The Kitchen Remodel Cont.

This is looking at the kitchen from the living room. The fireplace is all gone. You can see a hole in the ceiling where the chimney went. You can also see a big hole in the floor. The fireplace was VERY HEAVY. A wooden floor wouldn't have supported it, so the base went all the way to the foundation of the house. (It's a one-level house with a crawl space underneath.)
Also, when they removed the cabinets along the wall (the sink was also there) they found some water damage. Mostly just on the sheetrock and the cabinets themselves. Their back bottom sides were very rotten!

Here's the floor again. This is the view from the front door. (The big door opening on the right goes into the dining room and the one on the left goes into the family room.) You can see all the cinder blocks in the hole that were the base of the fireplace.

Here they are working to patch the floor. Many of those cinder blocks stayed there!

Here they are framing up the side wall in the new kitchen design.

Kitchen Remodel Begins!

Wednesday morning the demolition crew came faster than I expected. Before I knew it half the appliances were gone before I remembered to take the "before" pictures.

This is one side of the kitchen. On the far right is the space where the frig goes.

This is the other side. The counter is already gone, as is the stove top, microwave and oven, which was in the brick part sticking out.
This is the fireplace from the view of the living room. The back side of it created one of the kitchen "walls".

Here's a view from the front door.
The fireplace is very monstrous and takes up a lot of space. We wanted to upgrade the kitchen anyway. We decided to remove the fireplace altogether. Don't worry...we also have a pellet stove in the family room.
For another picture of what the kitchen looked like, check out the blog posted on Aug. 31 of '09 called "The new house in Bloomfield". It's the fifth picture down.

Emmee's 6th birthday

Emmalynn didn't have the most exciting birthday this year. We were in the midst of clearing out the kitchen for the start of our remodel the next day.

Dan brought her flowers and balloons, which she absolutely loves to get.

She did get her favorite dinner...pizza.
She's not a big cake eater, but she loves lemon bread. Her birthday "cake" then became a birthday lemon bread loaf. And she actually ate it!
It was also the LAST thing baked in our "old" kitchen!! hehehe
Thanks to everyone who sent her gifts and cards and birthday wishes.
For more on her birthday fun check out her blog, The Emmee Rae Show!

Spring Break in Moab

Here's some pictures of our Spring Break trip to Moab with our old Utah neighbors, the Johnstons. Here's the Johnstons and most of us, the Joneses at one of the Windows Arches.

Here's what the base of the arch looks like.

Here's the Double Arch with Emmalynn, Cassidee and Paige.

This is the Delicate Arch (way in the background). We woke up to rain and snow that morning. The pathways were very gooey as we made our way to the upper lookout.

This is the beginning of the trail to a few different arches. The scenery was awesome.

This is me in front of the Landscape Arch.

This is my friend Stacey. She's one month more pregnant than I. We were troopers to make it on so many hikes!

Cute little father and son hiking.

These rocks fell out of the arch in the picture above. They made a great playground.


This is what our full van looked like most of the trip!
Can you tell the kids are watching a movie?

Easter Fun

Here are some pictures of our Easter Fun.

These were taken the week before Easter. They are the Easter "outfits" my kids got this year. Adam is actually wearing a little suit that used to belong to my little brother Andrew. It's a old little suit and the pants were a little big for Adam. And, of course, he couldn't leave a tie on!

Then we dyed eggs on Friday the 2nd.
We didn't even have a major spill, although Adam did feel the need to "stir" the whole time his eggs were in the dye.


This is Easter morning with a little basket hunting. For more pictures of the individual kids check out their own blogs.
Adam's was, of course, found by his sisters first, so they needed to 'help' him!

Even Dan got to find "Mom and Dad's" basket. The Easter Bunny can't forget them, can he?


Here's Cassee starting to check out her basket.

Everyone found one of these bunny masks in their basket. The kids thought they were pretty fun to wear...all day long!

And last but not least, this was the little egg hunt in the back yard. Can't have Easter without that can we? Too bad all our cousins weren't here to do it with us!

We had fun and enjoyed General Conference on Easter Sunday, but it sure wasn't the same without having some family around to spend it with.