We had a baby it's a...HOUSE!

What a long journey buying a house has been!! Last November we took the first step and met with a mortgage loan officer and were approved to buy a home! Then we called up my mom's friend Craig Binks and he set us up with is AMAZING son Austin Binks, who became our realator. (I hope you are reading this Austin) We let him know we didn't want to start looking seriously until after Christmas, but to keep his eye open for anything special that might come about. January. Austin sent us a list of homes in our price range and...I pretty much hated all of them, we were beginning to become discouraged and thought maybe this whole, "buying a house thing" wasn't for us. THEN, a few weeks later we became more serious about the whole ordeal and started going to look at houses in person. We had a list of about 10 or so that we wanted to see, but about half of them were short sales, or already in contract. :( that narrowed us down to 5, we looked at four of them and the 4th one we looked at we just KNEW it was OUR house. HAHA I laugh because it was probably the house in the worst shape out of them all. I could see the potential though, and was sooo excited to see where everything went from there. We negotiated, came to an agreement on the offer, and the owner accepted! (The owner happens to be the BINKS family, they own about a hundred homes in the valley and fix them up and sale them, they are awesome I HIGHLY recommend them to anybody and everybody.) We wanted new windows and a new sliding glass door, and about a dozen other improvements, so the detailing began in early February. Wess Binks, one of Craig's other sons was incharge of all the improvement and labor. There was a ton of good workers who have helped make the house our HOME and it looks AWESOME! Thanks Wess! Now...all the documents are into the underwriter and closing is now set for the 24th!!! I can NOT WAIT!!! I go over there like twice a day just to look at the house and imagine where I will put all of our furniture. This is so exciting for us and we feel soooooo-blessed! Maddie will have a BIG fully fenced back yard to romp around in, I will have my own craft room, and large spacey kithchen to cook in, and Chris will have a huge family room to have friends over in, and a man room that doesn't have a day bed stuck in the center of the room! Our house is a Rambler with 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, family room, kitchen, Finished Basement,and storage room with washer and dryer hook-ups. We are sooo lucky! Now here are the BEFORE and AFTER photos for your shock and enjoyment! Love, Brittany & Christopher Kenner :)

BEFORE

Don't You just LOVE the blue door...


The carport's roof was pretty much falling down

Stairs to basement

Front Room

Family Room (in the basement)

1st Bedroom (upstairs)

2nd Bedroom (upstairs)This room will be our first babies room :)

Downstairs Bathroom..uhh no toilet?

3rd Bedroom (downstairs)w/drop ceiling

Same bedroom fixing drop ceiling

Family Room again

Kitchen SOO white!

Upstairs Bathroom


4th Bedroom Master Bedroom (upstairs)


5th Bedroom (downstairs)

Front Room again

AFTER!

Pretty House :)

Pretty Kitchen, just needs a chair rail between the tan and yellow!

I LOVE the colors!

The Front Room, Chris and I painted the Front Room and the Kithchen

Look how awesome the carport looks!


Doors to the Storage Room/Laundry Room

Stairs to go upstairs with the new railing!

Coat closet by front door


Linen closet at the end of the upstairs hallway

Backyard :)


HUGE Family Room

Another angel of Family Room

Bathroom Downstairs WITH a toilet!

Downstairs hallway and stairs


Room with what used to be drop ceiling


Living room

Kitchen with the rug My sweet Ashlee sister got me! VERY fist house-warming gift!

The Kitchen towls Ashlee also got me :) Don't they match the colors so well? I LOOOVE THEM thanks sis!

Going Downstairs...


Bedroom downstiars


Bathroom Upstairs


another pic of the bathroom upstairs

1st bedroom upstairs


Second Bedroom upstairs

And the hallway :)

Christmas at the Kenner's!!!

