Max is 16!!

The blessed day finally arrived! Max is 16! So crazy that he's that old which means I'm much older. It's a major bummer to celebrate your birthday in December but luckily Max is used to the chaos of making it work. We love Max in our family. He is wise beyond his years. Loyal to his friends. Crazy smart. And crazy good at the piano.

We found Max a stick shift car! He named it Bobo and does a great job with the stick

airpods that work!

A rusteze shirt

Max had a bday party with his friends playing lots of games. I'm terrible and didn't get a group pic but here's them having fun!

And the sad ending to a December bday - having just your parents there to sing to you!

My favorite gift

 

November

Sam and Cam getting in one last ride

November was full of lots of fun things. The biggest event was cousin Camryn coming home from her mission in Brazil! Hooray! And because of that we got to have 2 Thanksgiving dinners!

Johnson Thanksgiving

Camryn

Toby & I are at the stage where we wear matching shirts apparently

Spjute Thanksgiving

Pre Thanksgiving festivities included shooting and Pickleball

The boys were excited to join their cousins for BYU's last home football game. It was cold!

I love watching Max and Sam talk at dinner. It's hilarious

Lots of leaf raking

Toby's big Nuero IR lab opened in St. Alphonsus in Boise. It's pretty

Mel came to town. Hooray!

And Max keeps learning how a city works through the city's youth council. And he loves it when he's featured on their webpage :)

 

1 Year!

 

This awesome missionary has been out for 1 year! It's so weird to think I haven't been in the same room as her for a year. That's not good, but I'll be ok because she only has 6 months left! Hooray! She's doing great and LOVING her new transfer in Sanford. It's a really small town and Megan loves small towns!

Max's Concerto

Max made it to the finals for the Concerto division of the Ogden Piano competition! He played so well and won 2nd place! Honestly, we were a little surprised he didn't get 1st but that's ok, the judges loved his performance and only had good things to say about it. Super proud of Max and his hard work to get to this point!

Love this pic to show how far Max has come!

The other finalists

The judges

Max and his amazing teacher Catherine

And here's his concerto for you to enjoy!

The Breezeway

 

The biggest obstacle with our remodel was trying to figure out where to put our laundry room. We consulted with lots of people and they all agreed the easiest thing would be to move it out into our breezeway. So that's what we did. We also moved the gross bathrrom that was in my kitchen (yes, you read that right: in my kitchen) out to the breezeway. It's the teeniest tiniest bathroom you ever did see! We LOVE finally having a place where we can dump shoes, coats and stuff. It might be my favorite part of the remodel besides Marge.

What we didn't know was that the cement was just floating so when we jack hammered to lay pipes it completely crumbled. Yay. So that meant we had to replace ALL of the cement but we had tohold off on that until the rest of the project was done before we could pour cement. Which meant I didn't have a washer and dryer for 2 months and luckily our parents took pity on us and let us use theirs. Bless them. So here's some pics of the progress. And yes, there are 4 doors in the breezeway - 3 of them are painted orange!

This is what it looked like for most of the project. It was a moat we all had to jump over. Super fun. And yes, that's a skunk. I forgot to post about that. One day Toby opened the door from the kitchen and quickly slammed it shut and we were all wondering why - there was a skunk! I had to go to work and the kids to school, so Toby got to deal with it. Somehow he didn't get sprayed and took it in a garbage can up to the mountains and let it go.You can't make this stuff up!

Finally ready for cement.

The Remodel

It's the moment you've all been waiting for - a post about the remodel! I've put this off for a while because it was too soon. Remodels are terrible, and this was no exception. But we survived, we're still married and Megan will have a brand new house to come home to! We started mid July and were able to move back in on Labor Day. But unfortunately because of random things, didn't get my oven for another month! That was painful. But all is well now. A few things I want to remember (I think): eating outside on the deck, washing dishes in tub, coming home from work to Sam crying cuz he couldn't take the noise anymore, our wood floor guy staying until midnight one night, coming home from church and opening the door to see the dust so thick that I couldn't see through the house, having a giant hole in our wall in the basement with just a tarp to cover. I tried to take before and after pics in the same spot, so here you go!

As you can tell Sam was VERY excited to help with the demo. The workers were nice to let him help.

Everything came to screeching halt when this random half wall was determined to be load bearing even though 3 people had told us otherwise. Luckily it was fixed fairly quickly

Our kitchen and dump all. Yes we're eating next to our toilet!

Cabinet Day!

Paint!

Where we ate dinner and the giant whole in the wall behind us. There used to be a window there but we used it to run our water pipes out to the new mudroom.

We were grateful when we finally got to move upstairs and inside to eat

Countertops! It took 5 guys to carry our 10 ft. slab in.

We never want to do house projects again. My nights have been doing something on the house. Painting the pantry sent my wrist over the edge. It still hurts.

The weekend we finally got to move back in!

Toby's pride and joy. He had to talk me AND my sisters in to putting a TV there, but it's been awesome and every sub that's come in has expressed their approval.

The day the oven finally came Sam used it for smores! Max named the oven Marge and we love her.