Visit from Aunt Brenda and Uncle Mike

My Aunt Brenda and Uncle Mike were able to stop in for a night on their way back from visiting their two cute grandkids, Allie and Isaiah in Boulder City, Nevada, where they are living while their dad, Isaac (my cousin) works on the new bridge at the Hoover Dam

In about two hours I gave them the quick tour of Twin Falls- North, East, South and West!!! We went south to see our new house (which at that point was just the crawl space), East to see Chris' office and the temple, west to a cute little Mexican market called Mi Pueblo where we got cactus, tomatillos, jalapenos, some spices and poblanos for a mexican friend of theirs in Montana and also some pastries, mexican jello-s and popsicles.





The popsicles were very interesting! I got the best one- coconut which I shared with the kids. Mike got cucumber chili which was TERRIBLE and Brenda got mango chili (only because we didn't see that it said chili when we bought it!) It burned her throat and Mike ate his all gone although when he was done he said it was one of the most awful things he'd eaten. I asked him why he ate it then and he said, "Well, just because it was something different I guess!" (You'd have to know my Uncle Mike- he's a funny guy!)



From there we went north, back to where we live and I showed them the canyon, the bridge and the view!



Then they were off! It was a quick "hello" but I'm glad that we got to share with them where we live!

Updates on our house- September

So here are some updated pictures of our house FINALLY!!! These aren't even the most up-to-date pictures, but I'll be posting those soon! For anyone who cares to see pictures of the progress here they are!

Week #2:

Began with pouring the concrete footers for the vented crawl space.

Here you can see the forms and the rebar.

This is after they took the forms off, vents in place and concrete fully poured.

The week ended with framing beginning just as I left for Montana.

This is the last picture I took before heading out and then Chris (who stayed home and worked) kept me informed with pictures from his cell phone!!!

This is the framing for the floor.

When I came back from Montana we had a fully framed house with a roof!!! The first thing we did when I got back was to drive out to the land and walk through the house! It was so exciting to see it actually there! The showers/tubs had been put in also!!!

Week 3:

Master tub above;

Kid's tub below

This is the front of the house at the entry way prior to them finishing the arch in front and adding the two columns

Rear View:

There you have it! I'm heading out to the land tonight with the kids to take some more pictures! There has been a lot more progress which I will talk about in the next post!!!

The secret is revealed....We're BUILDING a HOUSE!!!!!

We are SO EXCITED to announce that we're building our first house here in Twin Falls!!!! We fell in love with a beautiful new subdivision south of town and just knew it was the right place for our family to be. It's called South Estates and is only about 5 minutes from Chris' work and right behind the elementary school where Brady will go to Kindergarten next year.

They are building a brand-new city park right across the street from our house that will have a playground, green space for playing fields and a large pond!

Our house will be on a nice quiet street that ends in a cul-de-sac so there won't be any through traffic. There is also a new Stake Center going in right behind our house about 1 block away!

We have a corner lot that won't have any houses on the corner side because it's all dedicated to the park and also there is a horse farm right across the street from us! We also have a direct view of the south hills (the closest thing to mountains here!) It's absolutely beautiful!

Our land right before they started:

Day One:

Day Three:

Day Five:

We are so excited to share with you our happiness and anticipation in building and becoming first time home buyers!!! I'll continue to post the progress as it develops!!!

GRAF Girls

We were able to have Chris' two youngest sisters over for a few days this past week and we had a lot of fun!!! We went swimming and played shark with Brady, threw him into the pool a few times and enjoyed the hot tub! Went on some nice long walks, made and ate cookie dough and scooby snacks, had some picnics at Centennial Waterfront Park in Twin Falls and Storybook Park in Burley, "snagglepuss," movies, Ticket to Ride, Settler's, country side drive, water fall exloration, "Go Fish," "Don't do crack (haha!)" and more!

Thanks for coming girls, we had a lot of fun and appreciate all of the help with the kids!!!


Down in the canyon there's a pretty nice park with views of the Perrine Bridge and the Perrine Coulee Falls. It's a nice setting along the snake river and we enjoyed some yummy lunch there along with a strange encounter with a "homeless woman?"

After our picnic Chris had to get back to work but we stopped at the waterfall and the girls and I walked in behind the falls!!! So beautiful!!!

We entertained ourselves with a lot of game playing! Brady loves to play games so he kept his Aunties busy with "Eye-Spy," "Go Fish," "Twister," "Hide and go seek" and more!!! Olivia loved sitting up at the table with them and watching!!!

At Storybook park we discovered that Squirrels are not interested in peaches but they love Cheeto's!!!

And Olivia is not afraid of Sharks!

Chelsae and Shawnae had a blast on the swings!

Olivia had a lot of fun exploring and Brady had so much fun playing that he didn't sit still long enough for me to snap a picture!

Olivia can say "oink oink" but it sounds more like "hehehehe" (I guess that's her own interpretation)

Thanks for a fun couple of days!!!

When you've got nothing else to do...go to the fair!

We went to the Burley Fair last weekend with Chris' family and had a fun time despite the wind and cold! Brady loved going on the rides and we all enjoyed some delicious fair food!! the Greek Gyros there are THE BEST!!!

Brady got to choose 5 rides to go on. He picked the train, a Harry Potter obstacle course, the carousel, the airplanes and the cars.

The Jump tent where Brady had a blast jumping and going down the slide!

We also visited the animals (mainly cows and sheep). There were also some meat rabbits and turkeys and a few horses that we saw outside of the Rodeo. I was a little dissapointed that they didn't have pigs- for some reason I've always loved seeing the piglets at the fair!

And a few random photos that I took: