Clean House West Style

The week of Thanksgiving my parents were out of town. This is always the perfect time to get things done in the house because we can use things that smell that my mom can't be around. Before they left Kimi and I decided to ask them if there was anything that we could do for them that needed to be done. We suggested painting, getting the floors in the kitchen refinished, and etc. Our parents decided that some painting really did need to be done in the upstairs bathroom and then Kimi and I suggested that we do the extra room upstairs and our dad's room because they both needed paint and major cleaning done. So that was our plan and as soon as our parents were out the door we got started. But first of all we decided that we needed some major help.

Kimi then called our grandma to see if any family members might be able to come out and help us. May I just say that I love my family! We called Friday night and Saturday morning we had so many wonderful helpers come and help us move furniture and get the first steps of painting done. While there my Aunt Terri really wanted to do something that my Uncle Marc and her had talked to my mom about doing a couple years ago and that is tiling our front entryway in the house. I am so very grateful to them because they took time out of their busy schedules and got this done for my mom, which is something that she really has wanted done for so long because our carpet had gotten so worn. 

Throughout the week we had busy little helpers coming in and out to finish the tile and the painting. We also had people come over and help clean the whole upstairs. It is amazing how much a little cleaning goes a long way. We got everything finished (except a few things on the tile which will shortly be finished.) My parents are now THRILLED with the paint, their new office, and the TILE!! In fact my dad wants everyone to know that he fainted from the thrill of it ;). Our house truly looks so wonderful now and I am so grateful that we were able to do this for my parents. Now on to the reason for this post, PICTURES!!!

Now this was my dad's room before

This is my dad's room after!

Big honkin' difference right!!

Now I am sorry I don't have any before's of the other rooms but let me just tell you that they are also HUGE improvements!

This is the new office slash sewing room.

This is the bathroom which had a lot of issues. There was a big patch in the wall that was never finished so this really needed to be done.

And last but certainly not least the new tile in the entryway!!!! (I will post pictures of the completed deal soon)

I simply can't believe how much was accomplished in that amount of time. I sit here in awe and would be completely ungrateful if I didn't thank everyone for their hard work. 

* Thank you Kimi and Ryan for all the help and time you sacrificed to this. You can't imagine how happy mom and dad are.

*Thank you Mandi for coming home and being my buddy and helping us with all of this you are awesome.

* Thank you Aunt Terri and Uncle Marc and the whole Purles Family for the tile and the help you gave to get it done. My parents absolutely love it.

* Thank you Chase and Cam for your late night of hard work and multiple days of early mornings.

* Thank you Grandma Davis for getting everyone together for us.

* Thank you Mackenzie, Amie, Chris, Aunt Teresa, Uncle Michael, Aunt Jerry, and Grandma for coming out to help us it was greatly needed and appreciated. 

If I missed anyone I am truly sorry. But I want everyone to know that my parents absolutely love everything and we are all TRULY grateful for all that you have done for us. It truly has shown me all that I am grateful for!

New Toy to Play With!

So this post is mainly for my sisters who asked for some pictures of my NEW CAR!!! This is really exciting especially since I was blessed enough to buy it new. Now let me just say I loved my last car, but the timing was just to good to get a new car. My last car was in great shape for its age but it was getting older. I was looking at starting to need to pay for repairs and if you know me well you know that I don't do well with cars breaking down. Even seemingly small repairs kind of trip me up. I also have been dreaming of a dark blue car since I bought my last car. I also have been wanting some way to play my ipod in my car. And as much as it pains me to say I decided that it was time to switch from a manual to an automatic. I want to keep this car for a long time and it is just too hard to multitask with a manual. Sigh. Oh well.

But this new car is awesome. It is a 2012 hyundai elantra. I now have bluetooth in my car and can call people hands free. I can also now play my ipod in my car and have XM radio (we'll see if I keep it). I can control my radio and volume from my steering wheel. My rearview mirror automatically dims and lightens itself and can be programmed to my garage door opener. I have a compass and outside temp display. My center console can slide forward to give me an arm rest. My seat can go forward, backward, up, and down. My steering wheel go forward, backward, up, and down. If you can't tell I love my car! Now onto some pictures...

My new blue car!

Gray Interior

Center Console Below

Happy Halloween!!

These were my pumpkins that I carved this year. They are Hades from Hercules and Ariel from The Little Mermaid! I am so happy they turned out. I hope everyone is having a Happy Halloween!!!

I Now Have My Own Ricky Type of Story!!

