The BIG,BIG Project!!!

For about a year now, I've had this nagging in my head to clean and organize my storage room. It is a large room with a ton of stuff in it, and the walkway was getting smaller and smaller. However, when I have a large project, I never want to get into it until I have a lot of time. During the school year that never happens, so I thought summer would be the perfect time to start. At the first of July, it dawned on me that my summer was quickly going by and because we had planned to go to Provo, Colorado and on a cruise plus I am having surgery on my foot, I'd better get started. So I took the plunge. It was a huge, huge job, but I'm proud to say that it is completed and I now have a clean and organized storage room with much less in it. It was a good thing that Heidi was here because she would keep saying to me, "Now mom, do you really need this?" Thanks to her I have eliminated a lot of stuff I'm sure I'll never miss. As you can see from the pictures, it looks much better and I actually know what I have now. I have done a complete inventory of our food storage and realize that we have much more than I thought. Sooooooo, here is the progress.

I begin making my garage much more messy as we empty the storage room.

Here it is getting bare.

The finished project.

Heidi, my handy daughter!

Since I have finally learned how to do my own blog, I'm practicing and also backtracking on some important events in our lives. Heidi, my redecorator daughter, is always trying to update our home and make us look like we are in style with the latest look. We've had this corner fireplace for some years now but haven't made it look it's best. Heidi offered to stain and finish our fireplace. This is the oak, before look.

While we were gone one evening, Heidi took the fireplace pieces apart and this is what Duane and I found when we got home. It looks beautiful already.

Here is the finished look. Doesn't it match the entertainment center beautifully? Many thanks to you Heidi. We love it. You are so kind and have such an eye for beauty. We've already received so many comments.

OUCH!

Telling this is a little backwards, but I thought it should be added to our blog. On Saturday, the 12th of July, which incidentally was the day before leaving for Colordado to help Garry and Heidi work in their yard, Duane met with an unfortunate accident. The High Priests and Elders were doing a service project for a family in our ward. They were moving a very heavy ramp from one house to another to help a man who just had knee surgery. This ramp probably weighed over 1,000 lbs. It took 8 men to lift this ramp while another man moved a trailer underneath it. Once it was on the trailer they discovered that it was caught in one spot. Because the back end was the heaviest and the ramp wasn't quite on far enough, the men decided to lift it up and move it a little farther. The other men then decided to set it down but unfortunately, Duane's finger was in the way. He didn't complain a lot, but the other men knew it was hurt more than he was letting on. They brought him home and I took a look. He told me that he would be fine, but one of the men came to me and told me that it was possible that he may lose the tip of his finger. At that point, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I thought the St. George Hospital was the best place to treat him so we hopped in the car and made the hour trek.
Once we arrived at the emergency room, they x-rayed it and told us the the bones at the tip of his finger were crushed, and he also had no nail at all. It was cut deeply where the nail bed was so they stitched that part of his finger together and then implanted a prosthetic nail temporarily. It was pretty gross, but so interesting I had to watch the whole process. He said the worst part of the whole thing was getting the shot in his hand to numb his finger. After he was stitched and obtained his new stylish nail, they wrapped it and sent us on our way. He's feeling much better but he said he would not be able to do any hard labor for a year. Nice try but it won't work. We called Garry to tell him that dad would be a little handicapped, but once we got there Duane tried to work each day.



As you can see, he's still smiling and doing well. That's being positive!

Work, Fun and Relaxation

We arrived in Colorado with hopes of helping out Garry and Heidi and their many projects. The major project of the week was finishing the play structure that Garry had started. It was much more involved and complicated than Garry had hoped but it was finally completed the day before we came home.
Here it is in it's completed form.
Duane helped out mowing the lawn because Friday night Garry and Heidi invited their neighbors to come to a neighborhood barbecue at their house.
One of Grandma's project was to pick all of her home grown grapes off their stems. While I was doing that I explained to Zachary and Tyler how raisins were made. This is their version of making raisins.
Grandma Great bought a fun game called lasso golf. All of us including Zach and Ty, got into the game.

Zach found a new love. He tried BMX racing for the first time. He LOVED it!

Grandma had fun going to the park with the boys while Grandpa and Dad worked on the play structure.

Grandma great enjoyed relaxing and visiting. She was a sport all week.

Grandma had lots of fun with Gavin. He's her special buddy.

The weather couldn't have been better. Every afternoon we were there it would cloud up and rain. The last day it even hailed. The rest of the day it was beautiful and cool. Our last evening after the rain we saw this beautiful rainbow. We were wishing we could bottle the cool weather and bring it home but the memories will have to suffice.

We're jumpin' on the blogwagon....yeehaw!!!!!!!!

Howdy ya'll!!! It seems like everyone is blogging these days but us. So, we're here to join the party and share our lives along with all of you, our loved ones. Hopefully you read, and we all keep in touch better this way. Our lives aren't very exciting, but we want to share it anyways. So here's to happy blogging and good times on the Internet. Love, Dubey (a mix of Duane and Becky, in case you were wondering).

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