Three blogs in one day!

I wanted to show the final product to everyone.
Personally, I think it is awesome and I have to give credit where credit is due-
Jake did a great job arranging everything.

P.s. On our drive back home from Chelsea's yesterday I got out some paper and designed our new end tables... maybe they will be in the making this weekend!! They are going to be really cool!

Auntie Darcie

I believe aunts were put on this Earth to teach their nieces and nephews all the obnoxious habits that moms and dads try to keep their children from learning. While Chelsea and Rhet were at church yesterday, I gave Ky a bath and taught him that his little frog toy was really a squirt gun. He thought it was hilarious and really enjoyed squirting the entire bathroom with water.

The water proof camera was still the best investment EVER made! What a cutie!

He kept saying more, until I showed him how to fill it up himself.

He's a quick learner!

Kyler loves hats...

And he also likes to share with his Mom.

The Rowley Family.
I'm sure baby Rowley was smiling inside Chels' belly for this one too.
I love you guys!!

I learn faster than a speeding....

Yes, we are talking about bullets. When I married Jake he came with his own arsenal of guns, and somehow he still needs more. But when you shoot as much as Jake does, it is very cost efficient to reload your own bullets. This lovely little hobby has been passed down from his dad to Jake and now down to me. Here is how you make a bullet.

Step one. You have to replace the little silver thing at the bottom of the bullet. (Jake will laugh at me when he reads this because I can't remember what it's called and yes he angled the picture so that I would have antlers.)

Next you measure out the gun powder. It has to be within a certain range for different bullets.

I'm not very patient with this apparently because I had to do it four times.

Then you pour it into your empty shell.

Finally, you place your little copper bullet head on top and squeeze it all together.

And there you have it. The exact moment I turned into a country girl. Goodbye city life, just like Tootles on Peter Pan- I have lost my marbles. Haha. 

Wilcox Woodworking Inc.

That would be a boring name if we ever went into business, but you gotta start somewhere right? I had a few days off of work this past week, so Jake and I planned a furniture project to complete over the weekend. A new book shelf for our front room. (it will also serve as a key holder since we just throw our keys down as soon as we get into the house.) So I will let the pictures do the step by step explanation:

First we went to home depot to buy plywood and wood stain which was followed by digging through a stack of firewood to find our posts.

We then started the world's smallest assembly line: Jake de-barked the wood with a knife and a wood file...

...and I followed up with sanding them down.

 

 

 

Then as you can see in this picture and the following two, we used very unsafe woodworking methods to achieve the perfect sized posts.

 If we had to right tools to start with the project would have been easier to complete, but Jake would randomly remember some of the tools his dad had as we got closer to finishing the shelves.

As you can see, none of these are the same size or even flat on the top...

This was our first glimpse of the finished product... it has potential at this point but we really started rockin and rolling when Jake remembered that his dad had a belt sander. 

 

At this point we were able to screw all the posts down and adjust them as needed with the belt sander. 

This is our masterpiece before the stain.....

And this is our homemade bookshelf that will be making an appearance in our very own living room as soon as the stain dries!!!!! 

It is perfect! If it was only a little warmer outside we could have taken it home today, but seeing as it is 20 degrees outside the stain isn't drying very fast. This the second piece of furniture Jake and I have made together and I think I can safely say it is our new hobby. Jake has made a few smaller projects without me, but the big ones we do together. Hello 2011, Team Wilcox is going to make this an amazing year full of adventures.

Our Extravagant Weekend Getaway!

Well I have been meaning to put up pictures from Christmas, so I will shortly talk about the holidays and then get to this past weekend!


Holiday Highlights:

Christmas morning....

The next day-ew.

Jake new obsession: His Ipod

Being home for Christmas.

The lovebirds....precious.

Seeing my grandmother <3 yes-she still makes me sit on her lap for pictures-ha :)

Spending time with these precious angels.

and finally- having Jake turn our Christmas "teepee" into an outhouse. Never trust that boy when he has a grin on his face.

 Now of course there were other amazing moments that were not caught by the camera like:
Seeing the Rowleys, eating lunch in Salt Lake with my sisters and their significant others, and seeing amazing friends like the one and only Mary Hill and the Nussmans.

But now to last weekend's Wilcox Weekend Getaway::
For those of you who know us well, you know that we only see each other on the weekends. So last week I started to plan a fun weekend for us to enjoy to get away from all the stresses we've been under. I will be the first to tell you I am not a fan of camping, but Jake is- so Friday night when he go home we went "camping" in our living room. 

 

I cleared out the living room and covered the furniture with camouflage. We watched a movie in our sleeping bags, but we wussed out and decided to sleep that night in our bed. BUT-the next morning we ate smores for breakfast and roasted the marshmallows by the heater.

 

 The weekend getaway continued on Saturday when we went ice fishing with Jake's family at Ririe Reservoir.

I found out that you don't really do ANYTHING when you go ice fishing, so I ventured off on my own.

I wrote our initials in the snow by scooting my feet around on the ice. It was a lot bigger than it appears in this picture and I almost slipped and busted my butt when I was jumping from the letters to the plus sign.

 After freezing our buns all day we hurried home to finish our date. I told Jake we were going to Hawaii. We ate Hawaiian haystacks for dinner and made smoothies to chase them down. I tried to make it as tropical as I could by using guava juice and coconut water. 

 I wouldn't let Jake go into the room all day because I decorated it with anything Hawaiian I could find. This is a few shots of the room.

We turned up the heater in the room and watched 50 first dates.

I made this little concoction using some dollar store specials and flowers from our wedding.

This little beauty is a lamp made from coconut leaves. Jake brought it back from Brazil.

And that pretty much sums up the weekend. Jake didn't have to go to work on Monday so I got to spend an extra day with him this week :) While he was out running errands, he bought me flowers for the first time!

They are beautiful and a bud has bloomed every day that he has been gone. Our room smells like lilies and even though they smell kinda weird, I'm really starting to like it. But anyways, Jake was so proud of himself for buying me something he went out and bought himself a present too... a new gun.I can't leave that boy alone for a second! I guess now I don't have to worry about intruders... we went out to his parents house and tested it out Monday night. Our next gun purchase will be a tiny pink light weight hand gun for me. 

Contemplate it.

This video is awesome. It makes me cry every time I watch it. It makes you think and makes you look at yourself and how you might be able to become a better person.

I teach reading... not spelling.

Since my kids are only with my for thirty minutes at a time I give them post it notes to use as bookmarks since they change books so often. This was in one of my second grader's books.