New Back door entry area

 Some people have Mud Rooms. We don't . Our back entry has always been through the garage. We have always flung our coat over the nearest chair. Heaven forbid we would ever walk it over to the coat closet in the other room. Or our bedroom closet! And shoes were shed and put in either a cardboard box by the door, or before that it was a little bookshelf we had there (since has moved outside).  Mostly just in a pile by the door.

I'm TRYING to get a little more order in our lives. A little more tidiness. We have practically a whole new house! I want to keep it nice!

This was just finished and installed today. Check out the cool hooks. Those are from an actual carriage house. The baskets below the bench are for shoes. (You'll notice where Mike's are). Old habits die hard. But I am going to try!!!!

We are still sorting through the boxes of albums and other things from Mike's parents' house. So. Many. Pictures. 

I dropped off my Four Seasons water color prints to be framed yesterday.  Hmmm. WAY more pricey than I thought it would be. I'm going to have to figure out how I can either have an art student do matting and framing for me, or take a class and do it myself. I mean, I left those there to be done at the frame shop. He does good work.  But I have so many other things I want to do!  Four I can think of off hand...

Of liver and things. Dishes, really.

 The photos loaded backwards. View photos from the bottom UP, please. 

My Grandma Sorensen made LOTS of ceramic things. Aunt Tuny gave me these ashtrays recently. The pink, heart-shaped dishes are being used as jewelry trays on my bathroom counter.  Damian said they look more like a liver. Only to his medical mind. To me, they are graceful heart shapes.

I grew up seeing these mermaids on bathroom walls. They are back in place on MY bathroom walls.

Also, while unpacking a box of dishes that I had kind of forgotten about, I found the fishies. . . And I'm keeping them. Please and thank you.  They will soon be on my bathroom wall. I havent decided which bathroom yet.

The gold-trimmed china came from the Coles/Sorensen family. Most of them say "EN" on the bottom, painted in gold. If I'm not mistaken, this was Leona Coles sister, Edith Nielson. Nelson? They never had children, Aunt Maureen had a setting for 12 of this same Gold-trimmed china that she gifted to me some years ago.  It's at Katie's house in a hutch she refinished.  Edith was known to her nieces (my Mom and her sisters) as "Aunt Dee Dee."

And, finally, there are some beautiful TEXAS pieces. The dishes with purple pansies were my Grandma Agnes

Autrey 's favorite dishes. I did not even know that my parents had them until they moved from Georgia to Utah in 2019. If these speak to YOU and you are an Autrey or Sorensen family person, speak up! 

I have been blessed with an abundance of beautiful dishes that are meaningful to me and hope they, and their stories, will be passed on to my grandchildren. 

And this is just MY side of the family! Mike's side also has two sets of dishes! Guess what might be coming to a newly-wed couple in our family in years to come?

February 2021 updates, Presidents' Day weekend

Jonathan and Gail drove in from Spring Creek, NV for the weekend.  We ate, we played games, we competed in Crossword Puzzle races (just me and Gail). We celebrated Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Eric and Matt came for Sunday dinner and games after. The brought "Fast Track," a fun new game invented by Matt's old roommate. It was fun. Mike won, after coming from behind.

Jonathan helped me put the non-slip rug pad and our new LARGE area rug down in the dining area. We had to weight down the edge because it had been rolled up for so long. I bought it from Wayfair MONTHS ago and it's been waiting all this time. So I cleaned the floor and got it down--with Jonathan's help.

Over the past week or so, Mike installed the hexagon tile back splash behind the range top and under the microwave.   Jack install the wood behind the china hutch so it looks like a china hutch now. Still waiting for the glass.

 We hung some art.

And have some art left to hang. Like A LOT.

The Remodel, May 2020

And then we got serious about getting a permit. When the road base additions and compactions were complete, the soil tester came back and said it was 100% compacted.   Before, it had been in the 80's or 90%.  Not bad.  But 100% is like concrete!  It doesn't get any harder than that.

It seems as though a lot has changed with the building permit procedures over the decades since Mike was an actively licensed general building contractor.  He's built a LOT. He knows a lot. He asked his contractor friends questions about what was necessary and what they do as commercial builders.

