Bathroom Remodel!

Who knew that when you give us a free bathroom vanity we are going to re-do my mom’s guest bathroom? Well we knew…. 

We happened upon a very nice vanity that no one wanted and so we decided to put it to good use by putting it in my mom’s guest bathroom. We love projects - which works out really nicely when you have a husband who can basically do anything. He is modest and will never make that claim of himself but if you have something that is broken, take it to Kyle and 99.9% of the time he will hand it back to you fixed. 

We had been planning on working on the bathroom for a couple of months now and started dreaming about paint colors, wall décor, tile and cabinet knobs. But then we had to get all of this stuff to my mom’s house which was not an easy task... it is a good thing we have such an awesome wagon:

This baby was loaded down with boxes of tile, the vanity, a bunch of Kyle's tools, our luggage, some camping gear (cause we went camping too on our trip) a shop vac and many other various things including a jack hammer.

After arriving at my mom's on a Thursday morning we got right to work. My mom, brother, and grandma were gone until Saturday so we tried to get as much of the bathroom done before they got back. I kinda forgot to get some good "before" pics but here are a couple:

(Don't let that rectangle on the back wall confuse you, the mirror is reflecting the flash) 

(we had already removed the toilet before we took this picture)

So here is what our remodeling weekend looked like: 

Thursday - Demo and discovering that we had to do some dry wall and more plumbing than originally planned....That nasty black pipe had to be moved for us to get the vanity in. Good thing Kyle can do plumbing and dry wall. 

Friday - Finished up the dry wall patch and let it dry...then painted and started laying some tile! 

That night two of my wonderful cousins came over with their awesome spouses and we got to have dinner, laugh and spend time together, unfortunately I did not get a picture of this. 

Saturday - The guys finished tiling while the girls went shopping for some decor. 

That afternoon my mom, Chris and grandma got back and since Kyle was preaching at Eagle Rock Baptist Church that night we took a little break from the bathroom. 

Also on Saturday I worked on the wall decor that I was making. I saw this idea on pinterest and wanted to try it out. 

(those are toilet paper tubes cut up and glued together)

(then spray painted it)

Sunday - Kyle preached again for the two Sunday services at ERBC and did a great job I might add. We got to have a great time of fellowship as we had lunch after church and shared what the Lord is doing in Uganda. We were so blessed by the love that was shown to us by our family at ERBC. After we rested for a bit we got back to work and put the vanity in the bathroom... it was a tight fit through the door but we got it!

Monday - We did the finishing touches on the bathroom and made it all ready before we had some people over for a BBQ that night. Here is the highly anticipated "After" shots:

Hope you enjoyed the process as much as we did!

Maybe by the end of the week I will tell you more of what we did on the rest of our vacation.

Vacation

We just got home from an 11 day trip to Southern California. Our time there was awesome, most of it we spent at my mom’s house. We got to spend time with family and friends, eat some really good food, do some fun projects at my mom’s house, go to San Diego for a couple of days, and enjoyed the gorgeous weather - we could actually be outside without breaking a sweat!

I took a good amount of pictures and can’t wait to show you some of what we did. Right now I need to go unpack and do some laundry cause I have to go to work tomorrow! 

What is cooler than being cool?

While most of the country is experiencing abnormally high temperatures, we are dealing with a normal summer with average daily high temperatures around 110 degrees. No matter where you are, the heat makes you think of creative ways to cool down.  Yesterday while watching our nephew Aaron for a few hours, we came up with a new cooling system. All you need is an air compressor and a cup of water. Its easy and fun for the whole family!

Here is how it works:

Do not be surprised when after cooling system is initiated, dancing ensues.

Only since I have been in Arizona have I ever been excited to have the summer end. The good thing is a trip to CA to escape the heat is in our near future!

We love college age people!

Last weekend we had the privilege of taking about 35 college age folks camping in San Diego.  We love camping and we love the beach so this was a win win for us at the get go. On top of being in a great place we got to be with some pretty awesome people which made it even better.

These people that the Lord has given us to do ministry with are funny, passionate, caring and are blessings to us.  Whenever we have a weekend full of ministry things we expect to come back exhausted on all counts but this weekend we returned home feeling uplifted and encouraged. This summer Kyle is teaching through the Psalms in college group and this weekend we looked at Psalm 39 and 40.

