ready in the bathroom while Thayne was playing in the freshly vacuumed family room. He army crawled to the hallway and I was happy he was so content just rolling in the hallway talking to himself. Next thing know, I look over and Thayne's lips are blue, and he is obviously choking on something. I throw him over my legs and start pounding his back, trying to help him get whatever it was up and out. He starts throwing up a little and I fished out half of a wall anchor from his mouth. He's been just fine since, so I'm sincerely hoping the anchor was broken before it went into his mouth and the half unaccounted for is already in the garbage where it belongs.

Scan every square inch of the floor before he starts playing- check

I am so grateful that he's ok and there have been no incidences thus far today. But I'm keeping my eyes open and my fingers crossed  

Elizabeth is here!

Sweet sweet baby girl. She spent the first 24 hours on oxygen in the nursery, but has been great since. Jill did amazing and we are so excited to get to know this little girl.

We're in Love

Since moving in last September, we've had hopes of fixing up our fireplace. It was originally a wood burning stove and had since been converted into a gas log fireplace, though the open chimney and broken dampener let in A LOT of cold air during the winter. Last winter we went with the classy option of sealing the fireplace with plastic sheeting intended to insulate single-pane windows. This year, as the frost started to set in, we decided it was time to look into a more permanent solution.

We had a repair man come out to see if we could make the fireplace functional, and after talking with him we realized even a functional gas log fireplace would still be drafty and would not be sealed off in a way to make the area safer for an increasingly mobile Thayne. We talked about different options and decided a gas fireplace insert would be best for us. We called a few different fireplace companies and had a couple of them come to our home for estimates. One guy told us we would need to chop off the lower half of our mantle to make room for their insert. We didn't like the idea of having a huge project like fixing a mantle left over after paying for an insert. The next guy had a much less invasive and complete plan with a custom fit insert that would work well with the existing mantle. We much preferred the second guy. They were booked a month out, so we gave a down payment to reserve an appointment the following month for an installation. 

Then I talked to my brother Spencer. 

It just so happened that he had a gas fireplace insert with a mantle in his garage from a demolition job he had recently finished that he was now trying to sell rather than taking it to the dump. He came over to measure our fireplace opening to ensure it would fit, and then the demolition began.

The mantle popped right off and revealed an original brick fireplace and chimney. Spence knocked of the surrounding brick and pulled out the existing gas logs. The gas insert needed just a little more clearance in the back, so he took out some of the bricks in the back of the fireplace as well. The tile hearth was cracked and broken, so we decided to pull it up too while we were at it and replace the tile before putting in the new fireplace. When Spence pulled up the tile, he found that it had been resting on some weird cement-like slab. The slab was completely uneven and was most likely the cause of the previous broken tile. So Spence broke it apart and got the cement-like slab out of there. Under the slab was the original slat flooring. And under that was the crawl space. He knocked out a few slats in order to manipulate the gas line without crawling under the house.  

The slat flooring was a little uneven, so Spence shimmed it up and put down a new and even floor

Then down went the backer board, thin-set, and tile

(you can kind of see the new gas line coming up behind the far right tile. It was previously in the center of the fireplace)

And we let that set over night

We wanted the insert recessed into the existing fireplace, so Spence sliced the mantle in half to line up with the  insert

This is the pre-sliced mantle with the insert to the left of it

I scraped, textured, and painted down to the line of the new mantle. The old mantle was just slightly taller and wider

Then Spence placed the mantle, hooked up the gas, and slid the insert in

TAH DAH!

We absolutely love the fireplace. It keeps our house so toasty warm. And we love that it worked out so well to have Spencer put it in for us. He did so much better than what we had planned to have another professional do. They wouldn't have done anything with the tile in front, and would have left the other mantle as-was. 

I'm planning on painting the mantle white once the weather gets warmer  and we can adequately air out the room. The black and gold isn't as bad at we thought it would be, but I think a white would look better in the room

That night, we couldn't help but bask in it's warmth. Thayne was really happy to be able to play on the floor in warmth. The former cold and drafty fireplace made play time difficult.

(The video simply shows the state of relaxation and warmth created by the new fireplace. Nothing too exciting)