Pope Christmas Party.

On December 10th we had a family christmas party at my Grandma Pope's (pictured above)
This is Wendell Pope
I act as the mother Mary in a nativity. Isaac is Joseph and Trevor was Jesus as a child.
Lincoln wanted to join in on the fun.

This is Kelsey, Analese, and Kade singing Away in a manger ( I think or maybe it was silent night)

TJ was dressed as one of the wise men. He wasn't too keen of the idea of wearing a womens dress;)

This is Joshua Salisbury. Next year he will be serving a mission in the Phillipines.

Sharon & Sachiko Salisbury

Kelsey brought her new laptop that she saved the money for and bought the day after thanksgiving. Trevor wanted to help push buttons.

Happy father, TJ

I think we wore Isaac out

Kirk and Jessica Salisbury chillin on the couch. Kade being Kade.

Lincoln was explaining to Kade the reindeer he saw outside.

Tyra Salisbury, who is attending BYU provo, was up in Logan for the party. She is great with Trevor.

Isaac's senior project

Isaac showing us his senior project on the night of everyone's senior project presentations.
Isaac looking handsome as always.

Here is a poster about his senior project.

Another poster.

Isaac and his team presenting to one of the graders. The big part of his project was doing a website that collected the data inputs from the wind turbine. You can view the websiet by going to this website: http://turbine.ece.usu.edu/turbine/

Isaac's brilliance

So this is the first semester that Isaac didn't work 3-4 days a weeks (He still worked 1 day down at the Hill Air Force base) and pulled 5 A's in his engineering classes. We are so proud of him. He worked very hard and he deserved the A's. He completed his senior project this semester as well doing a wind turbine. (I'll probably do a small blog on that as well).

I wanted to share with everyone the brilliance of my husband. After we completed the shed this summer we could no longer install the gate the way it was before because the shed was in the way. We had to change the side the gate closed on. However, our house was in the way. Not sure if you can see it through a picture so I'll try to explain to you what he did. He had to bend the gate latch on a 90 degree angle, but then it was hard to open and he needed more leverage. So with an extra curtain rod newell he attached to the latch with a bolt and now it looks better than it did before. (sorry if none of this makes sense, just know that Isaac is Awesome!)

Project:The shed

This summer we built a shed. The big reason why we decided to build the shed is because we had a lot of stone and 5 windows leftover from building our house. We needed to use em' or lose em'. To me they were too valuable to just throw away so onto building a shed we went. We started the shed in June and had it completed by the end of August. I realized that we never took any pictures of this project and so I am finally taking a picture of this project. We have enjoyed this addition to our house and it turned out better than we pictured.

Above: This is the upper floor of the shed that we use for storage. It is about 5 ft clearance to walk through. There is a set of doors (about 2'x 4') that we can someday use for a slide or a zip line.

Below:These are the steps to go up to the top part of the shed. Isaac did a great job designing the steps. By turning the steps and adding a plank, it makes a lot safer stairway for the kiddos.

We put up some shelves with some of our scrap lumber.

This is looking inside the shed. For Isaac's birthday I bought him some tools for his workbench. He got a drill press, a vise, hack saw, wood files, planer, pegboard organization, clamps, nail sets, and whatever else my mind cannot think of. Basically he has a pretty good start to do the basic building projects.

Our little boy full of discoveries!

He does a good job stacking many rings on top of each other, which I found out is developmental step for a toddler. Its fun to see him play and do things on his own. Kids are amazing.

Lincoln likes to paint, but not too long. Daycare has been a fun thing for Lincoln to participate in. I know there's things I do in daycare that I would not do otherwise. It helps to see other kids paint and then he follows what they do. He doesn't like wearing a paint smock so we use the bare shirt method.

Me and Isaac have been into watching different tv series on Netflix, such as 30 Rock and The Office. Now we are on a new series (new to us, its been out since 2004) called Veronica Mars. We had never heard of it before we started watching it and have enjoyed it. In the meantime, Lincoln is discovering all kinds of new things. The other day when we were watching it I came over to see what he was doing and he had got into the pantry where I keep a big 5 gallon bucket of flour and was playing in it. It made me laugh a lot.

A child's work is a child's play. (I think that is how the saying goes) Needless to say, we put him straight in the tub.

Go Aggies!

I haven't posted anything on our blog for a while. We haven't been on any amazing trips or done any new projects, ect.. We have been going to a couple of Utah State's football games this fall, which is more than I can say I attended while I was at USU. They have been doing very well, and we enjoy seeing their newly discovered touchdown.

We usually ride our bike to the stadium and watch the games, and Lincoln enjoys the games as well. However, we do come on our bike so we have to make sure we leave before its really really dark.

Lincoln is starting to get more hair! You can't tell as well in these pictures, and its still not enough to get a full haircut. (Never have given him a haircut yet)

Project: wall

These are some pictures of our front room before I decided to reduce the size of the front room. The picture on the top left was a picture taken in April 2008 so the furniture arangment has been changed a few times. Plus we have a lot more furniture and no more wicker in the house. This room as you can see is pretty big. It was about 26'x15' (very long) and it felt like a waste of space. The only time we used the front room is when visiting teachers came to visit, music time, and for kids to sleep in during nap time. However, I felt like the rest of the house was way too crowded...

So I decided to add a wall in the front room and create two seperate areas.

The first area is the sitting area for when visiting teachers come to visit that measures about 11'x15', and the second area is... where the new play room is that measures about 15'x15'. The nice thing about this addition is that we can take it down someday and have our big front room back when we want to and when we have more space with the basement.

We built shelving space for all of the toys and the kids have loved it! Lincoln especially loves it cause he can see most of the toys. The first day we had it like this he was getting out all of the toys to play with them. He does very well at cleaning up after himself lately though. With all of this new toy space it clears up the space in the closest that used to have the toys in it.

The pictures below shows the old toy room.

This is now what used to be the play room. It is now the "quiet" room and Lincoln's future bedroom. We will eventually put the beds together and make a bunk bed to make more floor space.

Below is Lincoln's bedroom before and below to the right is Lincoln's "new" bedroom and the baby's future bedroom.