July 2020 Part 3: The Everyday Stuff

 It's incredible how quickly time marches on. I remember it passing so slowly when I was a kid, but now, it seems to just fly by in a blink of an eye. 

In the beginning of July, I was praying about how to help Rachel. She's always incredibly positive and happy, like a ray of sunshine in our lives, but she had been incredibly sad and mopey. I was at a loss. She'd been playing with friends more (and made LOTS of new friends in our neighborhood.) I didn't know how to bring back my Sunshine, so I turned to the Lord for help. I had an idea pop into my head that we should write all the things we're struggling with onto a helium filled balloon and let them go.  My initial reaction to that thought was to reject it. That was such a cliche, stupid thing to do. As soon as I thought that, I figured it must be the Spirit giving me the idea because I certainly wouldn't entertain it. So, the next day, I bought 6 balloons, brought them home, and shared the scripture about giving our burdens to the Lord. One balloon was for our collective family struggles. We wrote "Grief over Grandpa (Dad)", missing friends, moving stress,  and Covid on it. Everyone also got his or her own balloon to write their personal struggles onto them. Then we went out onto the deck to release them. 

We all hung onto the collective balloon and let it go together, and everyone else released their balloon when they were ready. We told the kids we were giving all those things to Jesus. We watched the balloons sail up and over our house. We rushed through the house to the front porch and watched the balloons sail north into Salt Lake County. Gabe watched and asked, "Is that where Jesus lives?" The neighborhood kids told us excitedly about how they watched all these balloons fly by, that we had just missed them. 

Want to know the crazy thing? It worked. Rachel miraculously stopped being mopey. Seriously, it's been almost 8 months, and aside from the typical occasional bad days, our sweet sunshine girl is back! I'm so grateful that the Lord answered my prayer about what to do! 

We really enjoyed our front porch in July. We absolutely love our new house and neighborhood! 

And we love having a neighborhood pool. We love that family and friends come visit us and play in our pool with us. Lea came with her kids and her homework. She even tried learning through some osmosis. 

Each week, there were less boxes, and we carried on with normal life in the middle of all the madness. 

Gracie got to experience a car wash after her grooming appointment. I think she will never be the same again. 

I did some work editing something. I don't know what it was, but there was editing to be done. 

We went on a double date with Serene and Dustin. We grabbed these funky burgers in Provo and then headed up Provo Canyon a little to eat our dessert and play some spike ball and croquet. It was lovely! 

We enjoyed some peaceful Sunday moments. 

There was some crafting. 

There was baking. 

There was hugging. 

There was...whatever this is. 

There was some lawn mowing. 

Gabe quickly discovered the benefits of self-propelled mowers. 

We put up our flag most of the days. Our holder went up right away, and I love being able to easily reach the spot. Our last house was pretty high, and I had to get a step stool to post the flag. 

We got to have friends come visit and swim with us. 

Some of us got experimental with our clothing. Why wear a shirt like you're supposed to when you can wear it strangely like this? 

Gracie struggled with the move a little. She wasn't quite sure what was going on and had quite a few accidents. We had to leaver her in her crate whenever we left for fear she'd turn the house into her outhouse. Eventually, she did adjust to the change, which was good because I was about ready to make her live outside exclusively. 

We ate food and mom experimented with haircuts. 

And Brian discovered he is styrofoam intolerant, thanks to the furniture boxes with styrofoam in them. He really hates styrofoam because it gets EVERYWHERE!

Towards the end of the month, our out-of-town cousins started arriving in town for the upcoming Saville Reunion to Bear Lake. This meant more swimming! 

July 26th, the day the Reunion was meant to start, was what would have been my parents' 40th Anniversary. We wanted to give my mom something really special, so I commissioned my friend to do a pencil sketch for her. She used a picture I took of my parents at Cal and Cassidy's wedding back in 2017, but tried to make my mom's dress be more the style of her wedding dress. It ended up being a merge of her wedding dress and the dress she wore that day. She made dad's suit coat white instead of black. And the temple in the background was taken from a picture I took at Ethan and Erika's wedding. Mom and Dad had stood at this spot at their wedding back in 1980. I bought a frame and wrapped this up the best I could and mailed it to my grandparents so they could bring it to her on her anniversary. We pitched in to get flowers as well. (My siblings and I split the cost of all these things and we all contributed feedback after each draft.) Pardon the reflection of my light fixture in the glass. 

