Merry Christmas!

As per tradition, we all wore our red bow ties to church yesterday. It's fun to be matchy for one Sunday a year and even more fun to hear everyone's reactions to our bow ties. As per what is becoming tradition, we took our picture in front of someone else's tree. In the three years we've been doing this, we've always taken our picture in front if someone else's tree. Maybe that's part of the tradition. We hope you all have a safe and merry Christmas. 

House project updates

We got our new flooring installed at the very end of October and are loooooooving it. Seriously. Evoke luxury vinyl flooring is amazing. We are so pleased with the results. 

It is so so nice to have all of the main floor except the bathroom the same. We eliminated 3 of the 4 different floor types and now just have 2. We are still deciding what to do about baseboards and other things, but the cabinet knobs and drawer pulls are up in the kitchen. 

All in all, even though we still have quite the list of things to get done, we're very happy to have things mostly put back together. And because this was mostly boring and for our own record, I'll include the cutest picture of our sleeping boy. 

Halloween

When my mom was in town to help out with the kitchen cabinets, she lovingly agreed to help me with Dean's costume. We love Duck Dynasty in our house. So we found a beard beanie tutorial and figured out how to add on longer yarn pieces to make the beard look more like the crazy Duck Dynasty beards. We were all a little hesitant not knowing if Dean would even wear it. 

We had the stomach flu come through our house this week starting on Monday night. Dean and John got it first and we all lost plenty of sleep. On Tuesday I finally got all of the long yarn pieces strung into the beard my mom had crocheted and we tried it on Dean on Wednesday night. He hated wearing it. He bawled and bawled and bawled. 

I was very sad that this awesome costume that mom and I had spent so much time on wouldn't get used. John said he'd wear it since he tried it on and it fit! So after some tweaking, John wore it to work on Halloween. 

Unfortunately, I woke up Wednesday night with the stomach flu. I started feeling ok enough that I took Dean to John's work trick or treating, but that was the only Halloween festivities that our family participated in. Hopefully next year will be better! 

Lagoon

Back in September, we went to Lagoon with John's work. We were so excited to take Dean and let him experience something new and something we both love: rides!! He was 3 feet tall at the time (he's grown at least 2 inches since then) and so he was just barely tall enough to ride lots of rides. We eagerly boarded our first ride, excited to see how much fun Dean would surely have. He cried and was shaking for most of the time. 

We tried another ride and it was the same story. I guess enjoying rides is an acquired skill. We walked around for awhile just taking it all in and finally we chose to ride the merry go round. This he loved and we were glad there was at least something he would ride and enjoy. 

All in all although we only stayed for about 2 hours, we had SO much fun with Dean. It was very different than it would've been if we had gone alone without him, but so much more fun watching him experience new things. 

Kitchen cabinets

Because I'm a crazy person, I got a bee in my bonnet and decided that if there ever were a time to paint our kitchen cabinets white like I've wanted for awhile, it was now when we have no flooring and no couches to work around. We don't have a garage or basement so having all of the flooring out on our main level got it as close to a basement as we'll ever have in this house. With the help of our great nephews Cabe and Connor, we took off all of the hardware on a Saturday and I used a wonderful liquid sandpaper/deglosser that night that we borrowed from John's sister Marja.

I told my mom what I was doing and she generously offered to fly in on Sunday night to help watch Dean and paint. She literally saved by bacon. With drying times it literally took from Monday to Saturday to get everything done and hung. It looks soooo much better. We're waiting on drawer pulls which should arrive today and then we'll be done. It was a huge project and I am very glad to have it done. Thanks mom!!!!!

Dean's first movie

A few weekends ago we decided we needed a break from house worries and work, so we took Dean to his first movie in the theater. We have a family friendly $3.50 theater close by so we took him there to see Planes. The best part is all of their snacks are between $1-3. Because we all know the best part of any movie is the snacks. 

