Gardening Attempt

I have never gardened before but have been inspired by all my friends that do. Here is my first attempt. I got a late start so we will see how it goes. Maybe next year the back of the yard will be ready for planting.
My helper fell asleep pretty quick.

Two Cilantro plants and a lettuce plant.
Tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers.
Wish me luck!

Sister Moments

Relaxing on the couch.


Kate working on beads, Leia contemplating the red bird. They were both very focused on their activities.

Classy

Some of you may remember when Kate was born and we stuffed her into a crown royal bag for a photo op. For Leia we got just a little bit classier (or a bit more redneck) and made a onesie out of the crown royal bag for her to wear. It was an entertaining evening.

Miscalculation

We really thought Leia was a chunkier baby than Kate. Turns out we just have weaker muscles. At her four month checkup Leia weighed 12lbs and was 23 3/4 inches long. Kate on the other hand was 13lb 4oz and 25 1/2 inches long.

Leia 4 Months
Kate 4 Months

Cle Elum- the videos

There were many great moments and we caught lots of them on film. Here are some of my favorites.

Ring Around the Rosy was popular the whole trip!



These girls did a TON of running.



Kate got a little mixed up with her ABC's and it really confused Hadley.

CLe Elum!!!!

The girls and I headed to a cabin in the woods for a couple of days. We left Scott at home to fend for himself. We took along Dagny, Willow, Barbie and Hadley. Three moms and four kids was just right. We had a great time running in the grass, splashing in the kiddie pool and hot tub, playing in tunnels, and eating lots of food.

Over eager kiddos didn't have time for bathing suits.

Eating topless to avoid spaghetti stains.

Willow kindly fixing the trike for Kate.

Chowing down on lollipops before chasing each other around and around the tunnels. (video coming soon)

Crawl racing in the loft.

Kate and Leia hanging in the tunnel

The little troopers.

This is definitely a repeatable vacation.

Floor Completed

We finished the floor before lunch today. After lunch we started on the moulding, and got most of the way done. The base moulding actually took only about 30 minutes. The time-consuming part was doing it around the doors and hand-rails.

Here's a snapshot at lunchtime of the finished floor. Take note of the brown moulding above the hand-rail in this picture:


Now check out the view after we replaced it with new white moulding. This is just primered moudling -- it will be painted with real white later. Thanks to Andrew's skillful use of a hacksaw, chisel, and razor knife, this turned out awesome despite nothing in this house being square or plumb.


Now snapshots of the state of the project at the end of day two. We still have the window sills to do.


We also still have one more time-consuming rail to do as seen in the upper-left corner of this photo:


Kate loves the new floor. It makes a great track for running laps. She also loves having a big open room with no furniture, in which she annouces "Kate go circle crazy" and then proceeds to run in circles until she gets so dizzy she falls down. And then she does it again and again and laughs histerically.

Tomorrow a few more mouldings and window sills to put up, then on to fillng nail holes and seams, and caulking. We'll be done before the day is out, woohoo!

More Floor

We ended up taking a 5-hour break in the middle of the day, so we didn't get quite as far as we had hoped (we hoped to finish all the flooring in one day), but we got close. We worked from the kitchen over to the entryway, to get the other transition taken care of, leaving mostly easy parts remaining. The only flooring left that requires anything more than just snapping it in and cutting to length is some cutting around the door and the vents, plus ripping boards to fit the last inches at either end. We're gonna start early tomorrow and finish it off and move on to the moudling.

First Floor Progress Report

We started with the trickiest part: the transition between the kitchen and the dining room. We had to slide out a few boards from the kitchen and replace them with new full-length boards. It took some crafty chiseling by Andrew, but it turned out awesome. This was probably the most time consuming part. The transition to the entry way will be similar, but won't involve any crazy cuts, so the rest of the day should result in lots of progress.

Photos of our progress on starting to lay the new floor before taking a lunch break on our first day:

The Point of No Return

Today I started the project to replace the carpet in the living/dining room with the same laminate flooring as the rest of the downstairs.

I forgot to take a photo before I started, but here's a snapshot before tearing up the carpet, but after I had moved most of the furniture out and torn off all the moulding:


No turning back now...started tearing out the carpet. Kate and Willow were so fascinated with what I was doing that I had to put the baby gates back up to keep them from stepping on staples and those nasty tack strips -- those things are SHARP! They watched from the gate and the outside the window for a while. I cut the carpet and pad out in 4-foot strips to make them nice and easy to carry.


Calling it a night. Got all the moudling, nails, carpet, pad, tack strips, and staples removed and swept the whole area. It was really quite disgusting to see all the dirt underneath the carpet. My friend Andrew came up from Eugene, OR for a few days and we're gonna start laying floor bright and early tomorrow morning. The only hard part we anticipate is trying to make it seamless to the kitchen and entryway without needing a transition. That will probably be time-consuming, but other than that, it's pretty much just a rectangle and should go quickly. Hopefully we'll get the whole floor done tomorrow...

Table Fail, Part Deux

I finally finished refinishing the leaves of the table this week.

The leaves actually didn't need to be refinished, but after doing the main part of the table, the leaves were a lighter color than the rest of the table and were a lot glossier. I tried just sanding the leaves down with 400 grit sandpaper and adding one coat of stain to them, hoping that would make them look the same as the rest. That didn't work out so well, so I ended up sanding them all the way down and refinishing them from scratch using the same process I did for the rest of the table.

The problem is, I realized all my mistakes from the first pass and corrected them when doing the leaves, so the leaves actually look better than the rest of the table. The stain is much more even, there aren't the same kinds of glossy splotches, and they are still much glossier than the rest of the table. But at least they're the same color now.

I think the first time, I didn't use enough "elbow grease" wiping up the excess stain as my dad suggested, and I also don't think I waited long enough for the wax to harden to a haze before buffing it. I corrected those problems on the leaves and they turned out much better. I suppose I can-rewax the table and maybe get some of the gloss up to snuff.

I guess the lesson is, when you're new at this, do the leaves first, learn from your mistakes, and then do the main table.

Here's the final picture with the leaves in:


Oh well...we only use the leaves one a year anyway., and the table is usually covered with turkeys and such, so I doubt anyone will notice...

Reliving Some Magical Moments

Ahh Photo Booth how you entertain us.....



Jenna you can hate me later!

We have not subjected Leia to this yet but her time will come.

Week in Review

It was crazy and hot this week so we spent a lot of time outdoors enjoying it.


On a hayride at the South 47 farm. Kate also got to feed goats and llamas and plant some herbs to take home.

First ride in the dualie as sisters!! This will become a common occurrence.


At the Willis Tucker spray park.

Family trip to get the mail. Self portraits for Leia and I....

Piggy back rides for Scott and Kate.

We spent a LOT of time in the pool in the backyard. Kiddie pools are priceless.


Leia hung out in the shade while Kate splashed. Her shirt made me hungry all day!

Whew what a week! We saw a lot of friends and soaked up a lot of sun. I hope all summer is like this.