A New Cabinet!!

Michael made me a new pantry cabinet for the kitchen!! I guess I have complained long enough about using a bookshelf in the garage to stack boxes of canned goods, then needing heavy crates to store other things like rice, chips, nuts, spices, and anything else I was worried about mice getting into...that Michael built me a GREAT new pantry cabinet!! WooHoo!

This is what the kitchen area looked like prior to the new cabinet going in. You see the fridge? Well the cabinet over the fridge was only 10.5 inches deep, so, I stacked stuff on the fridge. The other cabinet to the left of the fridge is also only 10.5 inches deep. So I crammed as much into it as I could, but there was a lot of storing going on in the garage.

Here's what it all looked like from the side. You see the depth relation between the "old" or original cabinet and the fridge. (Oh, and the sweet, beautiful entry bench on the bottom left that Michael built for my birthday a couple years ago. But, I digress...)

They unscrewed the 10.5 inch deep cabinet from the wall and moved it over. Here's Bret, Michael's brother, using a sawzall to cut out the old over the fridge cabinet. You see, the cabinet above the fridge and the cabinet to the right of it were built as one unit. (Michael's dad and brothers built all of the original cabinets, by the way.) So he sawed it out...

...then they brought in the new cabinets and put them together...

then set them up. They leveled, connected, and voila! I have approximately 48 square feet of additional accessible shelf space! A comparison? 2 foot wide by 24 ft long shelving! This is accomplished with the drawers he installed. These aren't just shelves, they are very cool drawers that have a neato feature that prevents them from slamming. You give them a shove, they go in, then slow down and finish pulling in by themselves. Sweeeeeet!

All put together. Isn't it sweet?! Oh, and that's the little footstool Daddy made for the kids' bathroom so they could reach the sink. Don't you like the handles and the cut out heart?!

My sweet Michael with his beautiful creation.

And the happy (spoiled!) homemaker showing off her cabinets! See the drawer above the fridge? Uber cool, isn't it?!

Here's sweet Annisia helping Daddy put the hardware on the next morning. She's holding the vacuum while he drills so there isn't a lot of sawdust falling. I have such good helpers!

Laying sod on May 10

Two weeks ago, we helped M's brother, Bret lay his sod. It was a family event! We laid about 14,000 sq ft of sod that day. His place is gorgeous! And the grass looks good too!

It's Christmas time!

We were to Michael's parents for Christmas Day. We had a wonderful lunch of prime rib and all the trimmings. Here are some recovering after lunch...


"What?! I'm not opening anything." Annisia was pretty fascinated by all the gifts. We do a gift exchange in M's family. Always a fun time...

M's niece Jami enjoying a little time with Annisia.

Jonathan and Annisia love all the attention they get!


Watching Uncle Jon open the first gift. Papa couldn't wait for Jon to open his gift...it was a remote controlled Spider Man helicopter! Man, the guys and kids had a blast with that!

One tuckered out girl, and Annisia was tired too! (ha!)

Jonathan loves playing with Uncle Bret. I have no idea what is going on here...but they sure look like they are enjoying it!

Daddy and Annisia sacked out in the back bedroom at Grandma's. Don't they look sweet?!


It was so fun watching these two...and hearing all the background talk. "What kind of pie do you want?" There were some yummy choices...chocolate cream, angel lemon, pecan...wish you could have been here.

Camping and Spotting Moose

This past weekend, we went up to our camper parked in , yep, you guessed it, Circle Park. We stayed the night, got up for breakfast and discovered our dog was missing. So we went out looking for her and Michael's brother Bret drove up. I guess he's lucky to have around because we found her within minutes! She was treeing squirrels! (Or they were pretending to be treed just to tease her!) We had to move our trailer, so we brought it up by Bret's in the Hazelton area. We went for a little hike Saturday afternoon to get the kids sleepy and Annisia was asleep in my ERGOcarrier before we got out of the campsite! Jonathan fell asleep within about 20 minutes, so we came back to the campsite. Now, do you think you could sleep like this?!

Later, we went up Hazelton Rd to fish in the Powder River. We saw these moose on the way, just milling around the willows and munching. Pretty big paddles, don't you think? Nichole, you just have to come visit us.

Uncle Bret is showing Jonathan how to fly fish. Jonathan thought the whole thing was pretty cool. Bret caught a 10 inch rainbow trout, held it out for Jonathan to touch, and just when he was going to touch it, Bret thrust it out and said, "Rowr!" You should have seen Jonathan jump! Needless to say, he didn't want to touch any other ones!!

Do you see Michael in the background sneaking up on the fish?

On the way back, the moose were still there. Sorry about the dark photo, but these are some nice sets of antlers.