Yard work is never ending...

We decided that it was time to tackle the backyard this year. I am sick of the 3+ hours it takes to mow the lawn each week. We thought it would be a great idea to break up the lawn and put in a whole garden area in the end of the yard. Plus it would cut my mowing time down quite a bit. We plan to add more square foot garden boxes, some fruit trees and sometime in the future a shed.
First thing on the to do list: Get rid of the unwanted grass.
We rented a grass cutter and went to town! That was the "easy part," rolling the grass up and lifting the heavy rolls into the truck was exhausting.



Hyrum had about 30 minutes left before he needed to return the grass cutter so we decided to cut some of the grass in the front yard. We thought, "what the heck, we already have the grass cutter. Let's do it!" haha We just added to the craziness. Oh well.


Second thing on the to do list: Moving plants around and add curbing.
We transplanted some of the plants from the back corners of the yard to the side of the house. And then my most favorite part so far.. WE had the curbing put in, I am so in love!!


Next on the to do list: Ground cover, wood chips and some fruit trees. This is by far the longest task for sure. We ran out of ground cover twice and three full truckloads of wood chips didn't cover the whole area, and then there were the six holes dug for four trees. (I couldn't decide where I wanted each tree. :/ )

And the work continues..

Dinner at the park

Dinner at Jensen Park with the kiddos tonight was pretty fun. We had a little picnic consisting of Little Caesars, bread sticks and soda. Then we walked around the park and fed the ducks. The kids think that we should come here everyday and feed the ducks.

Bigfoot has been spotted at a local flower nursery!

We were out at the local flower nursery today in search of some trees to put in our yard and found these guys! The kids begged for a picture with this big scary brown bear and Bigfoot! Madelyn was not a fan of either. haha

Cars!!

We took the kids to the auto show down at the South Towne Expo Center today. I thought it would be cool to walk around and look at all the cool sports cars. I didn't realize that half of the show would be dealers showing off the new models of the year too. Oh well, we had a lot of fun anyways. The kids thought it was pretty cool that they could get inside a lot of the vehicles there!

 They had a little kid area where the kids could build parachutes and send them up this tube that shot them up into the sky. We spent a lot of time here. They really thought this was the COOLEST!!

Almost there!

I'm almost caught up. 2012 is all done, Wahoo!! I will now start with 2013, not too much to post and maybe  now I will keep up with all the events going on now.

Madelyn started crawling in January!

Looking back..

A lot has happened in the past few months and I was going to get all caught up after Christmas and start this new year fresh..

Well, procrastination came back to bite me and bad. My sister's computer was having problems and so being the nice sister that I am, I offered up my husbands services in fixing the problem. Well, after fixing the problem and plugging our computer back in we found that our computer wouldn't start. It didn't even show signs of life. Grr..
We started looking around at new desktops, and had no luck. We really didn't want to fork out any money for a new computer because we were still recovering from Christmas. Anyways, Hyrum decided that he would not be able to find a decent "Hyrum certified" computer at any store and that we would have to purchase one online or just build one. I really did not like the idea of building one so, we looked around online and found one that we could both be happy with.

We ordered it and waited. And waited, and waited and.... WAITED!! It finally showed up yesterday!! We are still in the process of moving pictures, documents, etc. but, I finally have a computer again. Sure using my phone to go online is easy but, there is just something about sitting at a desk with a fast full size computer. lol

Well, get ready for a few posts about past events that happened with the Taft's.

Does it ever slow down?

My friend Wendy took this after Thanksgiving. Can you believe it? All smiles!! lol

My goal was to catch up on my blog during my Christmas break. Yah, about that.. lol

School got out at the beginning of December, I was pretty burned out from that. I managed to get straight A's. (wahoo!) Besides my cosmetology classes, I took a Communications class. It started out really easy, not too many assignments and then after midterm my instructor threw out four huge assignments out that were all due by the end of the semester. I haven't felt that stressed in along time.

Hyrum's brother Phillip flew in from Virginia for Christmas. He moved there about three years ago. It was fun to see him and see how much he has grown up. Hyrum's mom reserved her church for Christmas, the family has grown soo much that we needed a bigger place. lol We set up in the gym, enjoyed a little potluck lunch, and then opened presents. Hyrum's family is very musical. So, his mom asked everyone to play some music together. As I understand it, all of the kids play an instrument. Unfortunately, some of them had to leave early. It started off a bit rough but, after a few songs they were jamming quite smoothly.

My brother got to come home for Christmas as well. He has been in Afghanistan. (They gave him two weeks of leave.) We spent New Years with him and his family. The girls scrapbooked while the boys competed against each other on the computer playing war games. (It's become a kind of tradition over the last 3 years) It was really fun to see Jeremy and his fam.

Samantha is Seven months now. She is growing so fast! I had to buy a whole new wardrobe for her because she is growing so fast. I thought that because Lyllee and Sam were both born in May that I wouldn't have to worry about the clothes. Boy was I wrong. Lyllee was barely in 6-9 month clothes during the winter, Sam has managed to grow past that into 12 month clothes! Right now she is loving solids, she has even snuck a few brownies, fries and captain crunch. (Oh and my hamburger when I turned away for a quick sec) She LOVES food. She is also really close to crawling, right now it's an army crawl. She can get around really good. Sam is also starting to use her voice to. All day long it's, "mmm.. maa.. mmaaaa!" So cute.

Andy is going through his terrible two's with a vengeance! He wants to be soo independent. Doesn't want to wear diapers, doesn't want to get dressed, doesn't want me to get him dressed. He mostly just wants to do whatever he wants to do, whenever and however he wants. He also thinks that his diet should consist of the following: Fruit Snacks, Sprite, Cookies, M&M's and Apples.

This is Christmas morning. Lyllee opened 5 Ariel outfits/jammies. She decided she needed to wear all of them at once WITH her Ariel hat!

Lyllee is working on her reading. She has about10 books memorized. It is so cute to see her reading to herself or to Sam. She tells me everyday that she is a princess. I ask, "like Sleeping Beauty?" she says, "no mom. like Ariel!!" She is still the biggest Little Mermaid fan. She is so eager to learn new things every day. I love that about her.

Spring semester started on Monday. This is my last semester, I am soo excited to finally be done! I am taking two extra classes this semester. I am already stressin' that I won't be able to stay caught up. I guess we will see.

Hyrum and I are starting a search for a new house. We are going to try to stay in Davis County. He wants to stay close to his work. I am soo done with renting, and being in basements. Maybe I can find a HUGE house that is all on one level. lol Not likely!

Any who, that is about half of everything that has been going on around my house. I will "attempt" to try to keep posting but if life happens, just know that I am still alive and will return someday.