We all sat in out own seats and Dean got a special booster seat. Dean LOVED being able to sit and stuff his face with popcorn. He was a little scared when the movie started and held both mine and John's hands. It was SO much fun to experience something new with Dean. He makes everything more magical and exciting. 

Happy 2nd Birthday, Dean!

Better late than never. We celebrated Dean's 2nd birthday on August 31st. What a fun day it was. Dean got some new books, a trike, and some legos and couldn't have been happier. We have had so much fun raising this sweet, tender, crazy, curious little guy thus far and are looking forward to many years to come as we all learn together.

Flooding... Part 2

Remember a few years ago when our roof leaked and it flooded our bedroom and bathroom? Well, it turns out that wasn't the only flooding we'd have to deal with in this house. 

A little over a month ago we noticed some bubbling in our wood by our utility closet. There was a hole in the pan under the water heater and the AC drained into the pan instead if into a drain. We called the insurance and went through the fun drying ordeal and waiting to get paid so we could pick out new flooring, etc. 

We had to pull up all of our beautiful hickory and decided to pull up the ugly tile by the front door and pull up our red brick road in the kitchen that I've loathed since we moved in 3.5 years ago. 

We've picked out some beautiful luxury vinyl flooring. I know it sounds weird, but it was recommended to us by a builder friend and is beautiful AND waterproof. 

We started pulling up the kitchen on Saturday with the help of our good brother-in-law Paul and found some mega mold around the perimeter of the utility closet where the leak was. So now we're back to square 1 and the insurance is sending someone out this morning to take care if it. 

It's been a ton of hard, physical labor but we're very excited to have it all come together hopefully very soon. 

Graduation!!

We have had a really fun last few weeks with so much of our family in town that it's been hard to sit down and write about graduation. It was a really emotional event for me. I cried several times. I am so proud of John and know it was not an easy feat to graduate while working full time and balancing church and family responsibilities! But the good news is, it's over!!! We were fortunate enough to get to be in the de Jong concert hall, which is much improved over the Marriott Center and Smith Fieldhouse we've had to sit through for the rest of our family graduations. I was trying to save enough seats for everyone I thought was coming from both families (I was 4 short...), but it meant I was saving basically half of a row. People were NOT happy, but whatever. Dean was a CHAMP and did sooooo great. I was worried we'd be going in and out with him, but he truly could not have been better. The speakers were great, way better than my graduation when everything was all about sports this, sports that, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports. Here are pictures from the event. The first two pictures are from the fun we had before graduation. My blogger is broken and I can't write in between pictures. Sorry man.

Thanks to everyone who came out for graduation. We missed you Lisa and Kat!

Oh... we still have a blog..??

I am horrible at blogging now that I post most of our life happenings on instagram. If you're on instagram, I'm @vojen and John is @jhvanorman. We're both private, but if we actually know you, we'll add you. :) I'll try to give a quick update for those of you who don't use instagram and therefore don't see alllllllll of the pictures of Dean that I post. 

 - John will graduate from BYU in about a month. He literally only has 1 more class period and that's his final!! We are THRILLED that he is so close and with all that he's learned and acocmplished. 

 - I have gotten really into family history since December and as my parents will be in town for graduation, we're taking advantage of this and planning on going and doing sealings (with Laura as well) to get some of our kindred dead sealed. We have had wonderful experiences as we've been taking our own names to the temple. It has been quite the coordination to get families ready to be sealed, but I liken it unto a march madness bracket and that makes it fun. 

 - I decided to paint our bathroom cabinet while John was at a design conference last month. It turned out GREAT and if you are thinking of painting them white, I have grrrrreat products to recommend. Unfortunately, we're now in the market for a new counter top since this one is just weird now.

- Dean and I have visited several splash pads and various watering holes and he is finally loving water again.

- Dean is a master hider. See below for proof:

- Dean (like probably almost every other boy) LOVES construction equipment:

- Dean will be 2 in a month and a half and we cannot believe how much he's grown.