Painting

Labor Day weekend was spent painting - a lot of painting.
We have lived in our house for 13 years. It needed a face lift. The purple and green scheme is out. After 13 years of looking at it, we are tired of it. We enjoyed it while we had it, but are ready for something different and new. And wow! Are we getting different! We are getting new living room and family room furniture soon and it is definitely not purple and green! By the way, if you know anyone who would like a purple couch and chair, let me know!
We decided to go back to neutral walls (they were a sagey/gray green). We now have cream/peachy walls. I really like the clean, warm look. It is a change. I got up the next morning and thought, "What have we done? Am I ready for this?" After about 10 minutes, I thought, "Yep, I am. Very ready."
My parents were incredible and took Enoch and Kate for the weekend. Greg, Gavin and I stayed home and painted as much as we could. My sister, Michelle, and her husband, Dave, came and helped Friday night. We owe them big time! They were such a huge help. Gavin was put on Marcus babysitting duty for a bit while the adults painted. We got a lot done with their help.

We painted Friday night and all day Saturday. We slowed down during the BYU game, but went until Saturday night. We almost got it done. We had to put 4 coats over the green paint to get a good coverage. Geesh! That took a long time. We borrowed some scaffolding from Steenecks and that saved us! It was so handy.



We are slowly finishing. We still have baseboards. Greg is seriously considering replacing the baseboards and then he can spray them outside. That won't happen until we get our new carpet (in a few months). I'm excited for the changes. Now, I need to figure out what to put on the walls (besides new paint!).

Misc Summer Fun

A few summer activities that didn't get their own post.

*Slip-n-Slide with the slide. My kids love doing this. (Apparently so do the rest of the neighborhood kids!)


*Making Magic Shell ice cream topping. Enoch and Kate thought this was the coolest thing ever! Gavin thought it was quite tasty.



*Enoch earned enough project points for a Butterfly Garden. The kids were fascinated with it. They were able to see the entire process from caterpillar to butterfly. It was very cool. Time to get more caterpillars!


*Too much fun!


*Getting hurt! Enoch scraped up the insides of both of his thighs on our rock wall in the backyard. It was quite bad and also the day before swimming lessons started. He missed the first day, but toughed it out after that.


*Jumping on the trampoline in the rain. Such fun!


*Flying paper airplanes in the backyard. Enoch loves making airplanes. Today they tied string to them and made kites.


*Going four-wheeling. Kate falls asleep every single time!


*Playing at Grandpa Dee's cabin. Enoch loves it when he leaves his tractor up there.


*Making a recyclable city. Enoch collected all our recyclable items and built a small city. He is still collecting and want to make his city bigger. He used milk boxes to make the White House, milk jugs for houses and Pick-Up Sticks for the roads. Enoch is the president. Since it is the city of Enoch, Enoch called his city Zion.


We had a great summer!

Kate goes to Preschool

Okay - I cried. A lot. I was still teary when I picked her up two hours later.
Kate started Preschool today. She was so excited! She has been asking everyday for weeks when she gets to go to school. She was so upset when her brothers went to school without her. What drama! (especially for Kate, who usually isn't a drama queen).
She was up early today, dressed and ready to go. I made a new skirt for her to wear. It is very twirly and she loves it. We had to wait until 9:30 for school to start. She was quite anxious since her brothers start at 8 am.

We walked to school. We are lucky enough that Kate's preschool is in our neighborhood and a lot of her friends get to go to school with her. She walked right in, put her backpack away and started playing. I gave her a kiss and she waved good-bye. So easy for Kate - so hard for Mom!
She had a great day! Kate loves preschool and I know she will have a terrific year. If only Mom can survive without her for four hours a week!

Potato People at a Family Reunion

Our family attended the Evans' Family Reunion today at Wheeler Farm. We had a great time playing at the park, feeding the ducks, going for walks, visiting with family, eating lunch and jumping on the bounce house.
One of the activities was making potato head people with various crafty items. Gavin was incredible and blew us all away with his creativity. He made a:

HARRY POTTER


ZEBRA


DESPICABLE ME MINION


Yep, those are potatoes. Pretty clever, I think.

Quilts

I had some fabric in my sewing room that ended up in the corner - fabric that I labeled for humanitarian use. I knew that our stake was doing a quilt drive and it gave me the perfect opportunity to put some quilts together and clean out my sewing room. I had to get a bit creative in how I put the quits together because I had a limited amount of each fabric. I also made sure I did some boy quilts, since not as many as those get done.
My biggest challenge was tying them. I usually machine quilt, so tying was a new experience. Luckily the quilts were small enough that I could do them on the floor and I didn't need frames. I tied all five quilts in two days. Yep, my fingers hurt. And, of course, I did it during the hottest week of the year. At least, I know these quilts are warm!
But, they are done - out of my house and on to kids who need them. Enoch and Kate kept asking who the quilts were for. I told them that some kids don't have any blankets and are cold. They were baffled. It never occurred to them that some kids don't have blankets. It was a reminder that I need to spend more time in our family doing service and being grateful.

Scattered Thoughts

1. Kate told me, "Know what I want mostest when I grow up?"
"What?" I asked.
"I want longer arms so I can do all the things in gym class!"
Poor thing! She has inherited my short arms, while her brothers have their dad's extra long monkey arms. I was hoping our kids would get genes from both of us and have average arms, but no such luck.

2. At the beginning of the summer, Gavin was about one inch shorter than me. Now - one inch taller than me! What! How can he be taller than me already?

3. Last night I heard Enoch tell Kate, "Let's go downstairs and be beavers and put our dam skills to work." Okay, I know I shouldn't, but I laughed so hard. When Greg gave me the 'I can't believe you are laughing at that' look (while he too was laughing), I said, "I've lived with kitties and tigers for years now. I'm relieved the kids have some dam skills."

And our little beavers were busy. They built a blanket dam, which was eventually overcome with a flash flood.

Waffle Day

This morning while Greg was checking the weather on the news, I overheard them say it was National Waffle Day. Fabulous - now I know what's for dinner.
I decided to make it a bit more fun and have chocolate waffles with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, hot fudge sauce and blackberries from the garden. Everyone loved it and it was a fun change for dinner.



Yeah - I was a popular mom tonight!