Ayres Insanity

  Just over a week ago I lost a long time friend, Pam Soloman. It was almost 20 years ago that she hired me to work at The Coverlook at the Fashion Place mall, it became one of my favorite jobs and I was blessed to have Pam as an example in my life.    Over the years I have continued to work for her in her own studio, and she has taken many pictures of our family, including the birth of our little Aspen.    It was just a few weeks ago that I saw her for the last time, I went in to work for her & we chatted about doing family pictures soon. How grateful I am to have had that last opportunity to see her.   Attending her funeral was difficult and heartbreaking, but inspiring as well. As sniffles filled the room, her 3 boys talked about their love for their beautiful mama, and to hear her husband Scott talk about his sweetheart, and his knowledge of their forever family, I left inspired to be better. To show more unconditional love as she did t...

  It has been my new goal to blog more often, I don't keep a journal other than this so I'm trying to keep this updated because, who knows, maybe someday someone will be entertained by our simple little life.    Anyhow... we got home from our summer vacation just a week ago and I'm not gonna lie, it was totally a blast! We stayed at the Out n' About Treesort in Oregon, it's this fantastic little place in Cave Junction OR on the border of CA where every room is a tree house, how cool is that? We left on Tuesday evening and drove all night so the kids would sleep, then went river rafting on Wednesday morning, after that we got lunch and checked in to our tree house. There were rope swings everywhere, an outdoor pool, and lots of fun things for the kids to do. On Thursday morning Russ and Ryler went zip lining, then after lunch it was mine and Taevin's turn, he and I were able to conquer our fear together! I made sure to spend time every day co...

Some pictures of the casa for your viewing pleasure... Mi casa es su casa... ok, actually it's just mine ;)  The sitting room, or as I like to call it, the visiting teaching room Were we picky about this stair railing? Yes, yes we were The heart of our home, and usually messy This island deserves it's own zip code. Impressive but awful to clean The great room where we spend most of our family time The master bathroom. I hear double sinks save marriages Who wouldn't want a chandelier above the tub? An antique from grandma and one of my favorite pieces The master bedroom would be more of a masterpiece if only I could keep the kids out Oh the love (and hours) I put into these puff quilts for the girls! And every other detail of this girly room, including the sparkly walls... They're SPARKLY! Superhero room, check (Russ & I refinished that dresser, he even hand painted the knobs. Snaz...

  We have been in our home now for 7 months and are feeling pretty settled. I love this house, everything in it was hand picked by Russ and I. We have been painting one room at a time and I have designed every inch to my liking and it is everything I've ever wanted, in fact I never dreamed we'd be able to have a home like this and I feel so blessed.    The weather was quite good in February, and my neighbors were, to put it mildly, anxious to get the fence up, so we were in a pretty big rush to get the yard going before the fence would make getting machinery back there much more difficult, so we got right to work on landscaping... and I have learned that it is not my strong suit. I can work miracles on the interior of a home, but sadly, I do not have a green thumb. We were referred to a fantastic handyman named Grant who we hired out to do the whole project. He poured a concrete patio with a fire pit on one side of the yard, built a retaining wall along t...

  It's hard to believe that we've already reached a new year! My last post was over 6 months ago... and a crazy 6 months it's been!    Z turned 5 in August and we had the option to send her to kindergarten or let her have 1 more year of preschool, after much thought we decided that one more year of pre-k would be great, especially with a big move coming up. She is enjoying school and is beautiful and feisty as ever. She loves dresses and all things sparkly, and though she challenges me every day, I love her to pieces.   Ryler turned 8 in November and was baptized, I still can't figure out how my little boy has grown up so fast! The house, as suspected, went a month over schedule so Ryler was baptized in Farmington with 3 of his buddies in the ward. He kept telling me that he was going to do a cannonball into the font, which wouldn't have surprised me, but luckily he never followed through. Ryler is the tease in our house but charming nonetheless.   ...

Life is good, really good! We're on, for the most part, a normal schedule, Russ' job is going well and the boys recently finished up their spring sports. Taevin was in baseball and speed & agility training, and Ryler was in soccer. It was super fun but consumed our entire spring! Taevin's team even came in 2nd place in his league!    We went on a family vacation with Russ' WHOLE family (there were 35 of us) in May. We rented a huge beautiful cabin in in Ashton Idaho and enjoyed some time at Yellowstone. Everyone had a great time and the kids had a blast with their cousins.   The kids are in swimming lessons now and enjoying their free time. We're a month into a summer and already I'm counting down the days until the start of school!   The big news for us is that we have just started building our dream home!!! WOOHOO! We are so excited for this new chapter in our lives. After meeting with several builders and looking into so many differen...

  I FLIPPED A HOUSE! I actually did it!    As a kid, probably from the time I was 12, when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd say an Interior Designer. I don't think I totally understood what that meant, but I knew that I wanted to make houses pretty. As I got into high school I realized that there was not much of a market for that here in Utah so I became a cosmetologist (designing people is kind of the same, right?) The first time I heard of flipping houses I knew that it was something I would love, I have been watching those shows on HGTV for years wishing that someday I could do it but never thought it was possible, with my husband working 2 jobs and me having babies and raising kids it just didn't seem doable. Then I got the itch. Russ was home more and we were finally in a position that might allow for this undertaking, I told Russ my idea and he went along... that is until he realized I was serious, the whole idea of riskin...