12/07/2012

Catching Up- Pert 4

Brandon and I finished our basement. Well, technically we didn't lift a finger. We hired someone to do it. Anyway, he's almost done, so we're trying to do some of the painting before all the doors come on. Because painting without taping? Awesome. So much easier.

We had to put two coats of primer on and let me tell you, I HATE painting the ceiling. So annoying. But it was really fun hanging out with the Hubs and listening and singing to Christmas music.


I want to do grey on all the walls, and we tried out a color that I think turned out a little too dark. But that's why we started with Brandon's workout room. We don't care if it's too dark. We'll try a little lighter grey on the rest of the rooms.

Don't worry, the splotch on the wall is just a reflection. And obviously that's just cement on the floor. Another perk of painting sooner rather than later- no carpet to ruin. AND, it will also look much better with white trim and white crown moulding.
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12/06/2012

Catching Up- Part 3

As is my style, I have a grand total of 3 pictures I deemed worthy of posting. Yikes. I really need to get my camera out. And these are just from my iPhone.

Anywho, every year I torture myself participate in the Turkey Trot with my sister. This year we did a different city's turkey trot, and it ended up being short by .3 of a mile. So after we crossed the finish line, we ran around the park until we reached the real distance. Stupid, but we wanted to go the full distance. We got 58:27, which is actually the best I've done.


The girls ran a one-mile fun run with their cousins and Brandon. He was nice enough to watch all the kiddos so I could run. They had so much fun!

I just thought this situation was funny. Rebecca lost a crown and had her husband superglue it back on. Remember the orthodontist? He tried to find tools around the house. The superglue didn't last long, so she had to go to the dentist. I think my favorite is the headlamp.
 
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12/05/2012

Catching Up- part 2

We went to Arizona for 2 WEEKS for Thanksgiving, which was fabulous. Within said vacation, Brandon had to work at a conference for Invisalign, which my brother-in-law just so happened to be attending (he's an orthodontist). So, Rebecca, my sister, and I went too. I left my kids split up with two other sisters (THANK YOU!!!) and we all went to Vegas. It was very relaxing and fun. And did I mention all the yummy food?! Holy moly.

One night we went to Serendipity for dessert. I went to New York and had the original Serendipity's Frozen hot chocolate and it was TO DIE FOR. Naturally, I had to share this gem with my sister and her hubbie. And Brandon of course, but he had it before too.


There they are. Aren't they beautiful?? The menus looked so yummy we went back the next night for dinner AND dessert. If you go to Vegas, you HAVE to go to Serendipity III. Trust me on this one.

Here's a quick pic in front of our hotel. Just saying goodbye to our little vacation within a vacation. :)
 

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12/04/2012

Catch Up Part 1

Sorry guys. Seriously. This poor blog. I figured I needed to do some blogging for posterity's sake. Here we go...

This picture was taken of Rett... just because. He's cute. He's almost 14 months and he's still not walking, but oh well. Lexi was the same way, so I'm not terribly worried.


Brandon wanted to show the girls the Original Peter Pan, so we found it on YouTube. It was a hit! We're gonna have to buy that one... But I thought the picture was cute of all three kids surrounding Dad.

My sister-in-law Valentina has a birthday in November, and the only thing she wanted for her b-day was for all of us to go to the temple and do sealings together. Which was really funny, by the way. "Brother Wernli, your turn. No, not you, Brother Wernli. The other Brother Wernli." The poor sealer had to refer to us as "Oldest Wernli brother", "next Wernli brother" and so on. :)


Next up, Vegas!
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10/14/2012

Rett's birthday cake

Hello there blog! It's been a while, I know. I need to take pictures of my house! I know, I know! In the meantime, Rett turned 1! Sorry about the deja vu if you're my facebook friend. But, it was so stinking funny I just had to post it. He was a little scared at first, but then he devoured his cake!

8/26/2012

Kids' bookshelves

Have you been on pinterest and seen the ikea spice rack bookshelves? for a kid's room? VERY cute idea, so I went to ikea to purchase about 10 spice racks for the shelves.

The Atlanta Ikea is a freaking nightmare. HUGE, underground parking, TONS of people, etc. I looked in all the places the spice racks could be, then asked an associate to help me. They took me to another person, who said, no joke, "Ever since someone posted something on pinterest, we sell out of the spice racks the same day we get them. We are never in stock."

I decided I would have to find a different solution...

I taped where I wanted the shelves, and...



Made my own, and...

Voila! I actually loved the way they turned out.

We had a few bumps in the road, but all in all I love them. Pay no attention to the top row. Yes, we read Christmas books year-round...

Grand total: $30. Not bad, I think.

If you're in any way interested in some kind of tutorial, leave a comment, and I'll post one. If there's no interest, I'm kind of lazy and I won't bother putting one together. :)
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8/25/2012

Brandon's office

Brandon needed a finished office. In order to do that, we needed a desk and a bookshelf.

I love craigslist in Atlanta. We got the desk for a great deal, and the bookshelf at biglots.

This is the first room in the house once you walk in our door, so we really wanted it to be done.


Both this picture of Christ (Brandon's favorite) and the other pic in his office were purchased before we left Utah. We wanted some really good paintings before we left the abundance of church stores. :)

This pic is taken in our entryway. Do you see the frame around the room? We're getting glass doors put in. They should install it in a couple weeks. Brandon needs his office quiet for his conference calls, so the glass doors are kind of a must.
 
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8/24/2012

My house!

So, just for posterity's sake, let me explain. For the past 5 1/2 years we have lived in Pleasant Grove, Utah, in the most fantastic ward to ever exist. :) We loved it there, but we started with one kid in an 1100 square foot condo, and we ended with 3 kids. In 1100 square feet. With no backyard. And no storage space. It was great because we saved some money, but we were ripping at the seams.

