Pioneer Day Camping Trip

We weren't actually camping the day of Pioneer Day but it was the same weekend so it counts. :) We found a great little secluded campsite way up American Fork Canyon that was really rough getting into. I should have taken pictures of the boulders we had to get the truck over! The baby was bouncing around like crazy and I felt like I had to pee all the way there and the whole way back : / It was a really great trip though. We spent time just relaxing and playing games and stopped at Silver Lake flats before we headed home on Saturday. The lake is so high this year! It had to be 2-3 times bigger than any other year I have seen. The feeding river was moving so fast it had washed out the road to the campsites in the area. The dogs loved the lake because they hadn't had a chance to really swim and get wet for a long time. Abigail was a real swimmer - she would have swam out to the middle of the lake with Roy if we had let her...we didn't.

 Oh Killer Bunnies....what a crazy game....

 Roy was a little over the weight limit for this raft and I was pretty sure he was gonna sink...but he made it to the middle of the lake and back without too much trouble...just some water down the back. It was funny to watch him in such a tiny boat.

My hubby is so cute :)

So...we brought Rhodes rolls to make scones for breakfast one morning...however, after sitting in the cooler all day, the rolls defrosted and began to rise.....

You can also see the beautiful bouquet of wildflowers that Roy picked for me in the background :) He's super sweet!!!!

While we were there, we saw Airmed (LifeFlight) fly in and they landed about 100 yards from our campsite. We walked down there and saw 6-7 Sheriff/Search and Rescue vehicles. We watched as they brought someone in a stretcher up the trail and into the helicopter. Our best guess is that there was a 4-wheeler accident and the road down was too rough to take her down by truck. There were a lot of 4-wheelers up there so it wasn't too surprising...but it was sad.

PS - Nursery Update! We decided to take a whole new route and just tear out 2 walls in the baby's room to put in new sheet rock. More pictures to come when the room is finished but here is a teaser for you. :)

It's a Boy!!!!

Hurray! We're going to have a mini Roy running around in the near future. Beware world....

These pictures aren't great but I was too lazy to actually scan in the ultrasound pictures. All you get are pictures of pictures. For the sake of the poor child's future, we'll keep the "It's definitely a boy!" pictures to ourselves. I will say though, our radiologist was having a lot of fun. She wrote boy!boy!boy!boy!boy!boy!boy!boy!boy!boy! all across the top of the picture (and printed the pic with her mouse pointing to...*cough*...ya) She commented on several of the ones I will post and I will include those under the pictures in italics.

Here are his legs....you can only see the left leg if you have mad skill like me ;) but the right one is pretty obvious.

 and his little hand waving at us....or telling us to buzz off and stop trying to get a peak at his private parts...one of the two...

BUFF! This is our little buff man flexing for us...this is Roy's favorite picture. :) Made the whole visit worth it for him (he doesn't like going to the doctor with me very much).

Hi mom!!! Admittedly, the skull picture is a little creepy, BUT this one is my favorite because if you look at it, he is actually smiling. We actually saw his facial expression change in the ultrasound. It was very cool and I felt my heart just swell with love for this little baby inside of me.


I finally started feeling him move around for real just last week. It's a little odd to realize that there is a person inside of me poking me from the inside...The best is when I'm in the middle of a sentence and he jabs me so good I pause. People look at me really weird...Can't feel it from the outside yet so Roy is convinced I'm making it up...oh well...he'll see soon enough.

My first belly picture! : / This is at 23 weeks pregnant (about 5 months). I can't believe I only have 4 months left! I feel like I haven't done a single thing to get ready for him...I have finished putting my registry together after way too much research (Walmart and BabiesRUs). But that's really it...My goal is to have the nursery ready for paint by the middle of next week...we'll see if it actually happens.

There was a really nice thunder storm that passed through here tonight and Roy got a couple of decent pictures I thought I would include.

What a crazy year it has been and will continue to be. I realized something the other day: within one year's time, from November 2010 to November 2011, I will have learned to teach and have taught 4 different subjects to various age groups; I will have bought a house and graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree; I will have had my mother pass away and a baby born. All of these things within 1 year's time...A lifetime of events and I got them all in a great big package this year. I am very grateful for every opportunity I have been given, I would even say that about my mother's passing. I have learned a lot about who I am and what I want from life. I know it doesn't get easier from here, but I do know that Roy and I love each other and we love God. We can handle anything that comes our way if we have those two things.

Tank likes birds...

Title Change

So...the list of occupants in the Shuldberg home is becoming so extensive...I decided it was time for a new title.

The Shuldberg Zoo!!!

Featuring:

Abigail the Wet Wonder

Tank the Trash Compactor

Archimedes the Scholar

Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood, and Little Red Hen

Wigs and McGuiver

Picasso the Terrible

And our newest addition:

Nefertiti the Queen of Egypt

And who can forget my wonderful husband:

Roy the Snake Charmer

(He actually really dislikes snakes...his kind heart won out on this one ;) )

And finally...

one more that is half done (eek!) cooking and will have pictures and more information available tomorrow :)

Now for a few projects....

First comes the nursery...Oh what a project! This little has turned into a nightmare. I didn't like the paneling that was on 2 fulls walls and half of the other two...so we tried to find a solution. We would take the paneling off the half walls and putty in the cracks on the full ones. Started out as a great plan...until we realized that the paneling was not only nailed to the drywall, it was glued as well, leaving a nasty resude on the wall when we pulled it off (the nasty brown squiggly lines in the pictures). Also the other half of the wall was painted with a really thick textured paint that we can't imitate (and don't want to) so comes our next solution: sanding, by hand, 2 full walls in this bedroom so we can paint it and make it look nice for the baby....*sigh*

These pictures are from the started process. We took off the paneling and we are currently working on the sanding...that will take forever...

And my latest project:

:) We made the chicken coup (which I still need to post completed pictures of) and decided the ducks needed something to so Roy built and I decorated this cute summer cottage for them. :) I am so proud. As I was working on it, I thought a lot about my mom. She was really good at stuff like this. I know she would appreciate (and laugh at) the work I put into this duck house.

Our New House

This will probably be the first of many "before" pictures for our new house. We have a lot of ideas for change around here but we want to make sure and document what it looked liked before. These pictures are from very early "spring" when things were just starting to bloom. Things look much more alive now. We have already started making changes so I will post the "after" pictures as things are finished. This first series will just be outside.

I am very proud of these daffodils. Roy and I planted these in February! They came up a little later than everyone else's but that just meant they didn't freeze like everyone else's. :)

(in the ones above, the middle picture is actually a tulip, and we didn't plant it; the previous owners did.)
Roy got a new lawnmower and had to try it out the day we got it.

 These are our trees. We have a full grown plum and a full grown cherry tree that are both finished blooming. And we just planted a peach, an apple, and a bing cherry.

These pictures are from the back yard. We have a lot of space for a garden, a strawberry patch (that Abigail is trampling through), and a couple of sheds and barns. There was also a nasty old "chicken coup" of some kind next to the shed. We tore it apart and burned it and are building a nice new beautiful one for our chickens (There is also talk of a "duck house" for the two ducks we recently acquired-we'll see what happens).

This last one is a big pile of old wood and junk that was left in the yard. It has come in handy as Roy has had to "redneck" a few places in the fence to keep Abigail in the yard. Exhibit A:

It is hard to tell but there is rope weaved across the top of the fence to close off holes betweent he chain link and the rebar horse fence we had to put up to make it taller. Abigail is a jumper.
So that is our yard right now. We have several projects in the works so there will be more pictures forthcoming.