We bought more pillows for couches. 

Michael discovered peeling from sunburns again. 

Brian made the world's tiniest taco. 

We met lots of our neighbors at a block party for the 24th of July, and our neighbor brought a few paratroopers to launch for the kids, but the fireworks had to be tame, thanks to restrictions. There was pizza, snowcones, and cotton candy, and I didn't take any pictures. But we watched fireworks from our office window again. 

We love having our piano in our front room for Church at home. 

We ate food. Some of us decided to get experimental with eating food. Again, why be traditional?

We left for Bear Lake on July 26th, and finished out the month with the Saville crew. 

July 2020 Part 2: House Progress

 We worked on the house some more in July. There was still lots to unpack and organize. And since we sold our dining room set to the people that bought our house, we needed to get a new table and chairs. We ordered both in July, but only the chairs made it. I had to laugh at the brand. 

You can see them, minus the seats in this picture. I didn't like the seat color, so I added a coat of poly stain to the seats to get them the color I wanted, so we had seatless chairs in our dining room for a week or so. 

I had to figure out where to put all my birds. I've collected lots of birds over the years. 

The first room we put together was the living room. This is where we have church, so it was a big priority to put it together so that we wouldn't be distracted by the clutter when we worship. 

These shelves that were a big part of our fireplace focal point in the last house got assigned to the office. That kind of changed their function. The drawers got filled with officy stuff, but the shelves have been a struggle. That's why they were still empty as July came and went. 

We wanted to get our downstairs storage under control before things really got rocking and rolling with the basement finishing. We got shelves at Home Depot

And I tracked down a couple of rotating shelves from KSL. Brian didn't feel like building one this time. Plus, we didn't really have the time. I was pretty pleased that I could find these since they were out of stock at Thrive/Shelf Reliance. 

We worked hard with unpacking, and we were able to pull one car into the garage by the end of the month! Yay!!!

In July, work officially started on our basement!!! Framers came over and had the whole thing framed in just a few days! It was amazing! When Brian framed our last house, it took a long time because he could only do it on free nights and weekends. We felt like we were master multi-taskers that the basement was getting framed while we were doing other things. 

Once the basement was all framed out, Brian got to work on wiring in every spare minute. This time, he couldn't take his time...the rest of the basement and inspections hung on him! Michael even pitched in and helped some. 

In our Saratoga Springs house, we hired someone to install the basement panel, but in this house, Brian did it himself! He felt pretty confident about doing it after wiring our last house and the old part of my mom's house. 

There were many days when Brian regretted saying that he would do the wiring instead of paying an electrician. The sweat equity was meant to save us money, but sometimes, he wasn't sure it was worth it, especially with all the shortages on electrical circuits and stuff, thanks to Covid. Amazingly, we were able to track down what we needed, but it required trips to Home Depot in Ogden and lots of internet searching. 

The hardest thing to do was getting power and lights into our cold storage. Brian had to drill through a concrete wall, all the while avoiding rebar to do it. It took lots of tries with the drill, but he was finally able to put the light in the storage room on it's own switch and get a plug in there for future electronics for our theater. 

Power is such a beautiful thing, isn't it?

While the basement was happening inside, we had yard work starting on the outside. We talked to multiple landscapers and finally went with a crew recommended by our neighbors. Here's our rough landscaping plan. 

It was a bit of an untamed weed jungle in our backyard by this point. 

It was fun watching from our air-conditioned house while the workers cleared out all the weeds in preparation for leveling and grading the backyard. The boys couldn't resist helping. 

After the weeds were cleared, trenches went in for sprinkler lines. 

And then the sprinkler lines went in. 

The whole thing was highly entertaining apparently. 

They brought in dirt and machinery and got the backyard graded like we needed. 

We couldn't wait to get the grass in so it wasn't so dusty! But we were happy with how much progress happened in the backyard throughout July.