So, we made the big move to good ol' Suwanee, Georgia. Brandon works from home, so we have more liberties as to where we live. Brandon's parents live about 20 minutes away, and it's nice to live by family. So far we love it. And we love our big house!

I want to post pictures of my house completely done and decorated, but it's taking longer than I thought. I'm trying to add pops of color and I have to do that on a budget. So, pretty much all the rooms are half done. :) These are pictures of my favorite features of the house before we decorated anything. Tomorrow I will post the only completely done room in the house... Brandon's office.

Here's my kitchen. At least twice the size of my old one. Gosh, I love that island... All the cabinets!


Our main living room. That looks so bare to me now. :) We love the vaulted ceilings.

Another pic of the living room. All the windows! And the space! If you look hard you can see the back deck.

Our master bedroom. Very big, with the recessed ceiling.

My bathroom! Can you believe it? You can't see it, but my sink is on the left, and Brandon's is on the right. Guess which one is clean most of the time. :)

My closet. Again, that looks so bare to me. :) It's pretty big, which is sooo nice.


I didn't take a pic of the backyard, so I will and I'll post it later.
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8/05/2012

Driving across the country... with kids- Part 3

Day 3 had us driving through the rest of Missouri, through the corner of Kentucky, through Tennessee, and on to Georgia. About 10 hours, if I remember correctly.

Tennessee was a bit of disappointment because 1) Everything costs money to see, and 2)The flood really did some damage to Nashville. The cheapest thing we could do was see the parthenon replica. Did you know there was a Parthenon replica? Neither did I. It was actually quite fascinating to read about, if you're a nerd like me. Brandon couldn't have cared less, but I was stuck reading all the back-story and seeing all the old pictures. Pretty cool, and the girls had fun.

Only problem is, there's a museum part in the inside that had modern art. Just skip it. Pornography posing as modern art. Seriously. Just a bunch of naked women. So dumb. But the back story and old pictures of the Nashville Parthenon were pretty cool.

The girls loved walking on the sides.

They had this pretty cool swing that we had fun swinging on. It's powered by pushing your feet down on the foot pedal.

You guys, I HAD to document this. I may or may not have been driving. I'll never tell. :) BUT, Lanie fell asleep! This girl takes 3 hour naps on a daily basis, but refused to sleep in the car. By the 3rd day, she succumbed and fell asleep! For a grand total of 30 minutes. At least it was something. :)

Was this last one in Georgia? Or Tennessee? I can't remember, honestly. But I thought it was cool. We need to move to Cassville. :)


Then the blessed time arrived when we made it to my in-laws! We got there Saturday, and closed on our house the following Tuesday. I promise to post pics soon!
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8/04/2012

Driving across the country... with kids- Part 2

Day two of our journey was as follows...

Day 2- Woke up really late. We had gotten in at 1am to our hotel, and like was previously mentioned, our girls don't sleep in the car. So, we wanted them to sleep as much as possible in the hotel. They slept til 9am (and so did we), and were on the road by about 10. It was okay because we only had about 8 hours of driving for day 2.

We were driving right through Independence, MO, so we HAD to stop and see some church sights. That's why we only planned 8 hours of driving. We stopped in Independence and went to the visitor's center there. It's weird because it's in the middle of all the RLDS stuff. Have you seen their temple? The tin man must have designed it. :) But the LDS visitor's center was really cool and they had stuff for the girls to do.

Liberty, MO was only about 20 minutes away, so we went and saw Liberty Jail. I was SO glad we did that. Such an amazing experience. The girls helped with the presentation before we saw a replica of the jail...

Seeing Liberty Jail was incredible. To be in the same place Joseph Smith had been and had so many precious revelations... there was such a spirit there. It was tangible. I hope the girls felt it too. 

We crossed the rest of the state of Missouri, and camped out right by St. Louis. And by camped out, I mean that we got a hotel. We got in around 8pm, and the girls loved eating burgers and watching a show on HGTV about the best back yards in the world.

By the way, Priceline is the best when it came to planning our hotel stays. Cheap deals.
Next up, Day 3! 
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8/03/2012

Going across the country... with kids- Part 1

Did you know... that it's 30 hours of driving to get from Utah to Georgia? We split it up in 3 days' worth. The first day we made it to Hays, Kansas. It's about in the middle of the state. Brandon had to drive our Mazda, and I had to drive our Van. I had the two girls (my mother-in-law flew Rett out, thank GOODNESS). Brandon had the turtle and the cat. I don't know who had it worse. :)

I told Brandon that I wanted to take pictures at every state crossing, and we only managed two. Once you hit Missouri, all the state crossings are in really metro cities, and it's too hard.

The first state was Colorado. :)

I cropped the pic and did a close-up of the girls because they were smiling so cute!

We made it to Kansas that first day, and man the girls were tired. We did 13 hours the first day. 

Here's our setup... 

That first day was the hardest, for sure. It was our longest day, and the girls were so tired and fed up of driving. Poor Lanie kept asking when we'd get to Georgia. They did really well though. They watched movies, played with toys, and ate snacks. But never slept. Little stinkers. :)

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8/02/2012

Swim Pics

Another good friend of mine offered to take some pics of my girls, so I asked her if she'd take them... in the pool. :) Here are my favorites...

LOVE this one!

It was harder to get Lexi smiling without her goggles. But I really like this one. :)

The two of them together!

Yes, I dunked Rett. He didn't even cry afterward. I blew on his face so that he would hold his breath. Such a cutie!
 
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