So my purse was stolen from my car early this morning, ugh. I had to get up early to go to work. I walked out and our garage door was open (not by the thief, we have someone working on our roof so he has needed the garage open and long story short he didn't tell us he was leaving and we forgot to shut it) and the interior light of my car is on. Cue heart attack. I checked the doors on my driver side they were good. Then I walk around and see that my passenger door and my dad's drivers side door are ajar. I went into my dad to ask if he had been in the garage (semi hopeful) and he hadn't (all hope gone...whoosh). We both walked out to the garage to inspect further. Sure enough I looked into my car and my purse was gone and so was my debit card. We looked in his car and it had obviously been gone through but nothing taken (although his car is always so messy I doubt he knew for sure :]). Great. I had 10 minutes before I had to go to work so I ran inside to get on a computer to check my bank account, nothing major. I needed to leave by then so my dad offered to take of everything for me (I have a great daddy!). I went back out to my car to hurry and leave but can't. Remember what I first saw that was wrong, yeah the thief left the door ajar which left my interior light on killing my battery. Awesome. I am a little frantic now because it is early in the morning and I need to get to work and my day is already so AWESOME!!! So I run back in and tell my dad so he comes out with me to look at it. When we get out there we have no time so I ask him to just take me to work and keep me posted and let me know what I have to do. I spend the whole morning talking to banks and police officers and my dad. Luckily nothing is very bad news when I talk to everyone, just inconvenient. Then my dad picks me up at my break to take me home and jump my car.
We get home and start the jumping process and get my car going. Then we let it run and I had to take care of a few break time type things. My dad stayed out front to let our dog relieve himself. After doing this he walks into the house and in his hands is my purse!!! I immediately take it to look through it. A lot of things were still in there but it had obviously been gone through. Thoroughly. In jumps my Ricky type story. Anybody that knows my dad knows he has some pretty funny stories and if you want to hear the one that relates let me know. So when I say thoroughly I mean thoroughly. They took every possible thing out of my wallet and took my drivers license, gift cards, 2 account information cards, and my debit card. But then they also decided to look through my tampons and pads that I had for emergencies. They even dismantled the tampons!! Yes people I hide money in my TAMPONS!!!! Goodness. I saw this spectacle and showed my dad and said "your friend stole my purse!" (Again got to know his story to understand this, but made short he and his friend found a prostitutes purse when they were little and the friend went through the tampons and found money). We started to laugh and then I needed to call the bank because the thief had all my account info and I needed to freeze my accounts. I went through the rest of my day at work and then had a fun afternoon of going to the bank to terminate my account and start a new one. Then I had to go to the DMV to get a new license( which I am mad about because I didn't realize that they would want to take another picture and lets just say this one was really not flattering and showed that I was tired and mad).
All in all the thief got away with 4 charges on my card, gift cards, and my license. But that is not the only thing they have stolen from me. They have partially taken my sense of security. They have really inconvenienced my life for awhile now as I have to get a new bank card and watch out for fraud. I am over it but I still have to deal with it and the police. Really in my mind what kind of loser is this person that they are trolling neighborhoods at about 3 in the morning. The thing that really gets me is that their charges were sooooo stupid! For heavens sake they went to McDonalds!!!! What is that!!! LOSERS!!!!! Oh well I lived and I learned!! I will not be making the same mistakes again.

Time to WAKE UP!!!

I just got back from a family trip to DISNEYLAND!! I was able to see my whole family and it was awesome! But sorry this is not my posting for this trip. I need to gather a few pictures and am way too tired right now to make any sense in a long posting. This posting is about an incident that happened at our hotel.

My dad and I were in a room together because we are the snorers and early risers. One morning my dad got up before me and started to get ready to go down to the breakfast our hotel offered. It woke me up and I got up for a second and then went back to lay down and go to sleep when he was done. He left and I was half asleep. He wasn't gone more then 10 minutes when all the sudden I hear the key card reader go off and in comes this complete stranger who is not bothering to be quiet. Needless to say it scared the crap out of me, and I was awake. I sat bolt up right and looked at this lady. She saw me and said "so sorry" and slammed the door shut.

Since I was up I decided to get dressed and go downstairs and tell my dad the story. We were both a little concerned that some stranger was able to get into our room. We also thought it was quite suspect that she came in less then ten minutes after my dad left the room. We were worried because my mom would be in the room by herself the rest of the day. We went to the front desk and told them what had happened and they were also very concerned. They immediately got on top of the problem and tried to figure out what happened. They sent people up multiple times during the day. I don't know if they ever figured out what happened but it never happened again. It was quite the wake up call for me though.

The Best Hot Fudge in the World!!

My dad and me went to his mom's house to collect some of the things that we wanted to save and that would remind us of her and grandpa. As we were looking through their books we found an album of her recipes. This was incredible! There were a lot of recipes that we thought went with grandma. She was an incredible cook and I loved going to Grandma West's just to have some of her food. They are all hand written and some have gotten some stains and drips on them. I've made it my own little project to type them and and get them out to my family so that we can keep her recipes going. I might share some of them on my blog as I go along for those who live out of state and just so that others may enjoy.

The first recipe I want to share is a family favorite and a must with dinner at Grandma's. I don't think there was one dinner where we didn't have it. In the spring and summer we would go out to their gardens and pick cupfuls of their raspberries to go along with it. This recipe is grandma's hot fudge sauce! It is sooooooooooo good so I hope you enjoy. P.S. Fresh raspberries are the best to put on top of this!

Grandma’s Hot Fudge Sauce
1 can Eagle Brand Milk
1 cup Water
¼ t Salt
½ cup Sugar
3 oz. Unsweetened Chocolate
1 t Vanilla

Directions:Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil it should be thick.

Then put on top of whatever ice cream you want, but vanilla is the best! ENJOY!!

Here's Your Sign!!

So many of you have probably heard of Bill Engvall. If you haven't he is one of Blue Collar Comedy guys. One of his bits is something called "Here's Your Sign". This is a bit where he says that there should be signs you could hand out to people to let them know that they have said or done something idiotic. Well I had one of these moments yesterday. Some guys were over at our house early in the morning to put some new carpet in my mom's room. They parked their truck right in the middle of our driveway so there was no way of getting any of our cars out of the garage and I needed to go to work. They were outside when I needed to leave and so I went out to ask them to move their truck really fast so that I could leave. They were talking so I was standing there waiting for them to finish. I had my keys in my hand and my coat on. It was obvious that I needed to leave. One of the guys noticed so he stopped their conversation and asked me if I needed them to move their truck. I said yes thank you. Then he asked "is your car in the garage?" I seriously thought "here's your sign". I mean there were no other cars anywhere on the street or in the driveway. I sat there and I thought "no I just wanted to have you move your car for the heck of it, mine is actually parked down the street out of sight!" Seriously, HERE'S YOUR SIGN!!