The Demolition HOUSE begins

As soon as the house was in our name we started tearing down the walls, carpet, flooring, and anything else that we didn't like. Although we do have a demolition derby car in the driveway that needs some work, we decided that the house needed to have its demolition first! Dallen and I are really excited to remodel this house and to turn it into a much better one. Here are some pictures of the start of a big, but fun project...

One of Dallen's good friends from his mission came over to help us get started... Remember these lovely green couches?? Now they are cleared out and here is the family room empty and ready for repair. (Below)

The beedroom... gotta love the wood panneling

...And the bathroom! What a great shower! (for me atleast haha) We'll have to do something to raise the shower head so it is useful for Dallen.

Scraping up the floors was a big project. The washer area and bathroom must have had a small leak for a really long time because all of the wood was wet and stunk!

Dallen cut out the wall where we are going to put in new tile and I pulled out staples from the floor. We had a fun time working with each other.

The Kitchen was one of the hardest to pull up the flooring. Dallen did most of it and worked really hard to get everything scraped up and clean

The cupboards were barely hanging on the wall so we put in a couple more screws and that solved the problem...

We are excited to look back in a couple of weeks at these pictures and see the changes that have been made! This house is going to be a great learning project for the both of us and we still consider it a perfect starter home!

Our First Home

When Dallen and I were house shopping before we got married, we searched and searched for apartments and basements available to rent. We found many rentals close to UVU's campus which we thought would be convenient for my schooling, but none of them worked out. We found this duplex house in Lehi and with just one quick look we decided that we wanted it. It has been a great first home..... a perfect starter home for the two of us!
There are some unique things about the house and the yard.... a.k.a. the trees in the front yard. We're not so sure how two different species of trees merged into one, all we know is that they're going to be gone next spring when we work on landscaping.

OUR SIDE....
Here are some pics of the duplex that we have been living in
Kitchen...

swinging doors leading to the kitchen

Living room....
Bedroom...Spare room/ officebathroom.......and the back yard which had a garden planted earlier this year


THE OTHER SIDE...
This is the side that our landlord was living in. We have plans to remodel so look forward to seeing more posts of the progress we make. Something different with the kitchen on this side compared to the other is that it doesn't have sliding doors to go back yard... It'll be a big help when trying to keep the heat in :)
As you can see, the floor in the kitchen could use some tile. I have to laugh at all the different patterns that were used to fix squares that got damaged or came off the floor.

...and the awesome lime green couches that fill our living room! My mom suggested that we make some blue pillows to go with them and they'd be "close" to our wedding colors... haha I hope our wedding looked a lot better than this lol

These are the two bedrooms.... We're going to love the new carpet when it gets installed.

Our landlord didn't like dealing with the yard work so he laid down plastic and cement blocks. Kind of funny how he handled some things.

Anyways, we are super excited about our purchase and the improvements we are going to make on the house. Once we remodel the south side we are going to move into it and then rent out the north side. We feel very blessed to have what we do and to be where we are in life. We have some fun projects ahead of us!

Miles of our Travels

Since Dallen and I have been married, we have kept the road hot to say the least. While I had a break from schooling I was able to travel with Dallen everyday for about 22 days! It was great to be able to have that much time to spend with him and to spend quality time with our families as well. Lately, Dallen has been working in Oregon and that is where we spent this past week for new years. It is nice that he has a job that allows me to travel with him and pays for the both of us to stay in a hotel. While we were in Oregon, we played racquetball, went bowling, ate out for dinner, looked for derby cars, and had a great time. When we arrived back at our house in Lehi, our odometer read 99,999! I think we have put about 30,000+ miles on our Suzuki Forenza car since we bought it in February 2011. Our trips have been fun especially when spent together. Each mile holds a memory and we hope to only continue making memories on the road.

Christmas with the Proctors :)

Christmas with the Proctor’s was a great one and some very exciting things happened. First of all, Briar was able to call home from his mission in Argentina and was able to talk for an hour with the family. He is doing great with the work and his Spanish is sounding good (according to Dallen). It was awesome to be able to hear him talk to Dallen in Spanish. In this coming March he will reach his one year mark. Kind of crazy how fast time has gone by.

Another very exciting thing that happened is that Kaitlin and Spencer announced that they are expecting! It was unique how they told us. They got an empty candle jar and put the pregnancy tests inside and then wrapped it as a gift for us to open. When Dallen and I opened it we thought they were playing a joke on us as if they wanted us to use it to check if we were pregnant. Haha We figured out what it really was though and we are really excited for them to be having their first baby sometime next August. They found out on Christmas Eve so it was a fun surprise for everyone!

On Christmas Eve Dallen and I stayed at Ed and Christine’s house. We played a lot of games, made Christmas trains, opened one Christmas Eve present (PJ’s), and had fun in each other’s company. The next morning we opened our presents from each other.

Later Christmas day we went to Grandpa and Grandma Proctor’s house for a family party. We had dinner together, watched some family videos, played games, and exchanged gifts. It was fun to be able to see so many family members on both sides of the family for the holidays and to make fun memories!

After the party Dallen and I went back to our house and this is what we found when we walked in (Thank you Tyler and Katelyn for helping set it up for me) Now we have some snowboarding trips to try out the new gear!....hopefully it’ll snow so that we can! Merry Christmas to everyone!