Christmas Time at the Kenner Home

Christmas is without a doubt my favorite time of the year! This year will be Christopher and my 2nd Christmas together, we have kept it very simple and sweet and all of our gifts have been carfully thought out. Chris and I went Christmas shopping BEFORE black friday and even had our tree set up two days before thanksgiving! We kept very busy thanksgiving weekend making, "Merry Christmas" signs for a few people in our family I think they turned out great! I guess you could say we were pretty excited! All of our presents are wrapped and placed neatly under the fire place, (our tree is too little to hold them all) and we patiently await next Friday. Chris and I being but a small little family with our precious two pets Maddie and Chloe have wanted to begin some cute new traditions we can do each holiday season. We don't have any children THIS Christmas but hopefully we will be blessed next year. One thing Chris wants to do for Christmas dinner is have prime rib Christmas Eve instead of turkey or ham, but since we will be with his family for Christmas eve this year I decided to do it a little earlier and set up a cute dinner as a surprise to my loving husband. We also want to walk around Temple Square every year on the 23rd of December and see the lights, we plan to go there next wednesday and I am VERY excited to get all bundled up with my hubby. Christopher's parents also have a cute traditon of opening one present on Christmas Eve, everybody always knows what they are getting, but it's still fun! We all get matching Pj's and wear them to bed so we can take pictures in the morning. Once we have children we would like to roll that over to our own family :) Does Anybody have any fun Holiday/Christmas traditions or ideas they would like to share?

Here are some pictures of Chris and my home all decorated for the holidays, and I threw in some pics of our the Christmas Dinner I set up for Chris :) Enjoy!

What A YEAR!!!

Alrighty, I do admit I have been quite the slacker on blogging! Let me update everyone on what's new in Christopher and my life. On September 20, 2009 Chris and I celebrated our one year anniversary together! We celebrated by going sky diving with part of my family and a few close friends! It was amazing!! Completely undescribable! It was the perfect way to end a wonderful exciting first year together. We were also able go on a delayed honeymoon in May, we went on a road trip with some close friends and stopped in Las Vegas on our way to California. We partied there for one night and then made our way to Disneyland, Sea World, Califorina Adventure, and Universal Studios! It was such a great trip and so relaxing! We had such a great time! Chris and have such a wonderful feeling of peace and love going into this next year. We hold such a strong marriage and love, I feel we can make it through any obstacle. Our first year made for some very rough run-in's and we have finally landed on solid ground. I lost my job two weeks before our wedding last september and only just in February did I find a full time job. I work at US Bank as a Banker and am very proud of myself on the accomplishments I have made there is only 9 months! I have a great schedule and awesome benefits and bonus opportunities! I am happy to say I bonused this past quarter and hope to from here on out! Chris has now worked for Teleperformance for a year and 5 months! He switched departments in July and is now a case manager for Toshiba! He seems to enjoy his new position and it makes for more resposibility and influence. I am very proud of him for being such a trooper and hard worker, he has provided for our little family in every way possible. I love him so dearly and appreciate all of his hard work. Chris and I started school again in the August and our loving everyminute of it! We actually take a Psychology class together every Mon, Wed, and Friday Morning. It's so fun getting up in the morning with him and having the same goals and ambitions in mind. I also take a class with my dad Tuesday and Thursday mornings and have come to the conclusion that my dad is VERY much a teachers pet! Christopher was also accepted to the Pharmacy Tech program last spring and is currently enrolled in the coarse until Summer Semester of next year. He is doing SOOO- extremely well, he has never missed a class and has gotten an A on EVERY test in all 4 Pharmacy classses. He is brilliant! He can retain information like no other and he is loving his career path. He has decided that he wants to become a pharmacist, (and I am FULLY supporing him on his decision :) Seems we will have a Doctor Kenner in our family in the future! Chris will be applying for the U in the spring so he can start there in the fall of next year and also hopefully work at the University hospital. We have so many goals and dreams a head of us and I feel so lucky and blessed to have met and married Chris. He is Perfectly amazing. We have made it through what I hope to be our hardest year yet and look forward to an exciting year to come. Here are a few pics of the past few months :) ENJOY!

