Baby Animal Days

 The day before Easter, Chris took me to Logan's Baby Animal Days. His family came along with us. We got to see a bunch of baby animals. Every time I turned around, Chris was holding one of them. We didn't bother with the baby chicks, since we have those anyways. We went to eat at the Bluebird Diner afterwards. It was fun. 

On another note..... I have been getting more domestic lately. Pinterest has inspired me to cook more because I see all of these yummy recipes that I always want to try. I made a cheesy crispy chicken recipe the other night. Definitely yummy! Yes, this is a picture of my actual dish.

 For the recipe, go to http://jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com/2011/10/crispy-cheddar-chicken.html
She has AMAZING recipes for anything and everything!

I know...... It's been a long time........ But Chickens!!!

It's been a long time getting on here. I have had a long break from writing in my journal, and writing on my blog. They kind of go hand-in-hand. I will probably be updating a lot lately on here with different things, but for now..... I am excited that we got 5 new chickens. Chris and I (well... me) have been interested in getting chickens. Not to take out the expense of cheaper eggs. Trust me on that one! We saw that the country store by us finally got the chicks in, and we decided to pick five up. We ended up driving back that same day about 3 more times, because the heat lamp bulb blew, the heat lamp connection broke, etc...... We have all settled in our living arrangements with each other. The chickens go about pooping and eating and chirping. Occasionally one will pick a bit of the pine shavings and they all chase each other like it's some great game of keep-away. I picked a handicapped chicken. It's neck did not fuse properly, and it is completely tilted to one side all of the time. She can't tilt her head the other way at all. She can also twist it all around where she is looking up at the ceiling. The other birds (at the country store) all pecked her feathers on her wings off, so they had to separate her from the rest with 1 other chicken. I knew no one would pick her, so I did. She is the draw of everyone that wants to come see the chickens. When she is trying to run away, she runs around in circles really fast because she can't run straight because of her neck being tilted. She doesn't act normal either. Her feathers are full and have grown back in, because one of the other chickens protected her from all the other ones. The ones we brought home would try to pick on her, and the other chicken would follow her all around and run ones over that were trying to be mean to her. Now she is kind of a bully. Their names are; Big Bird (handicapped one), Lady, Roxy, Sylvia and Goldie. We got them when they were a few days old, and now they are huge!
Chris decided he would build the coop for them. Coops are very expensive to buy. He designed and planned the whole thing. His brother came and helped him assemble it and do some of the cuts, but most of it was all Chris. I am very impressed with his construction skills. It is complete, except for a few little things, like paneling on the sides where the chicken run meets the coop, and wiring electrical to it for a heat lamp in the winter. We are excited to start getting some eggs. They start laying at about 4 months.

 Conception of the coop and run

 The paint they tried turned out light pink, so they used it as primer instead

 Chris and Bryan assembling the coop

 Starting to come together. They mixed up paint for Chris, and it ended up being hot pink instead of barn red, what we asked for; but we took it back and got the right color

 Putting it all together

 Chris wanted lights like ours on the outside, so we bought those stake lights along pathways, and cut off the bottoms, and they perched the solar lights on the coop

 The ramp and chicken run

 The completed coop in it's place. Chris designed it himself and built it. It looks amazing, with great engineering behind it. Everything he did made it so functional. This coop custom-built from someone else would have cost about $1,500. The material for ours cost less than half that!

 He is going to panel off the space between the run and the coop before we put chickens inside. He also chicken wired the bases so animals cannot dig and get to the chickens

 3 holes are for ventilation, and he chicken wired them off from birds, etc... The door is for cleaning the coop

 The jut is where the nesting boxes will be. The little roof lifts up to gather eggs really easily

 It rained a lot today, but the entire thing inside is sound. The bar is a perch bar, and a second half bar above that is also for perching. We will still line the bottom with linoleum for easy cleaning

 We will change the roof to a white corrugated one to match everything else better. We didn't know what color the coop was going to be before we started

 Chicks

This picture was taken today. The picture before this one was the first day we got them. We got them 2 weeks ago, and look how much they have grown since then. Big Bird is the one with her head completely sideways in the middle.

New Pet. Introducing LEO The Lionhead Bunny

When we got Piggy, she has always been kind of mean and incredibly independent. She hates to be touched and likes to be left alone. She gets into a lot of mischief. We decided to get a cute new baby bunny. It's a newer breed called lionhead. The fur is not typical fur, it's almost like fine cotton. We named him Leo. He doesn't mind being held for long periods of time. His favorite thing right now is to test everything with his teeth. He licks it first, then nibbles. There have been a few "Ouch!" instances where the nibbling was our skin. He is so cute though. He is the cutest pet I have ever had. I have some really cute pictures of him on my camera. These were the pictures used on KSL. It is the blue-eyed white bunny. We washed his paws off when we got him and they are almost back to white again.

