If You Wanna Be My Caddy . . .

Lance absolutely LOVES golfing.  It's his favorite activity ever.  Me, on the other hand, I'm not very much into sports when they involve a ball.  Even if the ball is supposed to go away from me, there is still a chance that it will smack me in the head.  I'm pretty much a magnet for flying objects, did you know? 

Anyway, for Lance's birthday, back in February, I told him that I would go with him once on one of his golfing excursions.  He and his brother, Scott trick out the system so that all of their Christmas presents are passes for golfing.  They golf almost every weekend. (Cue eye roll).  We went about a week and a half ago.  Lance was super excited to take me with him.  I didn't actually golf, though.  Do you know how long we'd be there looking for my ball if I actually played?  We'd probably still be there now! 

Anyway, for the past few months, he's been singing "If you wanna be my caddy . . ."  to the Spice Girls tune, "If You Wanna Be My Lover."  So, when I went with him, I pulled his clubs around a little bit here and there, being his caddy.  And I washed his ball for him when he needed it.  Most of the time, I was just an observer.  I also took some pictures.  Lance is thinking that I'll do the same thing next year.  Well, I'm not too sure about that.  It's not really my thing.  I'm glad I got to go with him once to see what all the hype was about.  We'll see, though. 

Oh, I almost forgot!  It was a great day to go with them, because it was the first time either of them got a birdie (1 below par).  Scott was excited to get his first birdie ever.  Congratulations to him! 

Well, here are some pictures/proof that I went golfing.

 Lance and I are ready to go.  I pulled that cart along at times.  We chose to walk instead of have a golf cart.  Golf carts are for wimps!

 I'm at the ball cleaning station.  It was a pretty cool contraption, I'll admit.

  I'm practicing my putting before we get started on the course.  If the ball doesn't leave the ground, I'm fine.

 Lance's drive

Lance and Scott had great drives

 

Scott is with his Birdie Ball

The Floor Is FINALLY Done!!!

It's been a long week finishing the floor, but it finally happened!  I'm ecstatic with the results!  It's so beautiful!

Last Friday, we rented the huge drum sander.  Lance was a little apprehensive about it at first, but he totally rocked it!  It didn't get all the way to the edges, so we used a hand sander for them.  We sanded twice everywhere.  It says to sand three times, but we liked what we saw after two times.  We had many family members come help.  Thank you to all of you!!!  I owe them all a treat for working so hard.  I'll do that when my kitchen is put back together.

 

Here is the beastly drum sander at work.  What a difference!!!

 

  The edges are sanded in the hallway pod.  Notice the blue tape.  We taped everything up so that sawdust wouldn't get everywhere.

Lance was the sander champion!  I helped by putting the lever up and down.  You're not supposed to have the sander down when you're stopped, even if you're changing directions.  I also held cord out of his way.  Oh, and look how we match!  That was not planned.

We finished sanding on Saturday afternoon.  We were a couple of hours ahead of schedule, so we were able to clean clean clean the rest of the afternoon.  (Much needed, since there were little particles of sawdust in the air.)

I'm putting wood putty in the crevices in the floor.  Probably one of the easier tasks.  We all had masks to minimize inhaling dust particles, which were a lot, but also a lot less than we had anticipated.

I started staining on Monday.  I wanted to start in the morning, but there was a ton more prep work to do (empty cupboards so smells wouldn't invade our food, clean the floors again, etc.)  So, I ended up starting in the afternoon.  I only stained the kitchen and hallway pod on Monday.  There was a little area in the dining room that needed a little help.  There were a couple holes in the floor that we had to fill in with wood putty.  It still needed to dry and be sanded down, so I didn't start on the dining room until Wednesday.  Tuesday, I started the polyurethane seal.  I did three coats.  Two of them on Tuesday, and one on Wednesday.  Thursday I finished up with three coats of polyurethane on the dining room floor.  I did the staining and sealing all by myself while Lance was at work.  Otherwise, waiting for him, we'd never get it done!  Needless to say, I got to know my floor VERY well.  We're buddies now.  We hang-out and stuff.

