Blast (literally) From the Past

So, a month or so ago I get a frantic call while I'm at work from Kristal telling me that Backstreet Boys are coming to town and tickets are on sale and if I would want to go, she needs to know right this second.
Now, let me just say, that I've been in charge of getting tickets/seats for many concerts and know that all too familar panic if ,when you're offered seats if you hurry and take them, or give them up, hoping to get better ones, so I totally felt Kristal's pain in the situation! In a heartbeat I was for sure in!

You can make fun all you want, but Kristal and I grew up to the Backstreet Boys. We've been to every concert that came to SLC and even went to Vegas (with Julia) for one. And although, they are not currently my favorite band or even favorite kind of music, I couldn't pass up to go and see them again. So the whole gang went!

It was definitely a grey night

For those who don't know: Me, Rachelle, Summer, Mallory, Audrey & Kristal

(all the Nielsen girls- so cute!)

Waiting for the concert to start!

It was such a good concert!! Instead of an opening act, they had a dj come out for about 30 mins before to pump up the crowd, get everyone dancing!

They opened with Everybody (Backstreet's Back) which we all thought was very appropriate! Then they played all their big hits and mixed in all but 2 songs off their newest album. It was seriously, such a blast.

And here we are after!

We unanimously decided that they all aged pretty well (with the except of AJ balding) they all looked good and still sang and danced really well. I can't remember the last time I danced around and sang my heart out and had a blast, like we did last night! I loved every minute!

To current...

After all the tile was finally ripped up, electrical, sheetrock and drywall was completed...

We got a nice new (big) awning over the back patio

Last week, all the work that was done on the interior was stuff that my dad (with help) did.

Memorial day, while everyone went to a movie, Dad, Nikki and Keegan stayed home and tore down wallpaper to prepare the room for new paint. (see Nikki's blog) This day also marked the start of some severe vertigo for my dad so over the course of the next week or so Josh, Nikki and Jon helped paint and lay tile and the bamboo flooring.

I was working while all this went on, and one evening I came to find this little guy tuckered out on my bed:

I didn't take specific pictures of the paint, you'll notice it in the pictures to follow

(yellow and more yellow)

Flooring:

And then this week cabinets have been installed. Some finish details need to still be installed, but here's a glimpse.

It's starting to look like an actual kitchen again!!

5K

On June 5th Weight Watchers hosted a 5K - to promote exercise and healthy living or whatever, so my mom asked me to do it with her. She has no problem exercising daily but thought that if I ran with her, I'd push her to do a little better than she would solo. Then she recruited Josh and Nikki to do it too. (Jon probably would have too, but he had a soccer game)


Here we are waiting to start. Let me just point out that this was at 1:00 in the afternoon. Who does a race in the middle of the freaking day in June?! (Ps this is at Wheeler Farm)



And after. Josh had a good start and went up ahead of us. I stayed with mom and stuck to the plan of pushing her along. We did catch up to Josh with maybe 1/2 mile to go and finished together at 30.03. I will admit they cut the coarse a little short- but for our first race ever, we'll accept that time.

Just to clarify- Keegan was not pushed for the 5K, he got to play with Pa, feed the ducks & geese, and looked at all the other animals while we ran.

Construction Update

I feel like we've had so much progess in the last week; yet I haven't updated any of the photos.

Back on May 26th the original wall came down.

Yep, now everything was gone, except for the sink.

Then more work was done on the exterior. Old siding was removed,
(side note- the window on the left is the bathroom. The day they were pulling off siding they replaced the window too- unbeknowest to me! I was in there getting ready for work and all of a sudden the window is pulled off and I'm nearly face to face with a random const. worker...awkward! Luckily I had some clothes on by then)

New siding was put on. How about that yellow?


And here's dad with his steady side-kick, patching the old air vent so debris didn't get down there while the tile was being removed.

(Side note- in the above photo, you can see a little tile gone- well getting the tile up, was quite the process. I swear it took a week of ear plugs & hard jack-hammering to get it up. Good job on my dad's orginal job laying it, but the workers said it took the prize for the hardest to get up they've ever done. )

This phase of construction drove my mom nuts! So much dust/debris everywhere. We tried to put a tarp up to separate the kitchen from the living room - but it was still messy.

We've grilled a few times and done some crockpot meals, but it's hard to have real meals with no kitchen. Atleast we still had a sink to wash dishes at this point.

Family Pics

A few weeks ago we had some family pictures done. We had to have some re-touching and cropping of some heads, done to get a great picture of everyone (especially of the kiddos) and they just emailed these 2 pictures to me for some reason. These aren't even ones that we edited; but nonetheless, I thought I'd post them.