GOP Republican Debate

On Thursday night, Chris and I watched the Republican Debate! It was so fascinating! It was more entertaining than a comedy show. A lot of the candidates were absolutely cornered by some of the almost accusing questions. I thought a lot of them handled it well, except for Rick Perry. He was applauded less and less as the night went on, and at the end he was getting booed. I thought that Rick Santorum is too young in politics to know what he is doing. He seemed way less educated than the rest of the candidates. Newt Gingrich has a really messy personal life. He left his first two wives after they were diagnosed with serious illnesses. My favorites so far are Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Mitt Romney. I am going to study out their issues in depth a little better. I found Herman Cain very refreshing. He is a guy that started at the bottom and worked hard to get his way to the top. His wife has no desire to be in the limelight either. He is very genuine. I like also really liked Mitt Romney. When the debate was over, I was sad. It went by too quick.

A whole bunch of exciting things all at once!!!

First on the agenda, we are closing on our house tomorrow. Hurray! It has been a bittersweet experience. Annoying at times, disappointing, but all ended up well at the end. We will finally be homeowners, and one more step towards building our family. Another step for us is getting sealed on the 13th. We are extremely excited to be able to be sealed together. Chris has wanted to wait to do sealings at the temple until we have gone through our own first, and I am excited to see him go through that experience. Another step to building our little family, is that I am finally going to start doing a round of fertility drugs and see what that will do for us. Everyone knows we cannot have children naturally, so we are taking a different approach. I am scared, nervous, etc.... for the whole experience. So many what ifs...... but we are excited to take the challenge. I am overwhelmed with excitement for so many new things in life. Things are going well for us, and we feel very blessed.

Hawaii

I posted all of my pictures on picasa since there were too many to post. I only posted very few on facebook. The link is www.picasaweb.google.com/karleebateman to see my pictures. There are some videos too. It was a great and well needed trip. The pictures tell the story.

New add to our family: Piggy, the bunny

I don't know how it happened, since it happened so quickly, but we ended up with a new little bunny. Not a pet I ever thought I would ever own, and not something I ever really wanted. Our neighbor that also has PTSD talks about his bunny all the time, and how it is therapeutic. He showed up with bunny babies today, and Chris instantly took to the one we now own. The guy was giving them away. We gave it back, saying we will talk about it. Well, I knew that Chris had his heart set on it. He wanted a dog, I wanted a cat. I guess it's meeting in the middle. It is low maintenance, doesn't make noise, poos and pees in the same exact spot, easy to train, and will be therapeutic to Chris. We bought a little starter kit with a cage, food, bedding, dish, toys and water bottle. We named her Piggy because Chris always says she looks like a piggy bank with the stripe on her back. She has a little stripe of black down the back of her.
Chris and I are ready to take care of a little animal.

Piggy the baby bunny

Chris excited and ready to go pick up the bunny

Stripe down the back

Today; the cold, Tomorrow; PARADISE!!!

Chris and I are totally excited for tomorrow. We are going to Kauai from the 2nd - 14th. We will be home early on the 14th. We never went on a honeymoon, so we call it our official honeymoon. Well, that, and I have always wanted to go there, because it's Hawaii! We are really excited. Packing has not been that fun, but we are stoked. I will have a huge post and tons of pictures when I get home. Hopefully I get home with a tan, because Chris and I went tanning a few times, so we will have a base tan, and not get very burnt. Chris tanned right up, and I have stayed as white as a ghost.

Happy Easter Time

Me & the Easter Bunny

I had planned on doing something cute for Chris for Easter. I waited until he was going to do his homework to slip out and grab something. I decided that since we live right next to a store, I would just walk over there, and grab a few things. I guess Chris had the same idea. He kept looking out to see when my car would leave, and it never did. He decided I was probably over at Rite-Aid, and wanted to come scare me. I was looking at some Easter stuff, when I heard "What are you going to get him?" It scared me, because I whipped around and it was Chris. We ended up just shopping for things together. We got home, and dyed some eggs. We bought some Paas kit to decorate the eggs with, but we never got that far, so we gave it to our neighbors to decorate with her little girl.
We went to a park with Chris's family to eat yummy food. We brought our neighbors with us. Chris got surprised by being asked if he could play the Easter Bunny for all the little kids there. It was hilarious indeed. We finished up the night by going to my parents to see Buddy, Tiffany and Kids. We went up to the "Wooden House" to see the progress. Eric actually let me tote him around for a bit. He has started to mumble a few words I don't understand, but it is so cute! Caden had fun picking up the never-ending nails. It was fun to see them.

