Nate, Nate, and Nate

This last month has been pretty crazy.  The speed with which Nate continues to grow and learn new things is staggaring!  One thing worth mentioning is that Nate loves books.  We just got him a couple new books on Saturday and he love those too.  He brings us books to read with him at least five times a day.  The love of books is a joy that we always wanted our kids to appreciate and so far Nate really likes them! 

It is really funny to me how much Nate acts like a little boy.  He loves to make a lot of noise, he never wants to sit still, he loves to throw things, he loves to play with his food, he loves carrying things around and smacking them into whatever he can find, and he really loves wrestling with his parents.  It is so much fun!

Nate had his first official haircut this week.  I'll post a before and after picture later in the week.  Julie was hesitating to cut off his hair because she didn't want him to loose his little curls!  Oh, well.  Having cut hair even makes him look more grown up!  It is so funny to see him continue to grow!

There are a few new pictures in the January 2007 Group.  Enjoy!

Apple Day!

Steve Jobs announced the Apple ipHone at the MacWorld Conference today. This phone looks totally awesome and will certainly revolutionize the phone/PDA/Internet device market for a long time. It will be released in June when it should get final approval from the FCC. It is a windscreen touch interface that basically runs OS X. That is so amazing. The problem, is the price. 500 dollars for a 4gig version and 600 dollars for the 8gig version. Ouch! And that is only with a two year service agreement with cingular! So that thing is pretty expensive.

So in light of the news I bought a 8gig Red Ipod Nano today and I love it! It is just awesome. It is just so tiny! I'm not terribly impressed with the current ipod video and with no imminent release of the next generation I went with the Nano. It is solid state so I can take it to the gym and finally retire my 512mb shuffle! I have used that shuffle constantly for the last year and it served me very well. Now that I have the 8gig Nano I can put my entire library on the device to take with me wherever I go! I have about a gig left so there is a little room to grow there. Anyway, I got the Nike arm band and also an invisible shield so I don't scratch it! What a great day. Anyway, I should mention that this was made possible by all the people who for Christmas, so generously provided me with the means to purchase my Nano . Thank you.

The Bathroom is Complete!!!!!!!!!!!!

So the day that Julie and I have awaited for so long is finally here.  We have finished the bathroom!!!!!  It has been such a hard road where a ton of disappointment and frustration along with a strange mixture of satisfaction.  Who would have thought?  Anyway, I have just posted a ton of pictures to the remodel group and we hope that you like our new remodel. 

Great Break and New Pictures of Nate

I have taken a lot of time off this holiday season and that has made for some really fun times together as a family.  Julie and I went on an awesome date up to Park City on Friday night.  The Kimball Art Center organized a gallery stroll and most of the art galleries had refreshments and many of the artists were present.  We had such a great time together! 

I have posted some more new pictures of Nate.  He is such a cute kid!

Snow Christmas Part 1

So we had a great Christmas here at the Snow Home in Layton.  We spent it with family and we felt very fourtunate to have both of our parents so close.  So we are going to post some pictures and stories about some of the gifts the we recieved.  Some of them have some fun stories that we think would be fun to share.  I also have some really cute pictures that I took of Nate on Christmas afternoon.  I hope you enjoy them.

Backerboard

I updated the remodel group with some photos that are a few weeks old.  They show the backerboard that I placed in the shower surround area as a preparation for the tile.  I placed 1/2-in on the walls to give the tile some thickness out from the rest of the wall and 1/4-in on the floor.

Nate on the MOVE

So Nate has really been cruizing around the house now that he can walk pretty well when he isn't tired.  We took some pictures of him while we were putting up some Christmas decorations.  Enjoy!

Plumbing

When I started this whole project I didn't think that I would need to do any plumbing.  I'm not sure why I didn't think about it because Julie and I had already chosen new hardware for the tub and shower!  It took my dad and I two days to put the stupid manifold together without any leaks!!!!  It was a really crazy weekend that included going one night without water because home depot closed before we could get the part we needed!  Anyway, most of the soldering went really well but when it came time to connect the last piece we always sprang a leak in one of the elbows.  We put that stupid thing back together like three time with no success until we finally decided to use galvanized steel and compression tubing and be done with it.  Why we didn't do this in the first place, I have no idea?  It only took us like 15 minutes to repair the problem that we were having and then we were up and running. 

Before we started on the plumbing we had quite a time with the new tub.  Our new tub was freaking heavy.  It took all the effort that my boss, elders quorum president, and I could muster to get it upstairs.  We got it into the bathroom and then it took the three of us, including my dad who showed up to help, about two hours to get it into place!!!!!  That tub was freaking heavy!

So things are going much better now and we've made a ton of progress but you'll have to wait for more information!  Oh and I updated the remodeling group so check out the new pictures.

Demolition

The demolition phase of our remodeling project was quite strange for me.  Indeed the first cut into the drywall was sort of tramatic.  Sure, I've broken tons of things on purpose just because I wanted to see what would happen.  But this time it was different, I was breaking my house!  We spent a lot of money on this house and I was breaking it! 

Anyway, I ripped out the drywall above the tub and shower enclosuse and removed the old fiberglass tub with a sledge hammer and a jigsaw!  It was pretty fun stuff.  I also removed the old floor and a lot of the old trim.  Enjoy the pictures.

Before

So I didn't take enough pictures of our bathroom before I started ripping it apart!  Anyway, here is one picture just to give you a flavor for how crazy the change was!