Our good friends James and Erica Peterson came down to Utah for the weekend and stayed with us.  We had a great time visiting with them and we got some good work and playing in while they were here.  Before I go on, I need to tell some back stories.

#1 Last year Kathryn and I transplanted the Rose of Sharon growing to the side of our garage a couple of feet over into the neighbors yard.  Then we smashed down the cinder block wall that separated the car port area to the side of the garage from the rest of the driveway.  We had planned to replace the wall with a gate, but we ended up deciding to just leave the area open.  Where the tree was, we planned to pour a cement pad.

#2 Kathryn has been anxious to work on the baby room since pretty much day 1.  We’ve got a crib, but we haven’t set it up yet.  We also have some furniture at Kathryn’s house that is waiting to come down here to furnish the baby room with.  The problem has been that the baby room is currently serving as our guest room.  We didn’t want to move the guest room downstairs right away, because we needed to do some work downstairs before it is ready to become the new guest room.  So anyway, we’ve been stalling.  We’re not that excited to work on the basement, and we knew James and Erica were coming to stay with us.  So one day we were looking for other projects that we could do in order to procrastinate working on the basement a little longer.  That’s how we came up with the idea that it would be nice to finally finish the concrete pad so we don’t have to worry about mud etc. when we go to take out the trash and stuff.

So we began to make preparations for the pour.  We dug out the dirt and we compacted the soil.  We borrowed some tools from the neighbors and selected the concrete we’d use.  Saturday morning Kathryn and I went in to the concrete place and picked up our cart.  We definitely exceeded the recommended towing weight of our little “truck” with our 2500 pounds of concrete plus the trailer weight.  We took it really easy going home.  Kevin came over to help and we got started.

It went really well, albeit slow.  It took a couple of hours for the concrete to bleed off the water enough so we could work it.  It just didn’t want to start curing for a long time.  We took the cart back and it was a much easier pull going back with the unloaded cart.  Maybe someday we’ll get a bigger truck.

Once the work was done and after we had a fabulous lunch by Kathryn, we loaded up the bikes for a quick trip up Hobble Creek canyon.  It had snowed and rained during the week, so it was a little soggy up there, but not too bad.  It was really pretty.  Devin joined us for the ride.  It was a lot of fun have the gang back together and it was fun to have Kevin be able to join us.

 

While the boys were riding, Kathryn and Erica had a great time working on some ornate Christmas wreaths.  I wish I had more pictures, but this is what I found.

It was a great weekend!  Thanks James, Erica, and Kevin for the help with the concrete!

 

Two weeks ago Kevin and I went on an evening ride up to Strawberry peak.  It was a very pretty ride!  Here are a couple of pictures from the trip.

I’ve been doing some research on our house trying to find out some history on it, when things were added on and such.  I came across these two pictures that are fun.  The first is from 10 years ago in August of 2003.  The next doesn’t have an exact date, but from what I’ve been able to find, it’s a pre 1966 picture.  The house was built in 1953, so it was one of the few houses in the area for a long time.  Notice the farmland in the background of the picture.