Easter Bunny Chris, our neighbor Christine, and Enslea

Our neighbors Tydus & Christine

Back view of the Easter Bunny suit

The Easter Bunny was walking around by himself, and looked so sad.....

Our nephew Max with Chris

Sealing

Chris and I went to our Bishop's appointment last night for our Living Ordinance Recommend. Our next step is to go to the Stake President, and we are all good to go to be able to get sealed together for all time and eternity. We are waiting for Chris's brother to come home from his mission since he will be the only family member besides his parents that will be able to attend and it will mean a lot to him to have him there. We are tossing around August 6th, 13th or the 20th. We will let you know when we have decided for sure. We are extremely excited to get sealed to each other.

There are not many updates on our house. We just submitted all of the paperwork to the loan officer. It was fairly easy to round up everything, and we got everything we needed. We are just waiting to hear back. Underwriters always seem to want an arm and a leg though. We are trying to round up boxes. It was nice when I worked at NPS because I got all the boxes I could ever need. Funny story about boxes......... Chris and I went to pick up the Bountiful Basket last Saturday, when Chris decided that he is out of cereal. We just went to the Dick's in Centerville. We had a few groceries in the bottom of the cart, and got a huge stack of boxes from the produce people. I told Chris to put the boxes in the cart so he didn't have to carry them around. We were down the cereal aisle, and I was waiting for Chris to pick out some cereal, when a woman walked by me, and leaned over and said in a really snide tone "Hmmmm.... That sure looks ominous!" I kind of laughed and smiled, because it didn't hit me what she was saying yet, and I thought she was joking. I turned around and she was muttering down the whole aisle "Those kids, hiding their groceries under those boxes....." She thought we were planning on stealing the groceries! I wanted to go up to her and tap her on the shoulder and say "Thanks for assuming!" but I just let it go. I couldn't believe that people will just walk right up and state their assumptions straight out like that. I was already having a bad day, and it was just weird. I laugh now though.

House

Chris and I have the house. The only thing stopping us right now is the financing. We are just getting that done right now. The bank got us the addendum on Friday, and we have already signed the papers and sent it back. Next is financing, then it's ours for good. We are pretty confident that financing will go well. The bank wants to close on it ASAP. We are really excited to have a place of our own.

Crossing Our Fingers!!!! Some Updates

Chris and I started looking for houses for a little bit now. We felt like it was time to have our own place. We have looked through numerous houses. We cannot believe how some people live, and their Do-It-Yourself projects gone wrong. Amazing. Well, after a few bids and not winning any of them, we finally found a house that we both love, and put a bid on it. It is a short sale, so we were not expecting anything. There was already a primary bidder on it, and we were the secondary. We got a call from our Realtor telling us that the primary bidders backed out and we were next in line. The bank gave us a counter-offer, so we took it. It is still not ours yet. We have not heard back from the bank yet. We both felt like we were going to get it, when we put our bid on it. We are pretty sure we are getting it, but you never know what the banks have up their sleeves. The only way we are not getting it, is if the banks foreclose the home (and take a huge loss.) We are still crossing our fingers and hoping that it's ours. Its a cute home in Foxboro in a lovely cul-de-sac. If you would like to see more pics & info on it, you can get on utahrealestate.com and type in MLS # 1006232.


Chris went to a NSL planning meeting last night. All the community got together to plan out things for NSL, and Chris was able to participate in ideas for the city. They are going to put shopping centers down there once the population gets a little bigger. He met some guys that knew the people living in the house. There is a maroon minivan in the garage, and on Sunday, I swore that I would never own a minivan. Well, the guys Chris talked to said that they are long gone, and whatever they left, will be the possession of the new owners of the house. So if we get it, I guess we will own a van. I thought that was so funny.

On another note, Chris is almost done with this semester. He is very close to getting his Bachelor's in Urban Planning. We are excited about that. I will be starting school in the Fall. I was enabled the opportunity to have my school paid for through a G.I. Bill just like Chris, so I will be taking the opportunity.

We are going to Hawaii from May 2 - 13th. We are super excited. We are going to the Island of Kauai. Chris has never been there, and I have never been to Hawaii period.

