Peaches!

In July our early peach tree came on and it was great!  Our regular tree is now ready.  Look at these!  It was no fun picking them because of the earwigs.  AAAHH!  Creepy.  But here they are, individually washed by hand and defuzzed too!  Time for jam. 

Rainbow

On the way to Blake's 1st soccer game, we saw a rainbow in the sky.  Dallin he wanted to touch it so his hands would be all "sparkly."  :)

Projects

It has been really fun to be home with the baby.  I've really enjoyed her.  You can tell from looking at my house, that I enjoy her since not much else is really getting done. 
But, since school is back in I have been trying to get some things organized and finished. 

If you stop by my house on any given day, it will probably look like a cyclone hit it.  First of all because I still just hang out with the baby a lot, and I play a lot with Dallin.  But also, because I am pulling out closets and re-organizing them.  Slowly but surely we are getting there.  Check out my desk:

We have enough projects, big and little, to last a long long time.  One that we are particularly anxious to get done is redoing our kitchen cabinets. 

I have read a bunch of tutorials online.  There were two possibilities for what we could do.  Option 1, paint them white.  Option 2, stain them.  Both looked promising. 

I decided to try stain.  I used my downstairs bathroom to experiment on.  That way, if I hated it, it was only the little bathroom.  Here is what it started out as:

Blah, boring honey oak colored cabinets.  So I sanded them as the tutorials say to do. 

Then applied the stain.  At this point, I loved it!  Pretty! 

Encouraged, I kept going.  Then I started to have some trouble.  Anytime you refinish wood cabinets, it is really hard to get all of the varnish off.  Since wood has a surface that is not perfectly smooth, sanding really only removes it from the high spots.  Varnish remains in the low spots.  Where the sander removes more varnish, it accepts more stain.  There really isn't an anyway around this. 

 

So I ended up with a blotchy surface.  And oddly enough, one coat on the top drawer was way darker than 2 coats on the middle one.  Weird.  But I am no expert. 

 

I kept going.  And redid the whole thing.  Here is the finished product:

 

It is not amazing, and you can tell this was not done by a professional.  But I do like it better than what was originally there.  Especially since these cabinets do not get seen a whole lot.  So I would do it again.  I think I would have been better off not sanding at all, since the stain will go on over the varnish and I could have avoided the blotchiness.  I was trying to follow directions.  Silly me.  Anyway, I am not going to use the stain on our kitchen cabinets.  So that means they will get painted white.  That will be a project! 

Pepsi

I have one food vice, permanently I think.  I love pepsi, or coke.  Just one can, in the middle of the day, makes my day.  :)  I look forward to it. 

At lunchtime today I got a perfectly cold, slightly slushy pepsi, cracked it open and took a few sips.  I left it sitting on the counter while I got a few things done around the house.  Dallin found my lovely still slushy pepsi.  He came running over to me smiling, with the can in hand, "Mama!  Mama!  Your pepsi is my pepsi now, okay?  Okay?"  big smile still on his face.  How could I say no?  "Ok, Dallin, you can have the rest."  I love my Dallin :)

Learning to Write

 

Toes :)

Back to School

We are back in the swing of  things around here. 

I have a 5th grader!  It is Kyle's last year in Elementary School. 

First day!  Blake is going to 2nd grade, so weird.  Both boys love their teachers, so that is a relief.  It will be a great year!

Dallin gets to go back to preschool, which he loves. 

He is enamored with his new backpack.  Here he is waiting...

He ran right in,

 

and showed her his backpack.  :)

 

Afterwards, he was loaded up with goodies.  Mrs. Jones is such a wonderful preschool teacher.  Dallin has a great time there.  

An Oldie but Goodie

We still do "Cars Slide" at our house. 

Here is Kyle, 7 years ago:

I think Kyle loved cars more than any other boy when he was little.  He knew their names, "Radiator Springs Lightning" and "New Mater."  He loved lining them up! 

And here is Dallin, he doesn't care as much if they are all lined up.  He just loves the fun of it.  Cute smile!  Love you Dallin! 

It is pretty noisy, these metal cars crashing down to the bottom of the stairs.  But since we haven't yet put in our new floor or re-painted the walls, I am not too worried about it. 

 

Everyone has fun!  Maybe next year, Julia will love this too. 

My little Jewel

My Mom!

My beautiful Mom came to visit!  It was so fun! 

She met baby Julia. 

And of course the boys took her metal detecting.  They showed her their pin pointer and all their gear.  I think they found a penny or two. 

 

She took us all out to dinner on Friday night.  We went somewhere I had never been before, Goucho Grill.  I have a new favorite restaurant.  It is a Brazilian grill where they bring around meat for you to try.  On the way in, Blake found a 2 dollar bill!  His eyes are always peeled for money.  He gave it away to our waitress, who was very pretty.  :)

Dallin asked her to get on the trampoline, and she did.  They all giggled and had fun!!

Dallin especially loved Grandma Pam.  He followed her around everywhere! 

All the boys! 

 

We had a great time!  :)