Flake Fun

17 July 2016 - This week....Nothing really stands out so it must have been a fairly normal week for us.  The weather is still hot...  The garden is still growing...  We still go to work every day...

We did find a HUGE zucchini in our garden and we are trying to decide what to do with it!  It was one of those that suddenly appears over night.  I still haven't quite figured out how there can be nothing there one day and a huge vegetable the next!  There are quite a few small one that should be ready soon. 

We spent the weekend at the house...shocker, I know.  But we have some pictures so show for it! 

This is our new hammer drill.  It has helped a lot with demo projects but it weighs quite a bit and is exhausting to use!

There is still more plumbing to do but it is started! 

There are 3 more stairs at the top that need to be finished but we need a little more wood before we can finish them. 

It doesn't look like much progress but we are happy that things are getting done.  We only have a couple more BIG projects and then we can start on the little ones. Hopefully it will be done and rented by the time we head up for the family gathering! 

Funny Primary Story:  We were talking about the temples built by the pioneers and I mentioned that the Kirtland temple was burned.  I asked why the kids thought that was.  A very profound 5 year old raised his hand. When I called on him he replied, "Because there was a fire." 

Flake Fun

10 July 2016 - It has been an exhausting but productive weekend.  We spent most of the last 2 days at the Lovelake house and things appear to be progressing; not as fast as we would like, but progressing nonetheless. We have started construction on the staircase in the basement, running a waterline in the kitchen for the fridge, and scraping glue off of the floor from the linoleum tiles.  We were planning to upload some pictures today but we left the camera at the house! 

The town softball tournament has begun and Scott played a game on Thursday.  Despite having only 9 players, we won!  They were all pretty tired by the end of the game though.  Hopefully we can get more people to come to the next game!

The weather has been really hot with no rain which is strange for July.   Hopefully we'll see some rain this week to cool things down. 

Our garden is doing really well.  The corn is starting to tassel and we have some zucchinis that have started to grow. The garlic is almost ready to harvest and the potatoes and tomatoes are getting big.

We were sorry to miss the Manning's baby blessing but hope that all went well there.  Hope to see some pictures soon!  Hope you all have a great week!

Springville Belliston Stuff

This past week was a lot of fun for the Belliston clan.  We took the week and went up to Bear Lake and got to stop at Grandma Chester's for a couple nights as well.  We got acquainted with Donald the duck and the kids loved gathering eggs.  We went swimming every day and took a hike up to Bloomington Lake.  The kids loved hiking and want to do a lot more of it.  I think we will bring the baby back packs next time.  

We stopped by Hyde Park on the way home and picked up a fun birthday present for the twins.  I heard there was a lot of sacrifice that went into getting it there so we are really appreciative!  They have played with it every day and it has kept the neighborhood kids very entertained as well. We also saw a moose on the side of the road on our way!

Lori has started a new hobby!  She decided she wanted to learn Chinese, so she picked up some CD's at the library and has been diligently going through them every day.  It's been really good for me to brush up on my Chinese as well.  All the kids are picking up on it including the twins which is really fun.   She wants to do Cantonese for a year and then start on Mandarin.                                                                                                                                                         

Grace helped Lori with another song she sang for the youtube channel.  You can hear that here.           

Not a lot of new news here.  We are just enjoying the summer and spending more time together.           Everybody is loving taking care of the garden and Lori has been thrilled that she has been able to use her compost that has been rotting next to our house the past few months.                                            

 We saw Lauren and baby Wesley while we were in Hyde Park, and she mentioned that they will be    moving to Idaho in the near future.  It makes me wonder...                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                         

Flake Fun

3 July 2016 - Happy Independence Day everyone!  Hope you all had/have a great celebration day/weekend!   We can't believe that it is already July! 

This week was a long one with abnormal things going on at work but we have recovered from all of that and are enjoying the weekend.  Yesterday we worked quite a bit on our Lovelake house.  It doesn't look like it is coming together but hopefully that will change after we spend more time there tomorrow.  Our goal is to make some good progress on the basement stairs.  But before we can do that we have to build a wall to enclose the stairs.  But before we do that we have to set some anchors in the concrete and run some wires for a switch at the bottom of the stairs.  I am discovering (again) how remodels are never quite as simple as "replace the basement stairs."

It rained quite steadily this weekend which was nice.  It cooled things down quite a bit and made our garden and flowers happy.

Funny primary story of the day:

Noah is a sunbeam who sometimes has a hard time coming to primary (just for the first few minutes) so I bent down to say hi and welcome the little visitor next to him.  The following conversation was the result:

Noah: I was crying in my bed.
Me:  Oh?  Why were you crying?
Noah: Because my Mom didn't let me have everything that I wanted.

There was no resentment or frustration.  Just a simple statement of fact.  Kids crack me up! 

Hart Happenings

It's good times in Idaho Falls these days. Summer is here in fine form and we have been enjoying the longer days, warmer weather, reunions with family, and projects that happen only in the summertime. 