Well, it's not like that for owner-builder doing an addition to an existing home. The State of Utah has requirements, the Federal Government has requirements.  And all the lines must be filled in. But Mike balked and just didn't want to play by the rules.  "They don't need to have all that!  It is NOT necessary. All I have to do is..." this an such what his friends said. But it didn't work, so the website (which is where all of it is nowadays--all online and a scourge to not-so-computer-savvy older person-who-shall-not-be-named) didn't get filled in properly for a very long time.  There was a lot of waiting, watching, looking, asking, waiting.  Mostly waiting.

Then Mike finally gave in and got the right people to do the right things and stuff finally started to move. But not until June.

So in May, I packed some kitchen stuff, started cleaning out certain areas. I worked. We endured the Pandemic some more.  Mike shopped for materials and supplies.  He worked at getting his parents' home on the market.

And we waited. We traveled to Nevada to see Gail's family.  We took a Mother's Day trip over the mountain to find a place to have our family reunion in June (Not DisneyWorld! Thank you, COVID-19).

 And, finally, on June 1, the forms for the footings were started!

YaY!  Progress!!!  But there is still no permit issued!!

Being sick during a pandemic

 When you get sick during the time of a pandemic, it really makes you think twice about things. The symptoms may not be the same, but you still wonder. And wonder. And you might even get tested. 

A couple of months ago I had a bit of a cold / cough. I wasn't horribly sick, but was sick enough to stay home and sleep and rest and get over it. Luckily, rest seems to be a great healing source for my body. I was over it quickly, but word still got around that I had COVID-19 . Somehow.  I did not. 

Mike did have it in January, and recovered fairly quickly. He still tires quickly, but some of that is just because of old age.

 Saturday evening, I was having some lower gastrointestinal distress. Lots of loud grumbling. Lots of pain. I knew something was coming. And it did. I had worked really hard all day, sorting and organizing contents of boxes. But that little bout of diarrhea just did me in. It must have been some sort of a little bug. I ended up in bed, having chills, and had a raging fever during the night! My lower intestines were feeling a little beat up, my stomach felt a little bit queasy, but a fever will always make you feel exhausted and drained. It did!

 Gail and her family came in to Cedar in the early evening Saturday, but I just went to bed. Mike fix them some dinner and I slept. Before I slept, I was able to hear Mike puttering in our new kitchen. It was so cute. That was about the first time he had used our stove. The new gas range top. He's decided he likes it. He is still learning where things are in the kitchen, as am I. But we're working it out.

As for Sunday? It was our turn to attend to church in person. I opted to stay home and in my jammies and listen to/watch the broadcast of the meetings. Gail and her family loaded up the stuff they came for, and they headed back to NevadaSunday morning. Mike and Joyce Christensen stopped by to pick up stuff for Nick. Mike wanted to show off our new bathroom, but I wouldn't let him. I didnt want any one in my bedroom. It's one of the messiest places in the house right now...

 My stomach is settled. My fever is gone. But I am still quite drained. We jokingly refer to that as being a little bit pooped out. But that was only part of it! I was so sick last night, and this is notable, that I didn't even want to watch my TV show on BYU TV that I have been binge-watching lately. That's how poorly I felt. Today is going to be a restful one. I will probably fall asleep doing the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper. And Mike is going to watch all of the Super Bowl pregame stuff and report to me what the best commercials were during the game tonight.

We did enjoy some excellent meetings, virtually, for church today. In my jammies. I will be so glad when we can meet together with our Ward in person all the time. And actually greet people! I remember when we did begin meeting again when the pandemic was loosening up some of the restrictions. I felt a little, shall we say, nervous? I felt like there were too many people, I felt like they were too close! As soon as the meeting was over, even though we had been social distancing during it, I did not stay and visit like Mike did. I made a beeline for the exit and went straight to the car. Next week we will be able to meet as an entire Ward. I wonder if I will feel the same? Up to this point, in recent months, we have been meeting 1/2 of the ward at a time. It makes for a smaller group.

 Oh, it will be so nice when this pandemic has over! Will we ever be back to normal again?