Monday, November 24, 2008

Your opinion needed!!

Please let me know which you like better; curly or straight?


Friday, November 21, 2008

And then there was......... cement!

Our basement is poured!! Our lot was excavated, primed, and foundation poured all in 4 days! (amazing how quickly they can move when they want to!)
Our new target close date is early to mid February.





Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Sad, Sad Day

So the day has finally come.......I got my first cavity. I've been avoiding going to the dentist ever since my pregnancy because I literally couldn't put my tooth brush in my mouth for oh.....5 months. Seriously, not joking. Add to that throwing up 6 to 7 times per day and your left with a pretty gross dental situation.
Having proudly worn the badge of "Never had a single cavity!" for the last 24 years, I must now take it off. The dentist says I should feel lucky I only have one given my oral hygiene, or lack there of, during pregnancy. He said most women who report having thrown up a ton in pregnancy will show up with 10+ cavities on their next visit. (the bile in your stomach breaks down the enamel of your teeth, leading to easier cavities) But I still don't feel so lucky, and I'm not ready to give up my "never had a cavity" badge. What a sad, sad day.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Update on our house

Well after many many frustrating months of run around, Chelsea decided that enough was enough with our builder. (writing in third person)
Being her mother's daughter, she sent a strong but courteous letter to the owners of the building company, describing to them the bad business practices that had been going on in their company. This letter was sent at approximately midnight on Thursday evening via email. Lo and behold, Friday morning at 9 am she received a phone call from none other than the owner himself. He extended his great apologies for the lack luster customer service they had received and requested a meeting that would include the two owners of the company, the foreman of construction, and ourselves.

Ok enough of this third person writing. Let me tell you, did we ever pick the problem child lot!!! When we signed our contract we found out that we were going to be house number 13. How lucky for us. At this meeting, we found out that many unforeseen problems arose with our lot. First being that when they began to excavate our basement they could not find the sewer lines. Apparently these are pretty important things! ;) So they had to contact the land developer to come out and locate the lines and also visit city hall to go through video footage of the creation of those lines( or something like that, I don't speak construction) Finally, said lines were found!! Then came the second large problem. In the middle of where our driveway needs to be are two city utility boxes. As you can imagine, you can't exactly just pour cement over city utility boxes. Nor can you have said boxes in the middle of your driveway. So back to the city the builder went. The city has finally decided to move said boxes to another location. This, we found out, is the reason we have had over a month of delays so far. Let's hope we've had enough problems from our lucky number 13 home.

Back to the meeting.... after hearing our concerns about the lack of service we had received in regards to unanswered questions we had and that we had been denied modifications we wanted to make to our home; they created a few special modifications for us for free!
1- we are taking out the door between the master bedroom and master bathroom and instead creating a large roman archway
2- We are closing off the door between the master bath and the walk in closet and just putting a door in the bedroom that leads into the walk in closet. (no more having to walk through the bathroom to get to the closet)
3- we are adding a window, 4ft by 3ft above my soaker tub for natural light in the master bath.


Moral of the story: stand your ground on demanding good customer service! I am proud to be my mothers daughter and that she taught me how to strongly but courteously stand up for myself and others. Thanks mom!

Monday, November 17, 2008

Halloween Babies!!















Joshie (above) was 1 day shy of 5 months in this picture(2005). Avalinea is 10 months (2008).


I think we have a tad bit difference in weight, no? :) Joshie weighed 16 lbs 14.5 oz and was 26 inches tall (at 4 months) Avalinea on the other hand, weighed 17 lbs and was 29 inches tall at 9 months. I love that they could wear the exact same 1st halloween outfit despite their difference in age!!

Thursday, November 13, 2008

That's right....my company is cooler than yours!

For anyone interested, the company I work for was in Time magazine today. Here's the link, it's a really great article!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858876,00.html

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Frustrated. *Vent*

Over the last 48 hours I have been hearing and reading a lot of comments saying that "those who voted for Obama were probably young, uneducated (collegiately anyway) 18 year olds who were doing it to be trendy and cool" . Just let that sink in for a moment.... By implication then, those who voted for McCain are older, educated persons not swayed by popular trends.

As a "educated" person this upsets me greatly. I take my voting responsibility very seriously. Prior to the election I spent several weeks reading and researching BOTH candidates platforms. Browsing both candidates websites as well as third party websites like CNN and other news. I watched all 3 Presidential debates as well as the Vice Presidential debate. I consider myself and informed voter. I am strongly against voting party line. I hate that button on the ballot which gives us the option to vote all democrat or all republican. Not all democrats are wild liberals who want to abort babies and take aways guns. Not all Republicans are Bible preaching, pro death penalty right wingers. We should be voting for a person, not a party. Voting for a party is the lazy way of doing things in my opinion. In fact, I'd be all for abolishing parties all together. I believe we need to have a balance across the spectrum of beliefs, platforms, and ideas and in order for our nation to run smoothly. Voting party line often involves a lot of assumptions, which is another thing that really irritates me.

Assumptions. Just because I'm LDS does NOT mean I'm a republican. And following the same argument, even if I was a republican, it doesn't mean I am because my parents were, or I am because everyone else in Utah is. Whatever I am, I am because I read. Because I research. Because I am involved. Because I can think for myself. Too often Republicans in Utah are stereotyped as just following the crowd and incapable of thinking for themselves. We need to fight against assumptions. I have often been asked the question, how I can be a good, God fearing, LDS woman and be a "liberal"- like the word is eternal damnation or something. I find this question so ignorant I'm not even going to take the time to give it a response.

Now that the election is over, we need to move past all the back biting and name calling. We need to be United. I would say this no matter the outcome of the election. Whoever you voted for, if you did your research and truly believed in your candidate; I respect you and your vote. We shouldn't spend our time categorizing each other as if one group of voters is more important than another. We all need to support our new President, regardless of how we voted. Because if we don't, we've failed before we've even begun. Divided we fail.

I'd like to propose a new rule for the next presidential campaign. I'd love to take credit for this idea, but in truth, my sister Alayna is the one that came up with it.
"In any debate, commercial, rallies, anything....you can only talk about YOURSELF and what YOU will do. You are NOT allowed to bring up the other person at all."
With this rule in place there would be no nasty name calling, no lies spread, and no negative ads. Political Utopia. It will never happen, but its nice to contemplate.