What Have We Been Up To?

(I wrote this the other day, but the computer was giving me some trouble, so I’ll try posting it again today).

Here are a few of the things we’ve been up to over the past few weeks:

Polishing – After I polished up the antique dresser we got for our bedroom, I was so pleased with how it turned out (all except for the whole broken mirror part) that I decided to polish my little six-legged table too. You can see in the picture that I took before I was finished what a big difference there was before and after being polished. I think it turned out really nice.

Baby Proofing – We got this china cabinet from someone on craigslist when we moved here, and since the top and bottom pieces of the cabinet were separate I decided I needed to secure them together just to be safe with the little boys, so I got some screws and washers and attached the top piece to the bottom piece, and then I anchored the cabinet to the wall so it wouldn’t tip over if one of the little boys tried to get into it (and I was really relieved that it worked out ok without damaging the cabinet). Then I got all the china into the cabinet and was pleased with how it looks. Now I just need to put a little hook on the door so it can’t be opened by small hands. I also put a couple baby locks on the kitchen cabinets that have cleaning supplies in them, put doorknob covers on most of the doors, put a hook on the glass door of the entertainment center so the little boys can’t get into it, put outlet covers throughout the house, and figured out how to make child safety locks on the sliding closet doors so Isaac can’t get into the closets in the boys’ bedrooms or into the closet that we use as a pantry. So, now we are officially baby-proofed. (Oh, and I guess that’s another thing I’ve done – all the wallpaper in the kitchen is gone, so this picture is a little outdated.)

Organizing the boys’ bedrooms – putting all their toys into toy bins, rearranging furniture, hanging pictures on the walls, and getting very excited to add all of the finishing touches to the rooms once we paint them. We have gotten a few of the decorations up – including the airplanes in Eli and Isaac’s room, and the lion bookends and Noah’s Ark books on the dresser in Kolby, Camden, and Courtland’s room. (Kolby recently informed me that I got the wrong thing for one of the bookends – if their bedroom is a Noah’s Ark theme, then there should be 1 boy lion and 1 girl lion, not 2 boy lions). :)

The family room – we decided to put two couches in this room and I got the slip covers on them. I got the curtains up, and they match perfectly with the paint in the adjacent dining room. And after picking up our family photos and scanning them all, I was able to get the ones of the boys all up in the frames in the family room. (I also framed the family photo and I need to hang it above the fireplace in the living room).

Painting the dining room – I know it’s hard to see the paint color in these photos, but we’re really pleased with it. Now we just need to add the white wainscoting around the bottom and put up some curtains and that room will basically be done. (Oh, and put up a new light fixture and add crown molding, but that will have to come a little later). And while I was finishing up painting the dining room, Michael was testing paint colors in the hallway by the front door – and leaving messages in paint on the walls – but I did end up getting part of that hallway finished earlier this week (we need to pick up some more paint to finish it up, and I want to paint that chair rail white (instead of the cream color it is now, but I really think the colors turned out quite nice).

Yard work – while Michael has perfected the mowing of the lawn and he was also able to get the big bushes in the front yard and the black raspberry bushes trimmed, I’ve tried to do some minor landscaping projects around the yard (we are trying to get the inside of the house painted and fixed up first, so we’ve only done things in the yard so far that don’t cost money, or that are things we had to get done). So, since we moved in, I have tackled the weeds in several areas – including under the pine tree in the front yard, along the west side of the house, and in the flower beds behind the deck, on both sides of the deck, under the hydrangea bushes, and around the trees in the back of the yard. Although there are still lots of areas in the yard that need weeding, it feels better to have these areas done. I have also removed a few of the plants, including these strange-looking little cactus plants around the light post in the front yard, a giant rose bush on the side of the house, and a couple large weedy-looking bushes at the end of the deck. And while weeding out by the trees I found that there were several nice-looking plants growing where you can’t really see them behind the trees, so I transplanted a few of them to the area in front of the trees and I think that area looks nice now. I also trimmed the large bush at the end of our front porch so that we can actually walk through that opening now. Oh, and there was an area along one side of the house where the ground sloped down toward the house, so we got some dirt and I filled in that whole area – my plan is to plant some lilac bushes there in the future. And I took out a section of the wooden fence that runs part way along one side of our front yard next to the walking path – there was one section that jutted in toward the house, so we had to walk (and mow) around that part of the fence, so I just pulled it out. And I also trimmed the small tree in the back yard because it had some low-hanging branches. So, we still have some weeding and we need to fix up the fence in the back yard a bit, and eventually plant some more bushes and we are planning a garden for next Spring, but I’m feeling pretty good about what we’ve gotten accomplished so far.