This is the floor all finished in the hallway pod looking into the kitchen.  We used red mahogany stain.  It's not too red until you shine light onto it.  It turned out a little darker than we had planned, but we like it a lot!  I love the contrast with the white cabinets!

This is the living room all finished.  The woods are different in the dining room and the kitchen.  There is a lot more grain in the dining room area.  I like how both rooms turned out.  I'm so happy with it!

It's been a long, work-filled week, but it's all worth it now!  Well, technically, not right now because it needs a week to dry and harden entirely, so I still don't have my kitchen or dining room available to me.  We stocked up on pot pies so that dinner would be accessible in the microwave, which is temporarily in the downstairs family room.  I like pot pies a lot, but I'm ready to be done eating them for a while. 

We had a wall of fans to get rid of the smell, which was extremely strong.  The fans were definitely needed and appreciated.  Thank you to Lance's mom for letting us borrow hers!  It saved us many brain cells!

 It's also been hard getting to all of the rooms in my house.  I feel like spider man sometimes, because we have to practically climb the walls to get to the main bathroom.  If we want to watch TV, we have to go out the front door, and in the back door, since all the floors in between them are off limits.  It's been an adventure.  We'll laugh about this in a bit.  Actually, I'm laughing about it now.  I feel like a little kid playing the hot lava game.  You can't touch the floor or else you'll get burned!  Well, we won't actually get burned, but we don't want footprints in our floor forever.

Here I am being spider man.  I can't touch the floors, so I have to stretch from room to room.

I feel like a huge burden is lifted now that this project is done!  There are a few little kinks that need to be worked out (fixing the baseboards and such) but it's still such a relief!  I'll post more pictures when I get the furniture back into its designated areas.

Yearning . . .

Why is it that we always want what we can't have?  (Sigh)  We're getting ready to FINALLY sand and stain our wood floors, and I can think of a million crafty things I'd love to do right now.  But alas, I must wait until the floors are finished.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm so beyond excited to get these floors done, you have no idea.  It's been seven months.  I just wish they were done, oh, say, seven months ago!

Anyway, like I said, there are tons of projects up my sleeve waiting to be done!  Sewing will be involved.  Painting will be involved, or maybe staining.  I haven't decided yet what I want to do with my dining room table.  It will be an adventure.  It's in desperate need of a makeover.  The entire top is scratched, so the only way I've been able to conceal that is to put table cloths over it.  They're pretty and all, but I'd like the actual table to look nice.

So, why did we wait so long to do the floors?  Well, that is a question that is easily answered.  When we tore everything up in January, we didn't realize how big and messy this project would be.  First, we had to wait for the weather to be nice so that we could open windows while we sanded so that we didn't asphyxiate ourselves by breathing in so much sawdust.  Then, we had to wait for the right window in Lance's schooling.  His MBA is quite a bit harder than a Bachelor's, so he definitely needed the break in order to do a huge project like this.  Oh, and by the way, I am super proud of him for working so hard on furthering his education!  So, this is the time.  But it's been nice to wait this long, in a sense.  The scraping of the nasty gluey floor that was on top of it wasn't too stressful for me because I was able to scrape at my leisure.

This week up until "go time," I will be figuring out where all of our furniture and decorations will go, and how to seal everything off.  The living room and kitchen will pretty much be entirely bare so that the sawdust doesn't linger for a long time inside furniture and nick-nacks. I'll be sealing all of the cupboards and closets with painter's tape and sealing the doors with sheets.  We don't want to take any chances.  The seals will be there while we sand, but the furniture will still be in other rooms until we're done staining and sealing the floor, which takes a few days. 

I hope this all will be worth it.  I go crazy when there is an empty room.  To me, an empty room is like an itch I need to scratch.  It will be so fun to start decorating from scratch in the living room again, but it will drive me insane until it's finished.  The kitchen won't be so bad.  It has built-in cupboards that look nice.

So, hopefully next time I'll be able to show you so much flooring beauty that your jaw will be stuck in the open position from countless oohs and ahs.  And soon after that, I hope to get some new crafty projects started.

How Low Can You Go?

