Saved By the..... Dog!

Big Cottonwood Canyon is in desperate need for some of these signs!

So we have decided that thanks to our sister Meghan we really need to get into fly fishing! So we decided to go on a drive up Big Cottonwood and just scout out a few places to go for future fishing. We walked up and down the stream to see if we could see any fish. Or if we should just stick to Weber and Provo Canyons.

(here is a picture of the family on our first adventure fly fishing after work in Ogden on Friday)

Caesar loving life, helping us scout for fish!! Well, we spread out on our walk up the stream after a little bit of a walk we stopped to look for fish in the water. Andrew was about 15 yards away from me, and Meghan was in between us. And Caesar was standing at my feet playing in the water.

As you can see this is by no means really a river. This is where I was standing, and the water when you stepped in would splash at your ankles. Not deep at all.

My view to the other side not zoomed in at all! So I was sitting there, extremely focused on finding fish in the water! When the next thing I know Caesar has stopped moving and let's out the most fearsome bark I have ever heard from a puppy... He is going wild. So I look down at him and all of the hair on his back is on end. He is low on his haunches bearing his teeth. I look up and no more than six feet away from me, standing in this little inlet is a full grown, black, bull moose!! My heart stops because I see the moose isn't stopping. It paused for a minute and looked at Caesar then at me and started across the river at us. First thing that came to my mind was moose kill more people than bears. A fact I learned from my sister Alissa. (Look it up, it's true) So I yell "Run" and I'm screaming at Caesar to come, but he's not budging he is stuck there barking at this beast. He keeps looking at me and looking back at the moose, so I realize he's not going so I have to get out. I am running through the water and my feet get stuck in mud, I kick off my flip flops and look at the moose bearing down on Caesar. I have to climb my way up the steep edge to get up onto the road. I could barely climb down it, taking my time and with shoes on. I had dirt under my finger nails from clawing my way back up. I get to the top and Caesar is still below, the moose has turned his antlers down and is after Caesar, Caesar turns to look at me and sees that I am up the wall and safe so, he lets out a few more barks and heads up after us. The moose follows as well. I'm yelling at Andrew to get the keys so we can jump in the car, he can't remember where they are, and the moose is still after us!

With all of this commotion about three trucks pull up right next to us, and the moose finally starts turning around and ran across the street and up the other side of the mountain!! Probably the most terrifying experiences of my entire life. I would have been oblivious to the moose had Caesar not been watching. An incredible dog!

A moose stand 6-7 feet tall at his shoulders. And can weight between 800 to 1000 lbs! And are surprisingly quick on their feet! Just a little interesting tidbit of knowledge! Imagine trying to run away from one of these!! Gets your heart pumping a little bit!

The hero of the day, and imagine running this road barefoot.... Not too fun!

And my shoes are now floating down stream somewhere : (

Cami's HOME!!!!!

YAY!!! Waiting for Cami to get off the plane!! This was the welcoming committee getting all warmed up for the actual moment! We're just missing Uncle Paul who started wandering off!

AHH!! Cami's here after living for three years in Torreon, Mexico!! We couldn't be more excited that she's finally here!! I am pretty sure I was always meant to have a little sister!!

Cami and her big brother Drew!

The welcome home sign!! Love it!

Lindsay is SOO excited her cousin's here!! She couldn't stop screaming!! Ha ha

Lindsay and cute Weston watching Paul sign the papers so we could keep Cami!!

Lindsay adoring Cami, I told you she was excited!!

The empty baggage claim... Cami's bag was missing!

Just the Hogan's at the airport!! Lucky me with the 20/20 vision! Ha ha

Sad part of the picture was I told everyone to look cute and last second I see Cami's tongue so I have to change my face, and then apparently Drew was doing it all along!! Ruined.. ; )

Almost There!

Here is our "little project." This little beauty is the reason why we are spending so much time in Ogden! It's a little dismal at first glance, but this house has a great deal of potential that we are trying to unearth! A little love and some elbow grease and this place will be good to go. We have some before pictures and during pictures. We were going to wait until we had the house finished, but we wanted Andrew's parents to get a look before they come home in 8 days!!

This is a picture of us priming the house. I did the lower half with the paint gun and Drew did the top half, so if there is anything wrong with the bottom part its because Drew messed up the top and it ruined the bottom ; ) We are still deciding on what the outside color of the house should be. I think gray with a redd door, Kami thinks a taupe color!

