"Just to see you smile, I'd do anything that you wanted me to." Any Tim McGraw fans out there?

Jack is turning 1 on the 26th of this month. That's in 2 weeks! I've been so sad about it. I've loved having a baby, holding him, cuddling him, feeding him, and carrying him everywhere. I've been in denial that he's growing up. He is becoming a toddler and won't be a baby anymore. I have actually been working on a video of his first year for his birthday. Each time I work on it I cry. Where did that little baby go?! But this week I'm starting to see a different light on the situation. He makes me smile everyday. And each stage gets better and better. He smiles more the older he gets. Right now he is learning so much and it makes me so happy to see his little brain ticking and figuring things out. I just love playing with him and teaching him things and watching him repeat them. He loves it! So back to the song.. I would do anything to see Jack smile. I do the dumbest things just to see him smile. He makes me so happy! So bring on the one year mark.. I am ready! If it means more smiles, I welcome it!

Jack crawls so fast these days. I say he looks like a gecko. His legs kind of swing to the side, it's hilarious! He plays paddy-cake (but only claps and marks his hand like he is making a B), hide and go seek (I do the hiding), He jumps, claps, dances, and waves when we ask him to. He loves books and hands me one at least 20 times a day to read to him. He really enjoys flipping the pages. He loves music and starts dancing as soon as he hears it. But he has to make sure he is seen.. so he will get your attention first then start dancing! He loves going up and down the stairs and waits until you watch him to do it. He will eat any type of food... even mushrooms! He won't turn anything down, unless I'm eating something else, then we wants whatever I'm having!  He loves the kitties (strictly outside now) and were pretty sure he is saying his first word. It isn't a full word but whenever he sees them he makes a "t" noise and points, like "te te te." I swear it sounds better than I can type here! He points and says "ooohhhh!" at absolutely everything. Oh he also points at whatever he wants. And he will shake his head and push something away if he doesn't want it.

I swear there is something new every day with this kid!  Here are a TON of photos of our cute Jack Attack!

Jack went swinging for his first time. And he sure loved it!

This is how every kid eats, right?

We had family stay over night and Jack loved having his cousins around!

Poor baby Jack has had a rough couple of months. It started with him teething, then the flu, then a cold, then two ear infections, then a yeast infection, then he got HFM Disease (Hand Foot Mouth) a few weeks ago. He has been miserable, and I felt so bad for him. He didn't want to eat or play. He didn't sleep well either because he was in so much pain. When will he catch a break?!

It was hard to photograph these.. but these are a few of his blisters. He had blisters all over his feet and hands and a huge sore on his lip as well as all in his mouth and throat.

Can you see the sore on his lip?

 Jack turned 11 months old and he is blonder than ever before!

11 months

We celebrated Easter. And we learned that Jack loves eggs. I bet you can't guess what is all over our house still? Yep colorful eggs are everywhere.. his new toy of choice.

Happy Easter! Love the Marcums

Easter baskets. Our house is filled with junk food, so we just raided the pantry for these. And yes those are croutons Brandon picked for me!

I sent Brandon on a traditional egg hunt. And he found this egg in the closet! Yay Easter Bunny! Thanks for the new ladder!

Here is a short clip of Jack giving me a book and flipping the pages!

 Jack is super super cute. Here he is posing!

Jack started to go down the stairs!




We got some free pictures taken at Target about a month ago. They are so cute! So I decided to share all of them:)

 

 

After the photo shoot we went shopping and Jack found some sunglasses:)

 Jack and Greta love playing with each other. Here they are actually sitting!

Jack cruising around in his Radio Flyer.

Jack likes to spit up and rub it around on the floor. Thank you Jack.

Jack loves to take baths. He tries to get in the tub whenever he sees one. This particular time was his first time with bubbles. And he was in heaven.

As you all know, we gave Jack a mullet. Well I couldn't resist. I had to see if his hair would fit in a ponytail.. and it did! hahaha.

He could possibly pass as a girl here. Poor guy.

As I said earlier, he is learning things everyday. We showed Jack how to get the shapes out of his hippo and now he does it all the time!

