The way time has past for us...

There's nothing I can say to excuse my lack of updating the blog.  I have found other things to occupy my time and frankly, I've stopped feeling guilty.  I would however like to attempt to fill you in on these last few/several months of our lives as you will find much has changed (and will continue to change, I'm sure)

After all the birthday celebrations, we did many fun things, celebrated holidays among other things, and decided to move back to Utah (the company Brad works for is based out of Provo, Utah so that's where we're going).  That has occupied much of our lives recently and will probably for the next little while.

So I'll use pictures with some caption to fill you in on the latest and greatest!

Saw the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile at our local King Sooper!

Brylie finished up her season of ballet lessons with a recital.  She did a fantastic job!!

The Easter bunny found his way to our house and left a trail of candy to Easter books for everyone!

Went on a fun family hike in the nearby mountains.

Got to go see Mitt Romney speak at a local oil drilling site.  GO ROMNEY!  Beat OBAMA! I'd like to add that the kids have been adequately taught how to cheer on our Future President!  And Cass was interviewed by a radio show host regarding the speech Romney gave and her reaction!  

Celebrated Mother's Day and got to remember the wonderful Mother's in our lives!!  We love you!

And lastly, after doing a lot of work in a very short amount of time (including painting the remaining rooms we hadn't painted in our house, and spreading nearly 10 yards of mulch in our backyard), we put our house up for sale.  This is something we are very sad to do because we absolutely love our house, especially now that we've got it exactly how we want it but feel the timing is right.  We only hope that our attempt to sell it "by owner" works out quickly eliminating the need to use an agent!  If you know of anyone looking to buy a home in the Longmont, CO area, please forward them our blog, http://5978scenicavenuehouse.blogspot.com.

My table

So we have been wanting to make a dining room table for a long time now and this particular one because you can make benches to go with it.  Well, we did it! Brad was kind enough to let me do most of the work (break the drill bits by the handful, etc).  I dare say that if he would have done more of the work, it would have turned out better still.  But now I have a little confidence and have caught the fever!  I hope to do a few more projects yet!


There aren't many pictures but here's what we have!

Birthday Land Around Here

We are pretty lucky (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) when it comes to birthdays because they are all within about 2 months of each other.  I guess for me it's nice, to get into birthday mode hard core for a little bit and totally relax when it's all over for a good chunk of time.  Birthday begins with breakfast in bed after which we generally open presents.  For lunch, Mom takes the birthday kid out where ever they want to eat.  Then we have whatever dinner they choose and the cake of their choice.

First was Olivia's birthday...

Then was Cassidy's birthday...

Then was Brylie's birthday...

Brylie had a birthday party this year with several friends.  She loved it!  And it was pretty fun for me to do too!  

Then was Brody's birthday...

And finally, Brad's birthday...we didn't take many pictures because we are lame like that.  Poor Brad but I think he had a good day!

Pearls

For Christmas, that morbidly obese elf Santa Claus gave Brylie a digital camera. We've been Olympic caliber procrastinators, and tonight was the first night we actually hooked it up to the computer to see what she's been doing. What we found was an absolute treasure trove of memories from the perspective of our four-year-old--absolute pearls.

Here's just one for your enjoyment. I'm sure more will follow.

-Brad

Merry Christmas! Love, The Gunnells

A lot to catch up on...

That is an understatement!  Between moving into our new home (YEA!!) and preschool, gymnastics, ballet, and our computer crashing, I have been busy.  And I'm a lot lazy so add that into the mix and you understand our lives a lot better.  First things first, our house.  We have been very busy painting!  When you first walked in, it was a pistachio green (we think the inspiration for many of these colors was the jello isle at the store).  This was something to fix as soon as possible!  And that we did. Here's before and after. And I can't figure out how to rotate my photos.

Pistachio pudding anyone?

So after we did that, we needed to do the office (to the left in the pictures above).  Below are those before and after shots.  We also spray painted the chandelier  from gold yuckiness to a black with flicks of bronze  in it.

Then on into the hallway and around the stairs.  We also have a den that was the lovely pistachio green that is now the toy room. 

 And finally, we had to paint our family room which took several weeks because it has 20 foot ceilings and we had to risk our lives on the scary ladder.  I'm a little disturbed by how comfortable I got being on the ladder.  It was really scary!!

We then moved up the stairs and painted the upstairs hallway.  This is where we stopped for now.  As you can tell, this has been a very big job and has taken a lot of time.  We are only able to paint when the kids are in bed so we have had many late, late nights.  Thank goodness for Excedrin Migraine is all I can say!

And the final pictures...my most favorite aspect of what we've done so far is the curtains...this was a major dilemma for a while.  We have those huge windows in the family room which is great for light purposes but at night, I just couldn't run across the walkwayto the kids' room in my underoos without everyone out the back windows able to see, in perfect HD, I might add (we have a busy street behind our house and then a large park beyond that). And it was very hot this summer.  The sun beat in upon the thermostat so the A/C was running almost constantly.  We needed blinds of some sort.  But the estimate we got was over a thousand bucks.  What to do?  One day, I had this epiphany.  So what was going to cost over a thousand dollars, ended up costing a little over $100.   And look how pretty the room looks now!

Here's the living room...I kind of skipped over it because we did nothing to it and it will probably stay that way!  Our stuff goes so well in there.  We will probably switch places with the couch and piano.

Here's the kitchen...we will be painting it but not anytime soon...we like the color and it doesn't look that bad.  We will eventually paint the cabinets white too.  No rush.  We plan on being here for a long time!!  

We have about six rooms left to paint...I have included pictures of those so you can feel our pain of living in the jello inspired rooms (it's really not that bad, except for the melon room...it is THAT bad...and make sure you don't turn on the lights...eww!)

This is Brylie and Brody's room for now.  We will eventually paint this navy and light blue and it will be a boys room.   (not any kind of announcement)

Here's the fluorescent melon room...it gets worse when the light is on!  It is not occupied currently but will eventually be a guest room/library.  It will be a light olive shade.  I'd like to thank the previous owners for painting everything in the closet.  Grrr!

Here's the master...we are not really fans of the yellow.  This will also change but we are unsure of really what color we'll go to.  Also not really a priority since we rarely hang out here.

So now you've seen most of our house...the last photos are of the back yard...this is such an awesome aspect for us!  The kids love having a big backyard and we have some big plans for what it will be in the future!  Come back soon for more updates on what we've been up to!