House painting

I am glad to see that you had time to paint your house. The rooms look great. Well, we decided that our outside of our house needed a new look. We went and got paint swatches to match the brick or at least come close. Got all the supplies that we would need and started to pressure wash the house. Once we got all the sand off the house didn't look to bad. The new color just really made the house look different. We started to paint the trim and the first color looked like coral on crack. It was pinker than I thought it would be. Mind you our bricks are red with a touch of orange. So i took the paint back to see if they could maybe darken it for us. They couldn't so they just exchanged it for the darker color. Came home started to put it over the other paint and it became bright orange. I was not happy. We decided to not do the rest of the trim and have a friend's brother finish it for us. Hopefully he can save our house. Or we will be know as "Just go past the house with the orange trim" house and I can't live with that. This was all after the lady told us that you have to apply 3-4 coats of paint to achieve the color that you want. Nice.

Have a great day and I hope this brightens some one's day it sure did mine.
I will post a picture later.
coree

So last year around December maybe November my husband comes home from work and tells me that I am running the Bataan Marathon with him on the coed team. I just who are the other girls running and he said you. I was the only girl to make it a coed team. We trained for about 4 months and ran a couple of races in betwwen. We discovered one more thing in our marriage that we enjoy doing together. A month before we ran "the Marathon" we did the El Paso Half. It was honestly the funniest run that I think that we have done. Some people think that I am crazy but it was fun. Dave and I both enjoyed it. I took 6th in my age group. The sad thing is if I had been about 3 years younger I would have won. But the older you were the faster the times got. Very shocking. Anyway, here is a picture of Dave and I finishing our first half marathon together.

Now about the marathon. We ran it on the 30th of March and took 5th as a team overall. Mind you this isn't a flat course. It is in the desert and there is an elevation climb of 1200ft. It is deep sand and rocks. We started off pretty good. When we got to the start of the incline we had a little bit of a head wind and one of our teammates kind of freaked out. That ended up costing because then his muscles were cramping. We finished an hour past our goal time. It was quite a bummer. The harder part about it is that you had to be within 20 seconds of each other. So we may try it again without a team. Just do it as individuals.

Home Improvements

So there we are getting ready to make some MINOR repairs to the house. We got up on Saturday morning and took off to Home Depot. Which was super busy and there was a wreck at the main entrance into Home Depot. Should have been a sign of what was to come. Took the alternate route and got into the store and started to make our purchases. Needed paint line was about a 1/2 hour wait. So we got our other things. Needed a bathtub. The one we want is sold have to wait till Monday to order a new one. Got the garbage disposal and new faucet then back to paint. No one was there so we order our paint. 20 Gallons later we are on our way. Needed filters for our Reverse Osmosis system. Check. Got home and started on the garbage disposal. Not installed right. Had to use the interenet to figure out how to get it off. Nasty. Decided since we had everything pulled out we would do the faucet. Internet again. Big rusty something that holds the whole thing there. check. Changed filters putting the filtration system back together and one of the main components was broke before we removed it so we finished it off. Tried to JB Weld it and it still broke. Called the parts for a new part and they aren't open until Monday. No filtered water on the Fridge of the sink until sometime. Projects down to the best of our ability. Sink faucet works and doesn't leak. Garbage disposl works but still leaks a little. Fix it later when Dave has returned from VA. Purchased a new fan in the family room because the old one was making a grinding noise. Didn't checked it out first just bought a new fan. Read the new fan directions and did the trouble shooting for that fan on the old one and that fixed it. So now I have to return the new fan and order a tub. Called early this morning for the replacement part on the filtration system and was quoted $36. I thought that is a fantastic price but that isn't my luck let me make sure you have the right part. 10 minutes later and $161 later we will have a replacement part here by Wednesday.

So much for a quick easy to do home improvements. The moral of this story is that you can be sure it was installed right if you don't know who installed it.

Anyway, that was our weekend fun.

Coree

Our last year

We have had a very busy year so far this year. Since we saw you last vacation we started school and Dave started to travel. Dave decided we would train for a marathon which we will run March 30. I am looking forward to being done and not having to go out and run 10 miles for my short run. It has been a very busy trying to juggle everything. But we are coming to a close. The kids have kept us busy. Tyler with basketball and scouts. His GT field trips and just going to friends houses. This year we experienced what taking the standardized testing is like and that was an intersting experience on teaching your child how not to stress. Kaitlyn is being very active social butterfly. She is doing well in school. Her teacher said that sometimes she has to press her to get things done. That isn't unusual since she operates by her own beat. Ryan's doing well. He likes his personal time with mom and enjoys having free rein of the toys or whatever he feels like watching on tv or movie if he wants. His blood sugar has been really good lately and we are grateful for that. He wants to play soccer this year but so far they haven't offered it to his age. We are hoping.
Dave has traveled much of the year. Every other week he is gone. It is nice sometimes and there are times I wish he was home. He is ready to move on to something different. In June we are moving to Kansas and will be there for the year. Hopefully we will be back to El Paso. We don't know when we will find that out. In the mean time we will rent the house out to friends of ours in the ward. I have just been trying to keep up with the kids and keep the house straight in between runs. That is the latest and greatest from the Youngbloods.

We will talk to you soon.

Coree

First time we have had a pinewood derby and Tyler's squeaked in at the end. We were finishing up just before we left and suprisingly it beat all the cars.

Our first blue and gold banquet where Tyler recieved his wolf and advances onto his bear.

Kaitlyn's Christmas program with her kindergarten class.

Tyler's first science project. End him in the before District qualifications. Unbenounced to him.

Friend and Foe at times.

Since we had jersey day at school they all got to wear one of dad's from when he played

This was what we came home to when we got back from Los Alamos. This is very unusual and this wasn't the expected inches we got over a foot.

hello

Cami I sure hope this works. I wrote something on the family site. but I think this would be more fun to keep in touch more often. I will write more soon.

Love
Coree