Do you remember that awesome deal I got on fabric a while back? The $1 per yard for home decor fabric. Well, I saved the cardboard spool it came on, and have found a purpose for it . . . a limbo stick!!! I mainly wanted to make a limbo stick for Activity Days. Tomorrow, we're having a summer fun day with water balloons, games, etc. and I thought that a limbo stick would be perfect for it! Let's just hope that the girls are as psyched about this as I am. I'll definitely be keeping it for future use, though. Who wouldn't want a limbo stick? Ha ha!

So, here is how I transformed a not so pretty cardboard tube into a super chic limbo stick:

Step one: I spray painted the entire thing black. You can use whatever color you want, and you can do whatever kind of paint you want. I just had some leftover black spray paint, so I put it to use. Let dry overnight.

Step two: I painted designs on the stick. I first painted a pink line going down the seam of the cardboard. You know, how there is a seam that spirals down a paper towel tube or a toilet paper tube? This tube was the same. Then I painted white polka dots (I have a recently acquired fetish with polka dots) all over. Let dry.

Voila! It's finished! I bet you thought it would be harder! Well, surprise! It isn't!

Here is the full-sized shot.

Here is a close-up of the design. Cute, huh?

Here We Go a-Cabining!

This weekend we went to a cabin in Oakley (by the Uintahs) with Lance's family. We had oodles of fun!!!

We went there on Thursday and stayed until Sunday. Our activities on Thursday were setting up our rooms/beds, playing Frisbee, going for a walk, and watching a movie. It was a little cramped there with 12 people staying over, but we made it work. Lance and I ended up sleeping on the couch that pulls out into a bed.

This was the stash of munchies. Do you think we had enough?

Lance is teaching Olivia how to throw a Frisbee.

Olivia and Savannah were the best of friends. They always held hands when we went on our walks.

Friday, we did a little more. We went to Smith & Moorhouse for a hike. It's a tradition to go there. There is a reservoir that we usually skip rocks in, but since it was so full, our special spot was not there. This took most of the day. So, we went back to the cabin, had dinner, put the kids to bed, and played Boxers or Briefs. We love that game. It's hilarious!

Lance is pretending to be an explorer on our hike.


Here's a bunch of hikers that were with us!


Jordan loves shooting his dad's slingshot. We'll have to keep an eye on this one. He may be trouble.

This is one of the bridges on our hike. It was beautiful. We had never seen the river that high while we were there in previous years.

It took two full grown men to keep Lance from falling in. Good thing he's safe now!

Saturday, Lance's dad and his wife, Laura came up. We all went to Mirror Lake. On the way there, we stopped near Bald Mountain at an overlook that was much too awesome to resist. There was even still snow up there . . . in July! Mirror Lake was beautiful! We walked partly around it, but Lance, Scott, and Dan walked around the entire thing. The trail was pretty muddy, so we decided that it wasn't such a good idea to let the kids walk through it. On our way back to the cabin we stopped at Provo Falls, yet again another beautiful place. Then we went back to the cabin for dinner, put the kids to bed, and watched a movie.

Isn't the overlook amazing? Wow!!!

I told Lance to go jump off a cliff, so he did. Just kidding! I never told him to do such a thing! And he's only jumping onto the next level. Of course he would never jump to his demise. And I'd never let him, let alone take a picture while he was doing it!

Lance and Dan are making snow angels in July!!!

Mirror Lake

Provo Falls. In case you couldn't tell, I was in a Holly Golightly mood, the way my hair is styled. She is the main character on the movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's. If you haven't seen it, get to it! It's a wonderful chick flick!

I thought this would be a cool picture. It was at the Provo Falls site.

Sunday, Lance and I had the meal assignment for brunch. I made cinnamon roll pancakes with maple butter icing (my very first post in my recipe blog scrumptiouslysatisfying.blogspot.com), eggs, and orange juice. Yum! Then we went to sacrament meeting at the ward in Oakley. We went home, had lunch, played Water Works, cleaned up the cabin, then came home. What a fun weekend! And to top it all off, Lance and I saw fireworks from our front porch that night! Now back to reality. (Sigh)

The Best Kids Ever!!!

I have the best job in the world! I'm an aunt to fourteen amazing kids. I love them all so very much. They are the best! I'll tell you a little about each of them.

