The Utah Layton’s

We finally have our Texas trip itinerary down.  Becuase there are so many people involved in it, we thought we would post it here so everybody knew.

Saturday 3^rd – Drive down to Arizona
Sunday 4^th – Becca Gwilliam’s blessing
Monday 5^th – Family time and get trailer ready
Tuesday 6^th – Family time and get trailer ready
Wednesday 7^th – Travel to Carlsbad, NM
Thursday 8^th – Explore Carlsbad Caverns
Friday 9^th - Travel to San Antonio
Saturday 10^th - Michael Teeples karate tournament, see the Riverwalk
Sunday 11^th - Church with Bryan and Natalie, Maya’s blessing, game night
Monday 12^th - Layton Family San Antonio Day, Family pictures
Tuesday 13^th - Six Flags San Antonio wth whoever else wants to come!!
Wednesday 14^th - Travel to Houston to Teeples house
Thursday 15^th - NASA with Teeples
Friday 16^th - Gavelston with Teeples
Saturday 17^th - Travel to Amarillo, TX
Sunday 18^th - Travel to Santa Fe, NM – church with Mom Gwilliam
Monday 19^th - Travel to Payson 

There you have it.  Anybody who is interested in joining us at Six Flags on Tuesday the 13th is more than welcome! 

Bryce and I flew down to Arizona on Wednesday eveing and drove back with our new Suburban on Saturday.  We had a great time.  Bryce even got to go up into the cockpit of the airplane before we took off.  I didn’t think they did that anymore after 9/11, so it was extra special.  Bryce spent time with all of his grandparents and had lots of fun.  I had fun cleaning up the Suburban and even hooking it up to Mom and Dad Layton’s trailer to see how well it would pull it.  I didn’t have a camera, so these are all the pictures I have.

While we were gone, the restoration people kept working on the bathrooms.  Here is a picture of the floor with the tile all done.

We negotiated with the restoration company that is doing our upstairs bathroom and got a good deal for them to lay tile in that bathroom instead of the linoleum.  While we did that, we also got them to lay tile in our downstairs bathroom.  Here is a picture of the tile in a "starting phase."

We are really excited about having tile in 2 of our bathrooms.  We will be ripping out the linoleum ion the mater bathroom in th enext couple of months and putting tile in there also. 

The mighty air scrubber has done it’s work.  The mold is gone and today they will start putting everything back together.  Hopefully it won’t take too long.  Here’s the latest pictures of our mold free bathroom.

It has been an interesting couple of days.  On New Years Day, when we found our Suburban, Emily noticed that we had a bigger problem than we had anticipated in the upstairs kid’s bathroom.  We have noticed some spots around the toilet and really thought nothing of it until  New Years when we pulled off the toilet and took a look at the board underneath.  The sub-floor was just rotting away.  So we filed a home owner’s insurance claim and a restoration company came out and started working.  What we thought would be a small job turned into a huge one when they pulled up the linoleum, and as Emily puts it, saw every color of the rainbow.  We had a huge mold problem.  So, they ripped out the tub and all the sub-floor and have sealed off the bathroom.  They put a "air-scrubbing" machine in there to dry it out and then will seal over it and put down a new sub-floor.  So, just a reminder that if you see somethign out of the ordinary and your wife says you should take care of it, do it!  Don’t wait until you have your own colony of mold growing in your bathroom.  No wonder we’ve been sick so much lately!!!

Yes, the black stuff around where the toilet should be is the residue of the mold.  The whole sub-floor (3/4 inch pressboard) was almost squishy with the mold.  Luckliy, the plywood you see on the floor is better wood than the pressboard so the mold didn’t get into it much.

Well, we finally did it.  We have been looking for just a little while for a Suburban with the thought that we would buy one when we got our tax return back.  I have been watching the Autotrader.com for awhile now and everything was either too high of miles or too expensive.  Then on New Years morning, for some reason I checked it again.  We saw one in Arizona listed for $12,500.  I called up and liked what I heard and asked Dad to go and take a look at it.  Luckily it was located only a couple miles away from Mom and Dad’s home.  Dad liked it and he spent so much time there looking over it and making sure it was a good vehicle that the people who are selling it basically told Dad what the payoff amount was ($10,999.59) and that $11,000 would be accepted.  So, I called them up and offered them $11,000.  Low blue book on this Suburban is over $13,000.  It’s a real blessing for us.

It’s a 2001 with 54,000 miles on it.  Bryce and I will be flying down to AZ on Wednesday to purchase it and drive back to Utah in it.  Here are some pictures.

Sorry it’s been while since we updated the blog. It’s been a fun Christmas time for us here in Utah. We had snow on the ground and it was a white Christmas here.  For Todd and Emily’s present, we got a new sink and faucet.  Todd installed it on New Years Day.

That was supposed to be a "before" picture, but Todd was faster at demolition than Emily thought.

Here it is in the "after" shot.  Yes, it is dark outside.  I had to make 2 trips to Home Depot for parts (the only store open today).

Bryce trying it out.

Brenden trying it out.

Here are some shots of some presents the kids got.

Bryce and his Marble Tower.

Brenden with his guitar.

Our family at Temple Square the day after Christmas. 

Hope everybody had a great Christmas and New Years!!!