The front room before... Notice the beginning of the clutter the tenants left on the ground... It just gets worse! We have pulled up the carpet and sanded the hardwood floors that were underneath.

We have also sanded, primed and caulked all of the walls and cracks. This room is ready for the paint. Which is a very pretty beige color. The moulding and trim will all be white, and we have new windows. Last step in this room will be to stain the hardwood floor.

And the master bedroom! Could not even see the floor! Incredibly disgusting that people were actually living in this filth. Drew and Brad tossed all of this stuff outside, then Nathan Hogan (Thanks Nate!) loaded it into a dumpster! Probably the most exhausting part of this whole house. Feel free to click on the picture to enlarge it, just so you can really get in there and see this junk in all of it's glory!

Yep, and there's more. The worse part about this is underneath all of these clothes were mice! The people living here said the mice got so bad they couldn't keep food anywhere in the house... Yet they kept living there. There was some major disinfecting done after the clothes were removed.... And still continues! Oh and the tenants came back and asked if we had their candy dispenser... It's kinda like eyespy... Find the candy dispenser... Once you find it, study it, and make sure you never buy candy out of it!

Master bedroom with the junk removed, carpet thrown out and the walls sanded.

Just had to throw in another shot of the clean bedroom because it was such a feat to get it to look like this. This is our carpet that we will be putting in, in the near future. Andrew will be laying it, and is pretty excited!

The dining room off of the kitchen. We had to rent a steamer to get the wallpaper off. Wallpaper is the worst!! Next house if there is wallpaper, my vote is to just paint right over it... That stuff does not want to come off!

After the clean up, and carpet ripped out. We had to go through with the 'blade on a stick thing' and scrape up the fuzz that was left underneath the carpet. I don't know what it was but I'm glad it's gone. This room has now been cleaned, primed and ready for paint!

The 'Pink Room'. Again all of the carpet had to be ripped up, walls sanded patched, caulked and windows will be replaced. We had to go over the floors with a sander to remove the mold spots. To help in reducing the smell that was lingering in the house! That was my job. The giant sander was a little intimidating, but was amazingly fun. If you rolled over a staple or nail it would send sparks flying everywhere! Pretty intense... Can you believe the trash, EVERYWHERE!!

This is Drew and Brad priming the walls in the 'pink room'. We have to paint this room with the same beige color, Andrew will lay the carpet and then they will replace the windows. I'll probably just supervise most of that... It's pretty intense!

The lovely bathroom, with a bizarre mirrored walls... Don't ask, but they had to go.

We bought a tub surround for the bathroom, and then Brad is going to teach us how to do tile. We have awesome slate that we are going to lay in the bathrooms and kitchen that will hopefully turn out nice! And we have to replace the sink and toilet, because as you can imagine they were pretty bad!

The hallway next to the dining room, Brad did a phenomenal job patching that massive hole in the wall. He is quite handy with putty!

Leaned up against the wall are our exterior doors that we are going to hang. They will update the home a lot!

The kitchen this is my favorite room! We have all new counter tops, slate tile, and paint that is going to look amazing. Drew and I tried to sand the cupboard door down, but it took three full sheets of sandpaper to do one door. So (yes I will take credit for this) I decided to go buy some beadboard and make frames and just reface the cabinets! They are looking amazing. And saved us almost a thousand dollars in new cupboards, and drawers.

After vacuuming out all of the mouse droppings, that were everywhere. Cleaning everything and removing all of the doors.

The drawers before we have primed and painted them. We just wanted to see how they would all look together. We think they turned out really nice. And we did every bit of it by hand. Andrew taught me how to use the miter saw to build the frame pieces for the drawers! It is so fun to see all of the knowledge Andrew has about tools. After we cut the frames and the beadboard we just used a nail gun and nailed them to the existing drawers and doors.

The cupboard door before. With the five coats of paint still on them. We seriously sanded through white, green, pink, peach, and white again just to get the wood. Thus why we refaced them.

And the middle step of the cupboard, we will be painting this a little bit of an off white color. We wanted to glaze the groves and corners but we're just selling the house not living in it. So we have to control our creative genius'. This has basically been our lives. We go to work and when we get home we head up here and play. It seriously is so fun learning all of these knew things, and being able to see all of your work turn something ugly into something nice. Our favorite part is that we get to do it together! Can't beat that!

To Be Continued....