Audrey: She's the oldest, 13 years old (the punk is growing up too fast! She's taller than me now!) My favorite story to tell about her is when she went to Mount Rushmore with us. She was about five years old at the time. It had started raining one day, and she was freaking out. I teased her saying, "Oh no, Audrey! We're going to die!" (She was extremely dramatic at the time). She looked at me and said, "We are not going to die. We are going to put on our raincoats." And she stopped whining.

Ashlyn: Ashlyn is 11 years old. She is about my height. She has been my little buddy ever since she was born. We call her Mini-Michelle. She looks more like me than her mom (my sister), mostly because of our coloring (blond hair, blue eyes). But she also acts a lot like me too. She really should have been my child, but I was only 14 when she was born. That would have been awkward. When she was three years old, she always used to ask me to paint her fingamails (fingernails). It was super cute, and most times I couldn't resist.

Merrin: Merrin is also 11 years old. She is hilarious. She used to pretend she was slipping on a banana peel. She was very good at it. She loves to make videos about Skeleton Dude. She films this toy figurine of a skeleton, and it's really pretty funny. Maybe she'll be a director or something one day.

Connor: Connor is 10 years old. He is a very active child. When he was a toddler, you'd put him down and you wouldn't see him again, except for a streak of white hair. He has a very good heart, but sometimes doesn't make good decisions. Once at school he poured chocolate milk down the slide. A kid went down the slide and got his brand new pants all dirty. When Connor got in trouble he said, "Well I didn't know his pants were new." As if that was the reason he got in trouble. No Connor, you'd get in trouble even if the kids pants weren't new.

Kohl: Kohl is 9 years old. He is a genuine, loving kid. When he gets passionate about something, his eyebrows peak. It's pretty funny. He always says funny things. Our favorite story about him is kind of sad because his cat, Mickey got hurt, but Mickey is okay now, so it's funny. One day while his mom was taking a bath, he yelled to her, "Mom the cat is bweeding!" She replied, "Why is the cat bleeding?" He answered, "I don't know, his tail is in my woom! This is the worst day evoo!" He loves his cats. The reason why the cat's tail fell off in his room is because he shut the tail in the door trying to keep the cat in his room so he could play. Oh, and he has outgrown his speech impediment with the R's and L's.

Dallin: Dallin is 7 years old. He is also a very active child. Whenever I babysit him, I know he has to have a toy or two. If his brother and sister are watching a movie, he will be in the room, but he's still playing with the toy. But he is super smart! He pays more attention than you'd think. And he can read really big words if he's interested in the subject.

Savannah: Savannah is 7 years old. She is from Haiti. She was adopted when she was three years old, so for a long time she had a Haitian-Creole accent. It was so cute! She loves doing cartwheels and handstands, and she's really good at them! She's very strong and could probably take me in a fight. Good thing we don't fight!

Jordan: Jordan is 6 years old. He is also from Haiti. His accent has never been quite as strong as Savannah's since he was a little younger when he was adopted. He always has a story to tell you. He's kind of obsessed with basketball, which is so cute, considering he was the smallest kindergartener in his school. He's also very good at cartwheels and handstands, and is pretty much made of muscle.

Katie: Katie is 5 years old. She says such cute things. She loves princesses (which is very good for me because I do too!) She told me a secret the other day and said that we're friends now because we share secrets and that's what friends do. The secret was that she wished that she had rainbow powers. Another secret was that she is a princess. The things this girl comes up with cracks me up. Lance and I went to their house for dinner once and she gabbed the entire meal. When she was eating her dessert, she said, "Who invited you here anyway?" It wasn't meant to be mean. She was just curious, but it was hilarious!

Olivia: Olivia is almost 5 years old. She was adopted from foster to adopt. She is my little bubby (buddy). We have fun playing and dancing together (that girl can dance!). Our favorite game is the hide and seek roar game. I hide and when she finds me I roar at her, making her jump. It's fun! The other day at the parade, she was a little scared. She had recently been to another parade where there were people dressed up from a haunted house. They scared her a lot. So when the parade started, she sat on Lance's lap and said to him, "Help me not be scared." He melted, of course, and so did I.

