April Showers Bring May Flowers

Not sure what that title is supposed to do with my blog post… probably because it’s once again raining here in the great state of Utah. 

We’ve had a busy, busy month here.  Mother’s Day, a new kitchen faucet (that I installed all by myself while Evens was at work.  And had the major cuts on my hands to prove it), moving the girls into a room together, birthday parties and more have kept us going in multiple directions with no end in sight.  Once again spring is upon us and we have more projects to do than we will ever have time for.  More yard work, more yard maintenance, more pond…stuff…, and that’s not even half of what we have to do outside!  Then there’s the usual spring cleaning inside, and then we want to paint (FINALLY!!!!) the living/dining rooms and kitchen, and the play room.  I’m getting exhausted just writing this list.  Ok, on to some pictures.

 We decided that with 2 girls comes lots and lots of girly toys, which takes up lots of room.  So the girls are now in one room and the toys are in another.  No more toys scattered throughout the house, no more toys taking over Kara’s room (seriously—it was so bad that we could barely walk in there).  It’s been wonderful.  Evens and I both had a lot of hesitation and anxiety over putting the girls together: would they sleep okay, would one wake the other up?  But it has been a dream.  The girls are closer than ever, if they go to sleep at the same time they just sit in their beds and talk to each other until they fall asleep, and Kara has gotten used to Sophie crying in the middle of the night until she puts herself back to sleep.  We also decided to have Kara stop wearing diapers to bed (yes, I know, she is 3, but I wasn’t ready to deal with the bed-wetting issues until now), and she has done spectacular with that as well!  No bed-wetting yet!  So all the toys and books are in the play room, and while there is no real order to it yet, there will be eventually.  We are going to get rid of the chalkboard/whiteboard and make one of the bottom half of the walls a huge chalkboard, and then hang a roll of paper from the top of the wall so the kids can have a drawing area.  We’ll see how it goes.  It’s certainly a work in progress, but it’s been fun so far because Kara has her neighbor friends come over and they all go and trash the playroom and then I can just close the door and ignore the mess!

We have been doing major spring cleaning, which has included a lot of selling of items that we haven’t used in a long time.  In some cases, since the item was originally purchased (I am ashamed to admit this, but our treadmill was one of those items… it is now gone).  Evens’s pride and joy has been sent to a better home.  He made the decision (all by himself, with absolutely no input, pressure, giddiness, or suggestions from me) to sell his truck.  It was very hard for him, and he was completely depressed for about a week, but in the end it was a good decision.  That poor truck has been sitting in our garage/driveway/road for 2 years, with no money available to fix it.  So Evens interviewed some candidates and chose someone worthy enough to take her home, care for her, fix her up, and drive her around.  Someday he will get another classic car to work on, but that will probably be when both girls have graduated from college. 

 

In April the girls and I drove up to Logan to meet Darci, Doug, and their kids at Baby Animal Days.  It was fun, and Kara loved holding all the animals and riding the train.  

And last (and probably least), here is my project of the month. 

We got this table set awhile ago, and like most things in our garage it’s been collecting dust (and spiders, ew!).  I really, really want a new kitchen table (er, new to me I guess), and so I decided the other morning that I was going to start working on refinishing it.  So I googled how to do it (love the internet) and the other night Evens and I went to Lowes to get the proper stuff (apparently you have to sand this stuff down like, a bajillion times), and I’ve started on it.  I’d really like to get it done before my mom gets here in 1 1/2 weeks, but we’ll see.  I figure if I work on it every day, it’ll get done eventually.

(Do you like the pond sitting there? Eventually it will make its way outside and into the big hole in the front yard-- I am sure of it! Yesterday I got all of the chairs sanded (sanding step 1 of 3), and today I’ll work on the second sanding step.  Evens will help me with the table, and then we can paint it black and recover the chairs and voila!  I’ll have a new kitchen table!  Can’t wait!