Fall is my favorite time of year. I took a little time from work to go walk around outside and shot these at our next door garden shop.






Except for this one. This is Kona. In the window.

Hey, I forgot to mention this! For everyone who lives in the one-city area (Salt Lake), I ask that you go to the downtown library and 1) see the awesome stuff and 2) vote for our sculpture. It's not that we need to sway the vote...it's that I want to.

So today was CANstruction day here in Salt Lake. Our firm participated (and by participated I mean destroyed all other teams that entered the competition). It was pretty exciting, as was expected, and the build went off pretty smoothly, mostly as was expected. Here are some pictures!

So, as many of you know, I have been working way too many hours recently (in fact I am about to head there right now, at 8 am on a Saturday!) which means, among other things, nothing is getting done on our house projects. I was able to get some work done on the basement one weekend, but the projects there are still in the works.


The stairs were needed because termite damage from before we purchased the house had turned the stringers and treads into mush. Also I took a sweet spill using my back to break about 3 of the treads, so that was good. If you look close you can see that part of the wall, which is sweet old school tongue and groove, was also in pretty bad shape so I replaced that as well. Our friend Steve, who is a carpenter, came over and gave me a lesson in stair building.



Much needed tool storage/organization.


The Foosball table lives again! Who wants some? This is what Katie refers to as my "man cave," which reminds me of the scene in Juno where Ellen Page says to Jason Bateman after seeing his room where he keeps all his cool stuff "She gave you your own room in... in your whole house? For your stuff?"

So I have been working way too many hours recently to participate in anything fun...or even anything not fun, like cleaning the house. Come the 8th of October, it should be all over and I will be back to my normal working hours.

Last night I took off early (a.k.a. I only worked 8.5 hours) and we went out for our friend Whitney's birthday to the Metropolitan. It was Dine 'O Round so it was supposed to be less expensive, and it was...a little. Everything was very tasty though and the portions were not as small as I had been led to believe.


Don't we look ready for a night on the town?


I think Kona was more annoyed than excited.

It was a very successful party. And by successful, I mean awesome. Joint birthdays. Two birthday girls. Booze. Presents. Meatballs. What wasn't to like? Unfortunately, I was too busy liking everything to think to take pictures of the party. Suffice it to say, it was a good time.

The only thing missing is a faux-hawk...and hair.



I was told these are called "poofs."


Katie isn't actually blowing out candles on two cakes (though she does like cake enough to warrant that). Aura is to Katie's right and is blowing out her birthday cheesecake.

Who wouldn't want to party with this special lady?

These are some camping pictures from a couple of weekends ago. We went up the mirror lake highway and camped at mirror lake. It was a lot of fun. My sister was in town with...Greg. Them, along with my cousin Kay Kay and my friend Whitney from work came up and hung out for the weekend. Highlights from the weekend:

- the hour and a half we waited for a mediocre burger and a decent milkshake at the local burger place.
- the 53 miles (round trip) that we traveled to get more beer because we (again) didn't plan well enough.
- the 34 beers that we left the camp site with (as a result of over-excited purchasing)
- the 6 eggs that mysteriously ended up on the ground
- the fact that the bear that snuck into some lady's tent was at a different camp ground down the road.




This is my impersonation of a Tyrannosaurus...pretty good, isn't it?


Cute. Aw.

I am not 100% clear on how/why this came about, but thanks L for taking the time to honour our little Kona...with a butterfly-filled rainbow land.

Yes, we have taken some time away from putting anything up here, and from doing anything on the house. We know. We are sorry. But this weekend marked the jumping back in to working on the house, even if it's only small projects now. I finished the top to the bench on the deck (something I have been putting off for a month and only took about 2 hours). I also put in the spice rack shelving that Katie has been bugging me about for about 8 months. Yay progress!







Just a reminder of the before. Pretty swell progress, huh?