Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Nieces to the Rescue!

Today was a very, extremely, immensely hard day for me. Almost as fast as you can blink, my day was absolutely ruined. 

However, I had agreed to tend two of my sweet nieces today while their momma was at school with their cute brother. 

ANSWER TO MY PRAYERS. Heavenly Father knew that I needed their sweet love, spirits, sunshine, goofiness, and smiles to make everything else just seem so small. 

I mean, how could these faces not make anyone's day better?


Seriously .. They could make anyone feel better. They're so goofy, fun, energetic, and just such sweethearts. Today would have been a wreck without them. :) 

I just love her hair. 


Thanks, Jer & Melissa, for "lending" them to me for the day. ;)


Saturday, April 26, 2014

Camping in Moab

It's been a long time coming, but we finally went camping in Moab! Devin promised me that he would take me camping in Moab back when we were dating, 3 years ago, and he finally made it happen! :)

We had a blast. So get ready for an overload of pictures.


Setting up camp:


 


We made lots of yummy foil dinners. Coming soon on my recipe blog: www.despaindinners.blogspot.com





The days were perfectly warm and toasty .. 







And the nights were very chilly .. 




We went hiking to Corona Arch ... 







We toured Arches National Park ... 







And Dead Horse Point ...




And just had a blast


 

 

 

Don't worry Moab ... The Despains will be back someday! ;)




Thursday, April 17, 2014

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

It is absolutely stinkin' beautiful here in Omaha today. I just love it. And so does Zoey. I took her outside to go potty about an hour ago, and she just decided that she wanted to stay outside :)

She sat right down in the grass and looked at me with a defiant grin, and then came and laid down on the concrete patio. So I agreed that it was beautiful, went and got a lawn chair, and parked it right there beside her outside, with my computer.

It's a great day to soak up the sun :)

 

Prep for trip!

Devin and I are coming to Utah on Saturday! 

We are so stinkin' excited. However, traveling for 2 weeks takes a lot of preparation.
Here's my to-do list: 

Send Chance's Birthday Card
Give Devin haircut
Get Zoey groomed
Funeral Potatoes for Funeral Friday
Salads for Enrichment Activity
Take out all of the trash in the house
Clean out the icebox
Turn off ice maker
Vacuum the floors throughout the house
Laundry
Wash sheets & bedspread
Clean out Corolla
Install new Sump Pump alarm
Find the light timers and turn them on
Sprinklers for my garden
Find a campsite in Moab
Find a hotel for mother, while we camp, in Moab
Make sure all dishes are done
Make chicken salad for trip food

Phew, anything else I should add?? Probably.
Oh, and why do I have to clean basically everything before we leave? Because I'm OCD, and there is nothing better than coming home to a clean house after you've been on a trip :)

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

48 Hours.

I know I haven't posted anything on here for quite some time ... and this is small to everyone else, but it was big for me.

The past 48 hours have been absolute hell for the Despains. I took it the worst. It all starts Sunday ...

Problem #1 

Sunday we left church right after the sacrament was passed because Devin's back was hurting him really bad in the pews, so we decided to go home and let him rest after a long weekend of work work work. When we got home, there was a high pitched alarm that we've never heard before, going of so loud that we couldn't speak to each other. We went to the basement and discovered that it was our sump pump.

It had been raining since around  7 am very heavily, and when we got to our basement, it was about a 1/4" from overflowing and flooding our basement. Which would have been a tragedy, not only because floods are bad, but because we have been spending all of our extra time and money on that basement, trying to get it finished. That would have ruined everything. Had we waited 5 more minutes to leave church, or waited until the end, it would have, no doubt, been flooded. Tender mercy #1.

Then the plumber told us it would cost around $600-700. Ouch.

Tender Mercy #2, the plumber called back after he left and talked about his two daughters, and their husbands, how we reminded him of them, and that he knows $600 can be hard to cough up when you're young and poor. So he gave us a pretty hefty discount.

Oh, and did I mention that I had to stay up all night long Sunday night manually draining our sump pump because the plumber couldn't fix it until the following day?

Problem #2

It's not supposed to snow in April. It did. And it killed the flowers that I spend hours Friday and Saturday planting. They looked absolutely beautiful, I spent lots of money making them that way, and now they're dead. Well, hopefully they're not quite dead, maybe they just look sad? But hopefully they come back to life.

Problem #3

Our electrician came back to the house to finish up all of our lights and outlets in the basement. We cut most of our holes too big. When you put the lights up in the cans, and the covers over the outlets, there are gaps. Devin and I spent HOURS painting like 5 coats of primer and paint on the walls Friday and Saturday, and then my electrician mudded all over everything, and now I have to sand more, and repaint these areas. So frustrating after so much hard work. 


But .. after all of this stress and emotional disastrous events, I look out our front door and see my husband walking up the driveway, carrying a bouquet of my favorite flowers. He said, "Hey honey, I love you, and I know you've had a bad night and day, so I got you flowers to make up for the ones that died" ... Seriously, I have the greatest husband in the world and I wouldn't trade him for absolutely anything. I like him a lot :)