[And I picked up this table and chairs at a couple garage sales, which makes a perfect place for the kids to sit and eat their lunch in the back yard -- plus I figure I can clean them off and put them in the basement in the wintertime too.]

Playgroups – I have been taking the boys to playgroups once or twice a week, which has been nice to let them get out and play and for me to get to know some of the other moms. These pictures are of the boys playing in the sand with Claire St.Cyr and a couple of the Phillips’ boys, and one of Courtland laying on a blanket at a park with James Johnson. This week we went down to a “sprayground” in Geneva, which was very fun – too bad we had to be back for an appointment and couldn’t stay very long. My friend, Jen, let me use her camera to take pictures of the boys there, so I’ll get those posted once I get them from her.

Palmyra -- A few weeks ago I took the boys to Palmyra one morning, where there are several church historical sites. I wanted to take the boys to the log cabin where Joseph Smith lived, and they give free tours of the historical sites there, so I thought they might enjoy that. I didn’t want to take away from the experience of anyone else who was visiting the sites, so my plan was to wait until there wasn’t anyone else going on a tour and try to go in with just the boys so they wouldn’t be too loud and distracting for anyone else. When I got there, though, the lady who was in charge of the tours said we should just go with the group because there would likely be more people for the next tour and she didn’t think we’d bother anyone. I’ll just say that I won’t end up going again with all 5 boys without Michael. Kolby liked it. And maybe the other boys did too, but they were less than quiet and attentive, and Isaac really detracted from the whole experience with his loud crying whenever I attempted to stop him from running around and touching things. Oh well, I tried. The good thing is that we live to close by, so we can go back anytime we’d like. And we can take turns going with one boy at a time too, for a more meaningful experience. This is a picture of the Palmyra Temple up on the hill – this is the best shot I could get with my cell phone, but Kolby really wanted me to take the picture anyway.

Michael’s birthday – I was so excited when I found this grill at a garage sale (and it was such a good deal), so I arranged to have Michael watch the boys one night so I could go back and get it without him seeing it. Then I saved a few bucks by finding a cheap (empty) propane tank on craigslist and then taking it to WalMart to exchange it for a new full tank. I spent a couple hours cleaning up the grill, and found a grill cover for it too. I think Michael enjoyed his gift, and we’ve all enjoyed the grilled dinners we’ve been having since then. I also invited several families over for cake and ice cream on Michael’s birthday, which was fun. (And we were glad that it didn’t rain that night, since we’d prefer to have 11 kids running around eating cake and ice cream in the grass rather than in the house). So, I think his birthday turned out pretty well.

Cutting hair – I did it, I cut my hair. Other than a couple of trims, I haven’t cut my hair since before Isaac was born, so I guess it was due. I saw a girl the other day who had a really cute haircut, (it looked something like this picture), and as soon as I made the first cut on my hair I knew that mine wasn’t going to turn out anything like that. Oh well. I wasn’t very pleased with it at first, but after a few days (and a few more snips to make it a little more layered-looking), I think it turned out fine.

[I am really glad that we got our camera repaired, because the last set of photos I had taken with my cell phone wouldn't work to send to my e-mail so I couldn't get them off the phone. So, here's the best I could do for that photo.]

Boys’ clothes – It’s that time of year again: time to get all the Fall and Winter clothes ready before the new school year starts. I’ve been busy lately going through all the bins of boys’ clothes in the basement, and re-labeling and organizing those bins. Then I sorted all the Fall/Winter clothes by which kid they will fit this year and made up a list of what clothes we have and what we still need for each kid. And since then I’ve been searching at garage sales and on craigslist for what we still need – I’m determined not to spend more than a few dollars on any of the clothes we need, possibly excluding the winter coat and the remaining shoes that we need to find. But I’ve made a lot of progress, so hopefully I’ll be done with the majority of the searching for clothes for them before too long. The boys have also enjoyed “garage sale-ing” with me on Friday mornings since I often find them children’s books when we go – we have especially been able to build up our collection of Boxcar Children, Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew books on our last few trips. And I’ve also spent a few dollars at a couple different garage sales to acquire this set of kids table and chairs – I think they’re so cute, and my plan it to clean them off and move them into the basement in the Winter and let the kids use them when they play down there (once the basement is finished).