Brielle: Brielle is 3 years old. She has the biggest brown eyes you'll ever see. She not only has looks, but personality as well. You never know what she'll do next. The other day, she and Katie were talking. Katie recently got eyeglasses and said, "I have glasses." Brielle replied by saying, "I have eyes." Then Katie was telling her about her secret password to her room and asked Brielle what hers was. Brielle didn't really know, so Katie tried to guess. All of a sudden, Brielle licked Katie's mouth (gross). Katie just kept guessing things like, "Lick? Tongue? Mouth?" So funny!

Paxton: Paxton is 3 years old too! He is a funny little kid. One time my mom made layered Jello in little cups. My mom asked him if he liked his Jello and he said, "No, it's ice cream." He wouldn't believe that it was Jello. He also loves bwoccowi (broccoli) cawots (carrots) and gwapes (grapes). The saddest day was when he stopped calling busses buts. And he used to call firetrucks fartefarts.

J: I can't say too much info about little J because he is a foster child. He is absolutely adorable, though, and I love him just as much as all the others. Whenever I'm at their house when they're getting ready for bed, J always asks me to help him. I know he can do these things on his own, but he wants me to do them for him. Like tie his shoes, or help him get his pajamas on. I comply because I like spending time with the little guy.

Declan: Declan is the youngest at 1 year old. He is a fun little chunk of love. I don't see him that often (maybe once a month), so I have to earn his love every time I see him, but it doesn't take too long if I follow him around. He loves being chased. He has the cutest "little guy" laugh. And I love finding his ticklish spot by his collar bone. He can't move once I find it. I babysat him once at my parents' house, and he found a chair that is just his size. He knew I got it out for him, so he would pick it up, set it a different way and repeat about five times. Then, because it was his special chair, when I went into the kitchen, he followed me, carrying the chair with him.

Well, those are my nieces and nephews. I love them all so much! Sometimes I think that the reason I haven't had my own kids yet is because if I loved any kids more than I do my nieces and nephews I might spontaneously combust from so much love inside me. They're the best, and I can honestly say, "My nieces and nephews are cuter than yours are!" Ha ha! Unless, of course we share the same ones.

Summer is Officially Here!

Yep! Summer definitely is officially here! We used our fire pit for the first time this weekend. And we celebrated the 4th of July. I know, it's official when the 21st of June comes around, but now with the weather and recent activities, it really seems like summer.

This last Friday, we had some friends over and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over our fire pit. Then, we went in the front yard and threw some poppers on the ground (our friends have a cute little boy who's almost a year and a half old). He had fun. Then when the poppers were gone, we blew bubbles for the little guy. He was entranced for a couple of hours.

Lance is roasting his marshmallow over our fire pit.

Mmm! Roasted marshmallow!

I'm blowing bubbles!

Saturday, we finished our parade of homes list. There were some amazing houses! If you ever get the opportunity to go, I highly recommend it! I got some great ideas for decorating! Let's hope my imitation will look as good as the pros do it.

We also got a fun surprise on Saturday. Lance's brother, Bryce and his wife, Jessie are in town for a couple of weeks! They recently moved halfway across the country. They decided to surprise everyone by just showing up. We had no idea they would be here! It's been fun catching up with them.

Then there was the 4th of July! We had a fun-packed day. Lance's brother, Blake raced in a 5K and got 2nd in his age group! 14th overall. Way to go for him! Then we celebrated with breakfast at Lance's other brother, Scott's house. Then we watched the parade then had a BBQ lunch at Lance's mom's house. We headed to my parents' house in the afternoon, watched the nieces and nephews play on the slip 'n slide for a little while and had a BBQ dinner there. My brother-in-law, Kevin brought fireworks which might have entertained the big boys a little more than the little kids. (I had fun chasing around my youngest nephew, Declan. He's a hilarious kid, just like the rest of them). We also celebrated my brother, Paul's birthday. His birthday is today, the 5th, but since the whole family was there, he celebrated it on the 4th. Then we went to the fireworks put on by the city. What a blast!

Blake crossing the finish line!

Brielle and Katie loved playing on the rock. Declan wanted to be involved too!

Paul's birthday cake.

Connor, Kohl, and Dallin are watching the fireworks.

Kevin and Lance are getting fireworks ready to light.

Happy Summer Time!!!