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks and I'm that time a lot has happened. We enjoyed a couple of trips to Logan where we got to meet baby Wesley and hang out at the Summerfest with the Mannings. People are so talented and it is so fun to see all their creativity. We went down to take Emma home after she helped us spruce up our new vacation rental. She was an indespensible trooper! She and mom surprised us and came up to help clean and freshen things. Ruth also brought her troops over and with their help we were able to whip the Walnut Cottage into shape. We would have been lost without them. THANK YOU!  

We returned Emma in time for her parade which was fun to watch with Thomas and the boys. Dad looked great driving the beastly truck the pulled the princess's float. 

The boys are loving their gardening class, playing with friends and cousins, and yard sale-ing with mom. 

They worked really hard to complete their school by the first official day of summer and as a reward we enjoyed a trip down to the aquarium in Draper. It was soooo fun! At the end we tacked on a visit to Becca who was staying at Grandma's house. We met Donald, the little duck that Emma rescued out of a window well. It was a great little getaway. 

We had to dash home to work on our little vacation rental we just acquired. We had a lovely Italian family staying there for the past week and when they left we had some other projects we needed to finalize. It's turning out so cute!

We are gearing up for the humongous 4th of July celebration in a week. That is always fun. We're excited to initiate the Nilsson family into this great, local tradition. 

Glad Jenn and Scott made it home safe and sound. The kids loved the postcards they got and can't wait to hear more about the adventures!

Happy in Hyde Park

So glad to see Ruth and family back on the blog! Lots of good changes happening there! And in Snowflake!  And in Hyde Park...

Our driveway is completely gone. It's a mess. But it's going to be very nice when it's done! It will take a few weeks still before they finish it and we can drive on it.

We enjoyed having Becca here this week. She's always a delight to have around. We went to Manila one day and spent several hours visiting with Uncle Burl. He is very thin and weak, but it was good to see him and spend time reminiscing. He was very good to me and my sisters while we were growing up. He treated us like his own daughters and even drove to Salt Lake to go with my sisters to daddy-daughter parties. He taught me to dance and to play the guitar. It will be sad to have him gone. While we were there, his daughter Nella Rae, was diagnosed with lymphoma. Turns out the doctors were wrong. They can't find any cancer cells now that they've done more biopsies. They think it is an auto immune disease that they can treat with steroids.  Quite a wake up call, and a great relief!

We drove the float for the Clarkston parade yesterday, which was quite fun. We then spent the whole afternoon and evening weeding and cleaning out the shed.  If you stand in the right place, it looks great! There are still lots of weeds, but Emma is teaching me to look at the flowers and overlook the weeds. I'm working on it...

We are now anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Belliston clan from Springville! We can't wait to see them!

Nilsson News

We are here and alive and well!!!!  I don't know why the blog has been giving me so much grief.  I have tried to post many times but with no success until today!  I don't even know where to start.  The weather has been beautiful, especially the evenings.  We kind of sound like the Flakes, in that we are also in the ripping things out phase and I don't know when we will get it all put back together.  Garrett got a chainsaw for Father's Day and was able to use it for 10 minutes and then it bit the dust.  They are really high maintenance machines we are discovering.  Our neighbor took out three huge and hideous elm trees on the side of our yard so now we have two more left, six more lilacs, two pine trees, and three stumps.  Not to mention the three burning bush shrubs and bed of junipers in the front.  We're getting there.  Demo work on our unique sunroom is to begin this coming Friday so that will be exciting.
It has been such a neat change for us coming up here.  The kids rarely ask to watch movies or play on the computer.  Instead they are out exploring in our pasture, bringing home all sorts of interesting objects, playing with the goats, climbing trees, swinging on the tire swing, picking weeds and calling them flowers and putting them in a cup of water for me.  It is how life should be!  We have enjoyed going to the farmer's market and library and playing with the Hart cousins.
Today was our Stake Conference which was most inspiring.  The theme that seemed to be throughout the entire meeting was developing a personal relationship with Heavenly Father.  We do this through our prayers, temple attendance, scripture reading, Sabbath observance, the Sunday school answers.  What struck me was what our Stake President spoke for twenty minutes about, that being making our bedrooms a sacred place.  Having them clean so we don't have to kick our clothes out of the way before kneeling down to pray.  Make it an atmosphere that we can develop a relationship with God in. And, teach this principle to our children.
Now for some photos of our house...

 This is the before photo of our living room...

 The monstrous fireplace

 The in between bathroom.  We have an itty-bitty one in the master and our 

nicest one is actually in the garage.

 The grand master

 The kitchen

 The garden does have plants growing now and that is the greenhouse in the distance.  Our property ends where the sky meets the trees in the background.

This is the after of our living room!  I had to have at least one room in the house that didn't drive me crazy.
This home is a fixer upper but we are loving every minute of it!  Can't wait to have you come for the family gathering!