Warr Visit

I couldn't wait until Christmas to see The Warrs so I headed out there last weekend for a short little visit.

I made the girls some hats and here they are sporting the fall colored ones.  

Evie does these cute little fake smiles when asked to smile for a picture.  They crack me up.  This is the first of quite a few in this post.

Here's example number two.  She is a cute little thing!

Penny has grown so much!  I guess the last time I saw her in real life was just a couple days after she was born.  

She's just recently learned to roll over and is a SUPER smiley baby!

I was excited to hear that we would be visiting a corn maze during my visit.

The Griffins got tickets for it.  It's always great to see them!

Some of the corn was pretty tall.  It was hard to navigate around.

Erika held Penny in Susannah's little sling so she got a good nap in.

Susannah had to carry Evie for most of the time we were in the maze because poor little Evie got sick on the way over to the maze.

She was wearing a cute Halloween outfit I brought her, but she threw up all over it so Susannah put her in one of Penny's onsies.  Luckily her vest was unscathed at this point.

Once we got out of the maze she must have been feeling a little better because she wanted to walk around and look at the rides and games that were going on.  I got a kick out of how she was walking around.

We did a little hay ride around as well.

The weather was really nice, but it was SO dusty out there!

Here I am with the Cute Warr family.  Evie's wearing the other hat I made her.

Her stomach had definitely settled because she showed me her mad scooter skills when we got back.

Sunday between conference sessions we went for a walk to the park.  I loved the view of Penny in that little carrier.  

I love her smiles too!

I miss them already!

We then went to look at some of the houses Adam and Susannah were looking at.  I had to get an aunt/niece picture since Erika was with us.

Loving Evie's smile in this one!

One thing I loved was that Evie would hold Penny's hand or arm - especially in the car where they ride right next to each other.

It's too bad that my phone camera is so slow.  I couldn't quite get the kiss in time!

This pic of Evie reminded me of pictures of me at this age.  Evie's mouth was full of chicken nuggets at this point.

A cheesy breakfast smile!

Susannah got her Halloween outfit all washed so she could wear it before I flew out on Monday.  Cute smile on a cute girl in a cute outfit!

You can see the skirt better from this angle.  Evie LOVES books!

Here's Susannah making Penny laugh.  Sorry these videos are on their side.

This is part one of Adam playing with the girls.

Part 2.  I was super sad to leave!

I had a long layover on my trip home, so I arranged to meet up with Jinny, my best friend from High School and we had a great time catching up!  Not he best picture, but it's the only I had! :)

Parent Visit and TILING!

My parents came out for a visit for a week.  I was so excited to have them come.  It had been a long time since they'd been to my house.  When my mom found out I was on the Houston "Time Out For Women" team, she decided to come out for a visit.  When I mentioned to my dad that I wanted to have the shower in my bathroom re-tiled, he decided to come out too since he loves projects and has really been into tiling floors the last little bit.

FYI - this is going to be a play by play of the shower transformation with a few other fun things thrown in, so if home renovation doesn't interest you, you may want to move quickly through this post! :)  Step 1 was to take off the door/glass walls to the shower.

My dad was slowly prying off tiles, but it was taking a long time.  He found it was much quicker to beat them with a hammer.

It was loud and very dusty and my entire upstairs was covered with a thin film of dust.

My mom and I cleaned out the old cement board so we could get started on the next phase.

We bought some NEW cement board/hardy backer and used some of the scraps from my Aunt Maylene and Uncle Darrell's house since they've got a contractor working on their house right now.  Luckily, they had their professional shower guys over there so my dad got some tips from them.

My dad taped and mudded the seams between the edges of the backer board.

Once that was dry we painted this waterproof sealer over everything.  I really liked the color.

Alas, I didn't like it well enough to forego the tile! 

So once that was good and dry, my dad decided we should do the bottom layer of tile before we went to be so it would be solid and hold the rest of the tile in place.

I'm sure it wasn't the most comfortable position for a project!

Those tiles did NOT want to stay up so we employed my leopard print duck tape.

Not long after that, my dad really felt like he should take those down, so he did.  We looked online and saw that you should NOT do the bottom first.  He measured space for the bottom layer, the nailed a board around to hold up the second layer from the bottom and then built up from there.

My mom was the official mixer of the thinset.  She found her hand to be the best way to mix thoroughly!

We added a mosaic strip above the 12x12 inch tiles.

I had to get a close-up so you could see the lovely glass pieces interspersed in with the porcelain.

It was then time for the 6x6 inch tiles.

My co-worker, Faye, had a wet tile saw that she let me borrow for this project.

That thing was LOUD, but effective!  Thanks, Faye!

We finally got everything but the bottom row up.  The duck tape came in handy for those edge pieces that didn't have a lot of support.  This was the last thing that my mom and I saw before heading off to . . . 

Time Out for Women in The Woodlands.  Sadly, this is the only picture I took of the whole event which was Friday evening through late Saturday afternoon.  We had a great time.  The speakers were amazing, I enjoyed seeing LOTS of friends, and we had a great lunch with the Chappell ladies!

When we got home, we saw that my dad had got the bottom row of tile up, and he'd grouted everything.  He was just cleaning the grout off when we got home.

Now another tiling break!  I made my parents these shirts for their 40th anniversary.  The front has a picture of them when they were first married.  On top of the picture it says "For Time and All Eternity" and the bottom says "1972 - Forever."

You can probably see the back, but both shirts together read, "Together Since 1972."  Their anniversary actually isn't until Sept 29th, but I wanted to see them get these and get pictures of them wearing the shirts!  Basically, I just couldn't wait.  Not pictured are the ping pong party we had Saturday night and my dad also gave a fireside at the Hafer building for the Single Adults in the area.  It was great as usual!

I did get a picture of our fun Bushman FHE on Monday night.  We had the Calls and the Johnsons & Rascons from my ward.  Also, my cousin's husband, Mark Washburn was in down for meetings so he came too.  Ken Johnson is related to us through the Bushman line and the Turley line.  Patti Rascon is related through the Bushmans and Jesse N Smith.  We had a BBQ then sang and told Bushman ancestor stories.  I really enjoyed it!

I had to get a Turley finger picture while we were all together.  My dad's hands are the two on the right.  Ken's on the far left and his cute little son is in the middle!

Now we're back to tiling.  My parents got the door back on on Monday when I was back at work, and they even made time to come have lunch with me there in The Woodlands.

I had to take a picture of them in the finished product.  It looks FANTASTIC!

I love it and I LOVE THEM!  Thanks, Mom and Dad for visiting me and for ALL your hard work.  You guys are the BEST!!!!!!!!!