The New Kitchen! (99% done)

Drum Roll Please.....Here is our (99% done) new kitchen! :) We are SO excited about it and can't believe its ours. Our friend Matt did an AMAZING job with the cabinets and our favorite part - the beautiful raw cherry bar top! All we have left now is to get two pendant lights for the bar area and add backsplash to the walls.

Just for a little trip down memory lane...here are a couple before shots, one with the wall still there, then one of the old kitchen

5 years!?!?!?!

Before I start posting pictures from Panama, I wanted to share pictures of another visitor we had. Treena and Jason and their ADORABLE daughter Faerosa!!!! I worked with Treena at the Honolulu NWS office and was immediatly drawn to her by her amazing smile and beautiful hair :) She was in Boulder for a conference and brought along her family. We realized it had been FIVE YEARS since we saw each other, before they moved to Eureka, CA. It was so great to see them again and finally meet the fantastic Fae and all her bubbliness! Thanks guys!

Panama....Here we come!

Tomorrow, Lisa's big 3-0 birthday, we're heading down to Panama to celebrate! We're going to visit our friends that we lived with in Hawaii, Mike and Hilary, who moved to Panama last August. Not only is it Lisa's birthday, but she shares the day with Hilary - another April 2nd baby! We've kidnapped our friend Kevin from Anchorage and Ben's dad Ken to bring with us on this wild ride. So far, a visit to the Panama canal, a 3-day trip to Isla de Coiba, a soccer game, surfing, a beach house, canopy tours and our own party bus have been planned! We're super stoked and can't wait to share pictures when we get back. Wish us luck!!!!

Our Yearly Spring Break Hang!

Just about every year, we get together with Lisa's cousin Casey and his awesome wife Annie. This year, their 11 month old cutie pie daughter Avery came to Boulder to hang out a bit. As always it was a great time!

Cousin shot-o-tequila!!!

Avery likes books, I mean REALLY likes them, sometimes she eats them!

Shower time!

They had experience a major winter storm earlier this season in Portland, and they brought it here! We got about 19 inches in one day while they were here!Ben showed Avery a little drumming fun!
Thanks guys for coming! We had a blast with you as always!

Cousin's Hair Salon!

We went over to my cousin Tonya's house the other day and her girls wanted nothing else but to play with my hair! So I said it should be a full salon! We had a ton of fun!

Working on Abby's hair

Claudia working her wonders on mine

Abby finished mine up! Thanks girls!

An explosive thorn in our side

Mt. Redoubt, the volcano southwest of Anchorage is being a pain in the ass! Its been erupting several times over the last month or so, and yesterday the winds were just right to send ash over Anchorage. Check out our friends blogs (Andy's and Sam's) for photos of the falling ash and people and their masks.

Here is a time lapse video of the eruption!

Redoubt Eruption March 27 2009 from Bretwood Higman on Vimeo.

The reason why its such a pain to us down here in Colorado, is because the ashfall has closed the Anchorage Airport. Our friend Kevin in Anchorage is supposed to fly down here on Tuesday to come to Panama with us Thursday. So if everyone could cross their fingers, toes, eyes, whatever, that would help a ton!

We're alive!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, we've been pretty busy though! We both went on work trips last week - Lisa to Boise and Ben to Baltimore.....but not before Ben blew out his GOOD knee playing basketball! He thinks he tore his ACL and maybe MCL, just as he did to his other knee in college. :( Ugh.
On a happier note though, Lisa's cousins Casey and Annie and their baby girl Avery are coming to visit for a few days starting tomorrow! It'll be great to see them, and continue our almost yearly visit with each other in late March.
Stay tuned for updated pictures of the kitchen....its almost done!

Demo continues!

The demo of the downstairs bathroom continues! Last night Ben and I got everything out except the bathtub....even scraped off the 4 layers of linoleum on the floor. Now just need to probably break the tub to get it out....we think its cast iron so it'll be heavy. Its a good thing that we're doing this and getting everything out, Ben had an "asthma" attack will everything was blowing around....mold. We're getting rid of everything to make sure its not around anymore, even replacing some studs!

So here is a shot of the new project, the downstairs guest bathroom. It is going to have to come out all the way to the studs. This one shouldn't take as long though as we dont have to have anything custom made. Home depot here I come!

 

Kitchen floor done!

So the kitchen is almost finished, we got the heated flooring and the tile all finished up in there. It came out really great, we like it. Now we are just waiting on the rest of the cabinetry to be finished and we will be moving on to the next project. I didn't have anything to do yesterday so I figured I would get a jump on it. I ripped out everything in the downstairs bathroom to prepare for the remodel down there. Pictures of that soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hike up Bear Peak.

So we decided to go on a 9 mile hike up a mountain this past weekend. It was fun and although we stopped just 200 feet short of the top because there was too much snow on steep slopes to traverse without something other than tennis shoes, we had a great time. Here are some shots from the hike. Oh and you can see the peak that we climbed from the kitchen window in our house in Boulder. We love it here!

 

 

 

 

More visitors!

Our friends and European travel buddies, Jon and Charmian, came to visit us this weekend. It was so great to catch up since we'd seen them in November in Italy, and try to convince them to move back to Colorado. A great lunch and some climbing made a fantastic visit, thanks for coming guys!

My awesome sister!

My sister was listed as the "Top 20 Under 40" in Colorado Construction on the latest McGraw-Hill Construction site. I'm so proud of all her accomplishments, she's a pretty bad-ass chick and an amazing mom - if you don't know her :) Check out the article!
http://colorado.construction.com/features/archive/2009/0903_covere.asp

More Progress!

More progress on the kitchen! We finally got our new Silestone countertops in and they're great! We've painted the walls (LOVE the color!), we've put down some cementboard to put tile down, and deciding on tile for the floor. Its coming together!

Here's Lisa styling the latest flooring fashionwear for the spring :)

Laying thinset down for the cementboard

Our new Silestone countertops!

A glance into the kitchen

Our new awesome gas range with a downdraft so we didnt' have to put a hood over it.

Our pulls we're gonna have on the drawers and cabinets!