We've tried to introduce sippy cups. So far they are just a toy, but he started to actually suck on them! Hopefully he will master this soon so we can work on a straw...

Jack LOVES to play with his food. Can you tell?!

Strawberries are very messy

Such a happy kid!

While we're talking about food, I recorded him refusing his food and wanting mine. So I just put his food on my spoon and he ate it right up! Silly child. (And sorry I had a hard time getting the food on the spoon:)

Last but definitely not least, Jack decided to start walking! He walks between us and furniture all the time! Before we know it he will be a walking machine.  Check out the videos.

video 1



video 2 




If you want to see any more videos, we are slowly adding them all to our You Tube page and you can check them out HERE.

Steph and I both love the look of hardwood. It can transform a space and take it to a completely different level. However, we were worried our budget after carpet would be too shy to show off hardwood floors. So we started to look at some alternatives. As much as we would have loved hardwood, we decided that a more fiscally conservative approach would be more appropriate. After looking at exactly 2,037 (possibly exaggerated number) flooring companies, we found a suitable alternative. Ready for it? It's called LVT. GASP! What's that you say? It's an affordable and quite striking alternative to hardwood. LVT stands for Luxury Vinyl Tile but as you probably noticed, the kind we got is a wood texture, not tile. Also, it comes in single planks so it doesn't have that fake seam look like some laminate.

The brand we decided on is Engage. We got it from a flooring place by Thanksgiving Point called Floorcraft Design. We HIGHLY recommend them. We worked with Scott and he was really nice and very straight forward. They did our carpet too. We looked at a lot of places and they had the best prices and made sure we understood everything.

The flooring is 100% vinyl, not a combination of vinyl and laminate. It's waterproof, yes that's right, waterproof so it's easy to clean. It's also extremely scratch resistant. Even rocks in the bottom of your shoe won't scrape it. The kind we got is 5 mm thick. It comes in a locking version and an adhesive strip version. We decided that the locking version was the smartest due to ease of installation and the fact it would stay put.

There are a lot of different types, so there were plenty to choose from. When we were shopping for just the right color and grain, we were drawn to darker woods and even after discussions with friends and family about the difficulty of keeping dark wood clean, we decided on a dark walnut for our floors. And guess what. It is definitely difficult to keep clean.

We ordered about 860 square feet of flooring the day after we closed on the house. We decided to install the flooring ourselves to save money. If you think 860 sounds like a lot of flooring to put in yourself you're wrong. It's a RIDICULOUS amount of flooring to put in yourself! After ripping up the carpet and preparing the sub floor we laid out the vinyl to acclimate to the temperature and humidity of our house. Even though this process is needed for any type of hard flooring, vinyl doesn't contract and expand as much as other types of flooring.

We were told we could install the floor in one afternoon. That would have been nice, but it ended up taking us about 8 hours a day for 8 days straight (including a full day on Saturday). My knee had enough after those 8 days! We were asked if we could do this all over again, if we would choose to just have someone install it. We both said no. Despite how long it took, I enjoyed using my hands and being able to say I installed them myself. And Steph enjoyed saving the money.

We also had to remove the 3/8 inch raised particle board sub floor in the kitchen, pantry, entry and storage room that the linoleum was glued to. (I enjoyed the manliness of this part.)

My sweet parents even came down from Rexburg for a couple days to help out. My Dad helped me with the floor and my Mom helped paint. (You can also catch a glimpse of the paint color in our entry from that photo.)

Kitchen right after install

Notice the gaps between the floor and the cabinets? It's from the sub floor we ripped out. The new flooring at 5 mm is shorter than the 3/8 inch particle board and linoleum so it created an unsightly seam at the base of the cabinets. Don't loose sleep over it though. In an upcoming post we'll show our solution to that problem.

Close up of the grain of the vinyl floor.

Dining area/ kitchen

People who have come over say the floor looks just like hard wood. And we agree. We are very happy with our choice and think the LVT we chose brings the perfect amount of simplicity and elegance we hoped for in our new home.

Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss any of our posts! We'll be showing even more flooring as we get to individual rooms so stay tuned! It looks amazing!