McNaughton Family Pics

The Lazy Saturday Morning after the Fun-Filled Friday!

I just had to post this picture....it is Jay, Kira, and Koda being lazy on Saturday morning. They are watching cartoons and hanging out. The dogs just absolutely adore Jay (especially Koda) and I think they were happy to spend some alone time with him this morning.

A Fun-Filled Friday!

Joe, Julie, and Jay came in on Thursday night. They were pretty tired (the time change really takes it out of you) and so Friday, we hit the ground running. First of all, we woke up to a dusting of snow on the ground. This was exciting for Jay, who, as expected, doesn't get to see a lot of snow in Florida. He absolutely LOVED it.

The picture on the right cracks me up because Koda thinks Joe is going to throw him the snowball (Koda loves to chase snowballs)!

Joe has a math conference at the Salt Palace this weekend, so he had to make an appearance on Friday morning. Julie was excited to go to the Nautral History Library downtown and do some geneology, so Jeff and I got to spend some one on one time with our nephew, Jay. We went to the Gateway and got tickets for the IMAX movie on mummies at the Planetarium. They have so much cool stuff to do in the Planetarium that Jay was entranced....plus, we all got to walk on the moon or Mars.

We also took Jay to Build-A-Bear and let him create a bear for Ella's 4th birthday. It was adorable because he put so much thought into picking out the right bear and outfit that Ella would like. He finally chose a Tinkerbell outfit complete with wedge heels, wings, and a wand. He named her Sweetie Pie and she is quite the cute little princess bear. It was nice to be able to spend some time with him and spoil him for a little while. Jeff and I miss them so much, so this was a nice day for us. We hope you like the bear, Ella. Happy Birthday!

It was a fun, but exhausting day.

The House is Clean...and Ready to Show Off!

Well, we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned...but FINALLY the house is ready to show off (or most of it anyway). It is not completely finished, but the majority of the rooms have been completed. It has been a true labor of love, especially since the entire house needed to be repainted because the previous owners painted EVERYTHING a brown gloss color....YUCKY!!! Not my taste at all. Anyway, here is a small glimpse into our house.....


Formal Dining room....

Kitchen...

Main Floor Living room....

Master bedroom...

Library...

Spare bedroom upstairs...

Office....

This is just the main two floors....I didn't get a chance to take any pictures in the basement (and now we have family staying there). There is still so much to be done, but at least we are on our way....let me know what you think of all our efforts!

3 Year Anniversary!

Although sometimes it seems like just yesterday (and other times much longer than that), Jeff and I celebrated our three year anniversary on April 9. It was a day like any other...we both had to work and we were cleaning for company that weekend, so I wasn't expecting anything. Still, always the romantic (yes, even for an engineer), I came home to a dozen red roses! I was really surprised. What can I say?.... I am married to an amazing man! And we have decided to take a trip to Vegas sometime in the near future to celebrate our big day!

Kira and Koda's Easter presents

This Easter was a little rough for us, being so far away from home. We decided that we would make it special by getting stuff for the dogs, even though they had no idea what was going on. We went to the store and got each of them a stuffed animal....Kira got a cute little bunny (she is much easier on toys than Koda) and for Koda we got a cute (more sturdy) duck. Needless to say, they absolutely adore them. These are some pictures we took of the two of them with their Easter toys...

Yeah, I know they're spoiled....but they are just too darn cute!

Our library is coming along nicely!

As some may be aware, we have a room in our house that, when we moved in, I wasn't sure just what we were going to do with it. After some hard thought, I determined we could make it into a library. Jeff and I have a TON of books (as the last two moving companies will undeniably verify) not only from school, but just fun reading books. I decided that I would move all the school books into the upstairs office and make the room downstairs a fun library. Now, I wanted this room to have a certain look which I had already designed in my head. The hardest part was making my dream become a reality. First, I wanted a brown leather chair...one to curl up in on a cold, snowy Saturday and just read (and we do have a lot of those days here in Utah); however, after looking for over two months and finding NOTHING I was getting worried that I would have to come up with another dream. Finally, my luck turned and I found a gorgeous leather chair on Ebay (which the seller was located in Salt Lake City, so we didn't even have to pay shipping :-)). Here is the chair and I am lovin' it.....





Now that my luck seemed to be changing for the better, I decided to press my luck again and look for a bookcase. I was very particular with what I wanted in a bookcase; I did not want one of those really cheap particle bookcases which look crappy. I wanted a large, solid wood bookcase with some presence. Pretty easy, right? WRONG! I looked everywhere and could not find anything even remotely close to what i was looking for. Then, Jeff and I went shopping for a spare bedroom set and I found a really large, antique bookcase at a furniture store. It is over 80 years old and made of solid oak. I was ecstatic! We brought it home and stained it to match the room. We just finished it on Wednesday night and here is the final product....

After all this you would think I would be happy, but no.....I got this brilliant idea to upholster the back of the bookcase with fabric to give it a little depth when we get books in there. So, off to the fabric store we went. Now, tonight my goal is to start getting the fabric into the individual bookshelves. Wish me luck! I will post another picture of the finished product soon!