SUSHI!!!

Sushi with Will and Jess
Last night Chris and I were treated to a FANTASTIC dinner. Chris' high school friend Will and his fiance Jess took us out to the valley's top sushi restuarant. It was soo- much fun and the food was simply MAGNIFICENT! We happened to be the ONLY customers (that's what you get I guess on a monday night in Utah) so the sushi house treated us well! We got some free food and dessert and they even took a picture of us for their wall of favorite customers :) Chris and I love hanging out with other couples and we just had the best time! As you can see....

Happy Halloween!

What a Happy Halloween! I spent all friday morning with my grandma hughes baking up all sorts of treats! We made my auntie Tina's most famous sugar cookies shaped in skeleton bones, Monster Toes (which consisted of little smokees wrapped in tortillas), and we put together a whole platter of other yummy treats. Molly my grandma's cute little Westie was dressed up as a chubby lady bug and my little maddie was a HOT dog :) Chris and I spent the evening with his family and it took five adults to take one cute little boy trick or treating! Kyle my sweetest, cutest, MOST, adorable nephew was dressed up as the CUTEST puppy ever! Suprisingly he LOVED wearing his costume, but since he is still a little wabbly with the whole walking thing he fell down quite' a few times, but his mommy Jessica and his daddy Cole were always there to save the day! It was a very fun evening and me and Chris had fun dressind up our selves. Chris was dressed up as GI-Joe and I was a tiger....GRrrr! It was a very fun Halloween and I can't wait until next year!

A Good Bad Day :)

The Glass Rose

Today Just made me realize how incredibly lucky I am! I have the most amazing perfect husband ever! So today started out to be an incredibly BAD day. First of all I woke up late which made me behind on almost everything that I had to do in the morning, Mia's mom Nicole (the lady I babysite for) was late dropping mia off, so I was late getting to Kaitlyn's house (the other little girl I watch) which made Jessica late for work ( Kaitlyn's mom), which made ME feel terrible! yattyyatta soo the first part of my day was SUPER crappy! WELL, then Nicole told me she would be picking up Mia by 12:30 because I only watch her five hours a day, Ha! 2:00 rolls around and she finally calls and says she's on her way. Then 2:30 rolls around and she calls again (just leaving) Oh! wait now she wants me to meet her on the side of the rode on 12300 S. and 500 E. I waited there for 40 minutes! And she finally called again and still, "can't find it!" I'm super angry by then and I just want to pull my hair out and leave Mia by the side of the rode, which I would never do in all reality, but still...we FINALLY meet up 20 minutes later and I'm headed home. ahhh.... I call Chris a little upset and acting kinda short' with him, and of course he is so sweet and patient with me and just says, " I'm so sorry you had a bad day honey, I love you and just come home and I'll make it better." So once I get to our apartment he is there with the door open even before I walk up the stairs with a huge smile on his face :) he pulls me in and gives me a big hug and an even bigger kiss :) Then he proceeds to tell me about his day and how he went on a walk in the park with our little puppy maddie. He says," While I was on the walk in the park I picked you up something." Of course I'm really excited by now and pretty curious so I ask him, "what?" and he says, " a flower." He then reaches behind his back onto the counter and picks up and hands me the most beautiful glass rose. He then tells me that on his way home from the park he saw a vendor saleing hand made glass roses, he said at first he passed them by, but when he was almost home he had a feeling to go back and get me one. I was near tears by this point, and he then pushed a button on his computer that was on the table next to us and sweeps me up into his arms and begins slow dancing with me in the middle of our living room. The song,

"Stealing Cinderella" starts playing and Chris tells me it was the song playing in the park when he bought me the rose. I had wanted to cry all day, but in the end their where only tears of joy because of how much I love my husband and how much I KNOW he loves me. It was a very Good Bad Day :)