It was awesome to watch this group be challenged to be truthful to Yahweh in prayer by lamenting to him at times. We also had a neat time hearing how Yahweh has been faithful to each of us as we sat around the fire and voiced times in our lives where we witnessed God’s faithfulness. Both Kyle and I got to have some great conversations with people as they shared their hearts and encouraged us.

The beach was glorious and so was the weather. San Diego is a place my mom would take us to a lot as kids to vacation so it was extra special for me as I reminisced and missed my family.

We brought our camera but I totally did not take any pictures. But for those of you that are visual I borrowed some photos from facebook…

I can’t say enough about our time in San Diego, we had a blast!

So.... our Air Conditioning repairman is fishing in the pond behind our house….

Sometime in the middle of the night our air conditioning went out.  Now this wouldn’t be so bad if we lived anywhere else besides the surface of the sun the middle of the desert.  We woke up this morning hot and thus cranky, which led to some quality sass. Something about being sweaty makes me sassy.  Nothing like being sassy on the way to the Lord’s house…

Anyway, we decided to get ready for church at the in-laws because the temperature in our house was quickly approaching 90 degrees and were not sure when this would be over.

After we went out to lunch for Bob’s (my Father-in-Law) birthday we got a call that the AC repairman would be over. Kyle went home to see what was up and I stayed at Bob and Debbe’s. The guy fixing the AC grew up on the same street as Kyle, he determined the problem, fixed the unit temporarily and said he would be back after he got a part to fix it for good. As he left he told Kyle “When I come back I might just bring my pole and catch me that bass in your pond out back.” (For the record, it is not our pond it is the golf course’s pond.)

Well he did not disappoint. Here we are sitting in a house with failing AC and the temperature rising when the guy comes back and heads straight to the pond. Kyle goes out to say hi and low and behold he dun dropped his pole in the pond and caught himself a large mouth bass. Apparently it was a “big ‘ol sucker.”

We couldn’t help but get a picture:

By this time he has caught at least 2. We are just about to go back to church and hopefully the air will be on when we get back. 

Happy Summer! 

VEGAS BABY!!!!!

Last weekend we went to visit our friends who live in Vegas. This is what they look like:

 

Their names are Brad and Annie Mills. Normally they live near us but during baseball season they live in Vegas cause Brad plays AAA baseball for the Las Vegas 51’s. We miss them when they are gone so we just had to go visit. 

We did a good amount of relaxing and watched a baseball game every night we were there. It turned out that we did not make it down to the strip. One day we drove north about an hour to Amargosa Valley. Amargosa is where Kyle’s family lived when he was born because his dad was an alfalfa farmer there for 12 years.  I knew Amargosa was remote but I had no idea what to expect… The dear Foxes used to live here in this very double wide:

 

It did not look quite like that 20 years ago when they lived there, there was a little bit less rust I am sure.

Kyle’s old man farmed this very field:

 

I am sure it was even greener when Bob was farming it.

This is the sign that Kyle's Dad put up when they first moved there. 

We stopped by to see some old family friends while we were there as well. It was a blessing to see them and sit and talk with them about their lives.

We love baseball and got to watch three games while we were there and the 51’s won them all. On Saturday Brad was the starting pitcher and did an awesome job.

The Mills took us to one of their favorite restaurants and we had the best wings and stromboli ever! We are blessed to have such good friends like the Mills, they are an encouragement to us and are really funny so that is a plus too. 

Rev. 7:9-12

 One thing I am sure about God is that he cares about the nations. He doesn't just care about Israel, or the church, or America, or non-Americans, or the "10-40 window," or those with disease, or the "poor," or the "rich." He cares about ALL peoples. This is a clear theme in every book of the Bible, especially the parts that talk about the end of the age and the new age (see Is. 45:23, 66:18-21, Dan. 7:14, Phil. 2:9-11 and Paul's usage of Is. 45, Rev. 7:9-12). The question definitely is not "should we go?" it is more of a "how should we go?" Sarah and I are two people in whom God is answering the "how should we go" question by saying: you are going to Uganda. God wants us there to spread his glory among those people. That freaks us out, but its also really sweet and humbling. But the thing is that we still have time before we go. So we still must be concerned with the here and now of the question: how should we go? The question you also have to ask is: how and where does he want you to go? There are so many unreached peoples in this world. So many. I found joshuaproject.net today and I really like it because it helps locate and quantify where these unreached peoples are. You should check it out.
Notice: there are unreached peoples in the USA.
May we continue to do the work of the kingdom in our location (wherever that is now and in the future) to spread knowledge of God every where.
Rev. 7:9-12:
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”