Porter Benjamin Atkins

At the end of April I was able to go out to Twin Falls to visit Melissa's family. She had her new baby, Porter Benjamin Atkins, on April 11. He is so adorable!!! I loved it. She had him about 3 weeks early. She actually was beginning to go into labor 6 weeks early, which is when she had Will. Luckily, they were able to to hold it off for a little while. He did have to go to the NICU, but not for very long. I had so much fun with the kids. I also went to Shoshone Falls, which is about 10 minutes away from their house. It is beautiful!!! It is actually taller than Niagra Falls, but not as big across. It is huge in the spring because of the snow melting from the mountains. I have been before in the fall, but was not impressed. When I saw it this time though, it was awesome! I couldn't get very good pictures because it was so misty there! I got soaked--not from rain, but from the mist that comes up. It was so good to take a little mini vacation.

Pictures

The other day Tanner took us out to take pictures. Normally Troy and I both hate getting our picture taken, but we had a lot of fun this time. I think they turned out awesome. Here are some of our favorites.

Men Can Be So Prideful!!!

So, we got our kitchen cabinets in. They are absolutely beautiful!! We got such a good deal on them because we bought them "ready to assemble", meaning we had to put them together ourselves. They are all hardwood, no particle board or MDF, so they are really good quality. For the most part, they are really easy to put together. They just snap together and then you put in a few screws and you are done. Well, we decided to put together the hardest one first--the lazy susan. Before we started, I asked Troy if we should watch the instructional video on their website on putting that piece together. He said no, he could figure it out. So we started, and 2 hours later, we still weren't done. We stopped for a few minutes to get something to eat, and started again. This whole time, I kept saying we should just go watch the video and he wouldn't hear of it! Finally, after working on this stupid thing for 3 hours, we got it put together. Guess how long it takes in the video? ........9 minutes! Haha! The whole thing was pretty funny. But now I have to bragg on Troy. It might have taken him a while to put that piece together, but he is doing an amazing job on this house. He built a half wall between the dining room and living room, braced the ceiling to we could tear out the wall in the kitchen, patched the ceiling, put up new drywall, put in new french doors, and numerous other things. Everyone who comes to see the progress is amazed! I am posting a few of the "work in progess" pictures. Next week I will put up a picture of the kitchen. We have almost all of the cabinets up now.

The Rapids

It has been pretty warm here, so Troy and I decided to enjoy it. We went over to the Savannah Rapids. Unfortunately, it cooled off the day we decided to go. Poor Tory--he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Anyways, I love going over there. It is peaceful and just a nice place to go take a stroll. We enjoyed our afternoon and hope to go more as it gets warmer.

The House

So back in January Troy got a house. We will live in it once we get married, and I can't wait! It was a foreclosure, so we got an awesome deal on it. It is 1540 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 car garage, and a pool. It was not in very good condition, so we are going to fix it up. It will be beautiful when we are done! The previous owners were such big smokers that nicotine covered the walls. You could see the outlines of where the pictures hung! Pretty much everything will be new. We put in a new pool liner already, but I don't have a picture of the new one yet. We will also be replacing all the siding, the decks, the floors, the bathrooms, and the kitchen. We have already ripped out the kitchen and floors. We took out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room to make it more open. We will put an island there in place of the wall. I have put some pictures up of the "before" and the "destruction"! You can see how dusty it got in there when we were ripping everything out. Hopefully it won't take us too long to complete, but since we are doing it ourselves I have a feeling it may take a while!

Will

For Christmas, Mandy, Melissa, Lance and Will came home. Lance and Mandy had to go home early, but Melissa and Will were able to stay for 2 weeks. We had so much fun and I was so sad to see them leave. Will is such a little character--he loves to entertain people, and if he sees that someone is laughing at him, he will keep acting like a clown. He also had this hilarious face he would do whenever there was a noise. I included a picture of that! He also loves to get his picture taken, and will sit there and pose for you. I pretty much followed him around the whole 2 weeks taking pictures. I took tons and tons! Here are a few.

Christmas 2008

This Christmas was great. It was nice to have some time off of work and enjoy spending time with family. Mandy, Melissa, Lance and Will were able to come home for Christmas. Will is the cutest little guy and has such a sweet personality. Troy and I spent Christmas morning at his house. Aaron and his kids were able to come home for Christmas also. Afterwards, we went and had Christmas at my house. Will was having fun opening presents at first, but then he became more interested in throwing the wrapping paper away. Troy got me an awesome present--a digital SLR camera. It is the Nikon D60. I absolutely love it. There is a lot I need to learn, but for now I just set it on the auto setting and snap away! My favorite thing about it is that I can constantly snap pictures. I don't have to wait for the camera to get ready. Here are a few pictures of us all opening presents.