I had Lasik at Hoopes Vision last Wednesday. We have been saving up, since I went to wearing glasses full-time about a year ago. I never liked wearing them, and when I didn't, I couldn't see anything. We decided to fix the problem when it was still relatively easy to fix, and not have to mess with contacts. We saved up enough, and I wanted to get it before we went to Hawaii. They were booked way out, but we got lucky with a few cancellations and they got me in right away. I have never let anyone touch my eyes, let alone myself. I was so scared! I had a hard time with eye drops and exams. It was not as bad as I though it would be. I had the Intralase procedure (different than Mom's) where the flap is made with a bladeless procedure. They attach suction cups to your eyes, and attach the laser to the end of the suction cups. You feel a lot of pressure while the laser is on. It creates a lot of little bubbles in your eyes, and everything looks foggy. They take you to a massage chair for about 15 minutes until the bubbles subside. Then they take you to another machine where they forcep your eyes open and pull up the flap with an instrument. While the flap is open, they make you stare at a green dot (which is incredibly blurry since the corneal flap is off) and they turn the laser on. You can smell the eye burning. Then they smooth the flap over with some lubricant and sponges. It's all done after that. It was quick and virtually painless. I am a pro at eye drops now, since you have to put so many after the procedure for a while. I tested at 20/15 vision which is better than 20/20. I read the line perfectly and quickly. That is the lowest line they had, and I could have probably read a line below that. It is really nice to have great vision again.

Life as we know it

Things have been good around the Bateman household. I have been on crutches with knee wraps on both knees lately. I was on bedrest for 2 weeks, and now I am walking around, and it's been another 2 weeks. I finally just went to a chiropractor. I won't know the results of the x-rays until today. I have a feeling that my lower back has something to do with it. It's been screaming at me lately.
My birthday was really good. Chris surprised me with a hot pink Canon SD1400 camera! Mine is pretty much shot. I also got some good shoes to try to help with the knee and back situation. Mom made stew for dinner and dad made some wheat breadsticks. They were good.
Chris and I started looking for homes. We usually go with our realtor about every weekend. We have seen some real strugglers. Most of them actually. There are definitely some interesting living situations people get themselves in. There are a lot of DIY-projects-gone-wrong. We found a really good house that we really like. The house already has an offer on it, but we put in an offer in case they don't follow through. Huge gamble on our parts, but we are still looking.
We booked our "honeymoon" since we never went on one, and because we have never had a vacation with just the two of us. We both have never been to Kauai, Hawaii, so we booked it. We got a really awesome package rate with the airfare, hotel and rental car included. We are really excited. We will be going from May 2 - May 13.
We are able to do these things, because Chris's disability got bumped up, and we got backpay from it. Quite a bit. It felt so good to be able to pay almost all of our credit card debt off from it.

Finished piece

Here is my finished piece. It turned out pretty good I think. Chris tells me I should leave it alone, because I am always trying to make it better, so this is the finished product. I have since added more shading to the lips to make them not disappear so much into the picture, but I did that after this photo. Drawing is fun, and I would like to do more pieces soon.

Bringing Out Our Artistic Sides.....

Chris's painting to me

Dude I decided to draw. A work in progress

Not exact, but close. The shading did not pick up on the camera well either

So, Chris and I decided recently that we want to start expanding our talents, since we have been given them, and don't really do anything with them. The story of the "Parable Of The Talents" always comes to mind, and I feel like I am wasting them by not doing them, and I want to learn many more. There is something enjoyable about Chris and I taking some time to work on our projects side by side. Date nights don't always have to cost money. He even agreed to craft with me sometimes. Chris surprised me by painting me a picture. The Tuscan landscape with poppies. Some of my favorite things put together. He didn't even use a reference picture. I think that is the nicest thing a guy has ever done for me. As for me, in 7th grade, I had an art class, and we had to draw a person using a grid system. I drew a baby. That art is since long gone. I decided to print out a head shot of a model and draw it to see if I could do it. It doesn't look exact, and it is still a work in progress, but granted, it is the 2nd time I have ever attempted a person. Probably one of the hardest things I have ever attempted to draw.

Chris's Mom Gag Photo

Original photo

Gag photo made with photoshop

So, today on photoshop, I worked with layers. I saw this picture of Chris's mom, Tammy, and it looked like I could easily make it look like she was smoking. She obviously does not, and is against it, but it is a gag picture. Chris did a lot of getting the cigarette into the picture, and I finished it off, and created the smoke. It's amazing what you can do with photoshop. If you didn't see my last photoshop projects, go to my post before this one.

Photoshop Is So Much Fun!

Original eye

Really dramatic eye

Original photo of Chris

After photoshopped Chris

Okay. So, yesterday was the first day I have even attempted Photoshop. I read a few tutorials online, and tried them out today. Here is what I have. Keep in mind that it is only my second day learning this stuff, so if it is rough, that is why. I used an old photo of Chris to shade in some really defined abs, make his muscles bigger, and bring in his waist a bit. I changed the color of his eyes too. If you didn't know I did, hopefully it looks like all of it was real.