The garage – Michael tackled this one. While I was out doing a long grocery shopping trip one night, he cleaned up the garage, set up these shelves, and entered the code so that we can open the garage door from outside the house. Now we just need to get rid of a few more things in the garage and install the hooks that we got to hang a few things from the wall, and it will be nice and organized out there. (I’ll have to take a picture of the garage later).

Hiking – a couple Saturdays ago we decided to go on a hike in the afternoon and googled “Fairport hike” and ended up going for a walk at “Falls Trail” that goes along a river where we ended up getting in up to our knees and wading around. We had lots of fun, so we decided to go the next Saturday to a place some friends had told us about that isn’t far from here called Corbett’s Glen. Although the mosquitoes just about ate us alive, even with mosquito repellent, it was a great outing. The river runs through this old tunnel built in the 1880s and then there are these beautiful little waterfalls where we had lots of fun swimming and wading (the photos from Corbett’s Glen are still on Michael’s cell phone, so I’ll have to get those from him). This weekend we are planning on going to Lechtworth State Park, which is supposed to be “The Grand Canyon of the East.” And then the following weekend we were invited to go camping with the Silvas. And we are going camping with some families from church at some beach over Labor Day weekend, so that should be fun. We are trying to get as much as we can out of the summer before the winter comes.

Climber toy – I found this on craigslist and picked it up yesterday (and attached it to the roof of the minivan with bungee cords to bring it home, since it wouldn’t fit in the van). [I was pretty excited to find it for such a good deal – this one cost me $20, and I can’t find the same extra-large size one of these for less than $120 on eBay.] My plan is once we’ve finished the basement to get a few of these plastic climber toys and set them up down there as a fun winter-time play area. I need to clean the toy off a bit after it was used outdoors, but once we get it set up it should look like this picture:

A Little Bit of Demolition – The other night I pulled up one of the tiles near the doorway in the upstairs bathroom (where we plan on eventually removing and replacing all the tile and refinishing the tub so it will be white). I got the idea to remove all of the tile that night after we put the boys to bed, so I got the shovel and started at it. The tile comes up without too much trouble if you get the end of the shovel under the edge of the tile. When I started removing tile, I found a thin board under the tile with a thicker piece of particle board under that – both of these boards were dry, but had signs of previous water damage, and the tile floor in that bathroom is a good 1 or 2 inches higher than the hardwood floor in the hallway outside the bathroom – so I figured that since the boards had been damaged and we’d prefer the bathroom floor not to be so much higher than the hall floor, I’d just remove those boards too. (I also thought that the thin board might be the reason for the cracking in the old tile floor, since the tiles were cracked right along the seam between two of those boards down the middle of the floor). I started pulling those up, and then I realized that maybe that wasn’t the best idea. Although I think we will need to remove the tile and those layers of wood before putting down some backer board and re-tiling, it will be a little while before we are able to put down the new tile floor, so it’s probably not wise to have the wooden sub-floor exposed to possible water damage every time our boys splash in the bathtub between now and then. So, I ended up stopping and waiting to finish the job until a future date. Now we have a nice hole in the bathroom floor, but at least the job has been started.

Homemade Jam – Since we have a nice big freezer in the garage now, I decided to make some freezer jam for the first time this morning. I’ve been saving these plastic fruit jars (they are the perfect size and the labels come off really easy without leaving sticky stuff all over the jar, so they’re perfect for re-using), and I got the berries and pectin yesterday. It took me a couple hours or so, but in the end I had 3 jars of blackberry jam, 3 jars of strawberry-blackberry jam, and 6 jars of strawberry jam. That should hold us over for a while. They are supposed to set for 24 hours before you freeze or refrigerate them, and they seem to be starting to set up alright, so hopefully they’ll end up tasting as good as they look.

[We have since tried the jam, and it turned out quite good. We also found that if you heat it up it makes good berry syrup for waffles too.]