Why We Love Ogden Pt. 2

So many reasons why Ogden is our new favorite place. You would think that spending so much time up here would make us hate it. We are always on the look out for little adventures and activities. On our way to find the local Home Depot... I never thought I would spend so much time in one of these stores! We happened on a darling little Farr's Ice Cream shop! The ice cream was not that expensive and the atmosphere was adorable and rustic as you can see from above picture!

We do these little adventures to help keep my attention... I can only sand, paint, caulk and use a miter saw for so long before I start to get antsy! And when that happens I start following Andrew around and drive him nuts. So no work gets done! Anyway, on this little outing we decided to go to the nearest park (Ogden is abundant in beautiful parks!) We decided we would enjoy our ice cream there! (I promise after this house is finished I will start doing my hair and make-up, there just doesn't seem to be much point when you leave the house caked in dust and paint)

To our ultimate pleasure we happened upon another fun activity Ogden has to offer. It was "Movie Night at the Park" So fun, people come with chairs, blankets, food and frisbees. Before the movie starts they have karaoke! I begged Andrew to sign up, but the sign up was full. So we went back to work on the house. You better believe we will be on stage next time! We got there just in time to hear a lovely version of "Sweet Child of Mine" how lucky are we?!!

I just think this picture is darling of my cute husband Drew!

As mentioned above, I sometimes need a little break from construction. Lucky for me I have a dear friend/sorority sister who is a local Ogdenonian... Yes I made up that word myself... But I feel it will catch on quickly! I call up Chewbs (not sure where that nickname started but it fits her more than her name Chelsea) and make her take me to the local hot spots. This one such adventure we went to the taco vendors on main street. I asked Chewbs if I was going to contract hepatitis... She assured me they are abundant in both B and C. How can you pass that up? Well it was a Wednesday and you know what that means.... TWO TACOS FOR A DOLLAR!! haha! Seriously they were the most amazing tacos we have ever had!! So excited it's Wednesday today because Chewbs and I have a standing date night every Wednesday from now on!!

Happy Fathers Day! To Two Great Men!

To my wonderful dad (sorry I don't have any recent pictures of us on my computer.... but this one is good of both of us!) Thank you, thank you, thank you... for showing me the importance of hard work! You have been an incredible example to me of perserverance and determination. Thank you for working so that I could be afforded so many blessings in my life.... You remind me of a quote I once read by Thomas Jefferson where he stated "I am a firm believer in luck, I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." You have worked hard everyday of your life yet I can only remember, at the most two times where you missed one of my events... You were at every dance recital, baseball, basketball, soccer, lacrosse game and even to high school assemblies that I was in.... You have always been there, and I want you to know, that I am so grateful to you for your support!

One of the most memorable trips that I have ever been on was to Torreon, Mexico.... To meet Andrew's wonderful parents... Andrew and I both knew that we were getting married, but we hadn't told anyone yet. However Rich and Amy could not have made me feel anymore welcome! They treated me like family from the very beginning. I knew after I met them there was no doubt in my mind that I had to marry Andrew. His parents were too great to pass up! Rich, I just want to say thank you for raising such a phenomenal man! As I tried to give Amy a compliment about raising such a gentleman, she turned and said "Well that's because his father has always been an example of that!" Thank you for teaching integrity in your home. For showing your son how important hard work and honesty are. Thank you for accepting and serving a mission. We are so grateful for the blessings that we receive in our life because of your service. We love you Rich, and can't wait to beat you in ping pong in two weeks!

Our Dog on Miracle Grow!

Caesar next to his kennel that he was shipped to us in.... He was small enough two months ago to stand completely upright, and still have two or three inches before his head touched...

Caesar nestled soundly in Drew's arms, on the night of his arrival into the Salt Lake valley....

Drew and Caesar wrestling in the back yard, two months and two weeks later...

Caesar snoozing on his favorite pillow.....

Caesar taking a break from all of his hard work up in Ogden.... Not much room left on his pillow... The pillow has lost a little bit of its fluff...

Caesar and his friend Fenway. Fenway used to love pinning Caesar to the ground and sitting on him.....

There isn't much of that going on anymore!!!

Caesars new kennel!!!!! The first day we brought it home, we were shocked by the size of it... Drew calls it the Taj Mahal of dog kennels.... It is quite spacious.... We had to try it out!! Thank goodness for self timers!

The amazing tower of kennels that Caesar has been able to call home...