Kitchen progress

The cabinets went in back in June, and it was the biggest relief.  I had honestly been up a few nights, terrified that we made a mistake.  We spent more money on the cabinets alone than almost any project in our house - I think only replacing every window in the house beats it out - and I based that decision on a 4" by 4" sample they sent us.  I knew I loved the walnut kitchens I saw on Pinterest, but these guys didn't make those cabinets.  All they sent us was a 4" by 4" block of walnut.  I carried that block everywhere for months to match it up to everything else we were doing.

So when the cabinets were in and we both loved them, I could take a deep breath.

We bought the flooring before the cabinets were installed, since that takes a couple of weeks to arrive and had to be installed before the countertop. So we had a template guy come and measure for the counters the day after the cabinets went in, and then headed to San Diego.  Christopher started on the floors when we got back, but he had a Scout trip to Lake Powell for a few days the next week.  The week after that, we were gone for three days for Trek.  Originally the counters were going in the day after Trek, but they had scheduling issues and pushed it back.  Christopher was furious with them, but to be honest, I think that was needed on our end, too.  We arrived home, exhausted, and had maybe a quarter of the floor in.  Counters the next morning would have meant no sleep that night at all.  My parents came into town, and then we all went to Idaho three days later, and when we got home, THEN he finally was able to get the entire floor down in time for the counters.

The floors are vinyl plank, which we picked because it is waterproof.  I was worried (I did a lot of worrying) that the floors would be too dark, but they I think it really works well.  The "Black Walnut" goes well with the walnut cabinets.

The counters add enough lightness to make the dark floors work.

I wanted to keep the white appliances (I seem to be in a minority, but I don't like dark or stainless), so white counters seemed like a good match.  Christopher was the one who picked the sparkles in the counter, which is something that amazes everyone.  I didn't have a big emotion about it, but he really wanted speckles in the counter, and loved the sparkling bits of mirror in this one.  I'm just glad that the white is the same true white as the appliances.

Actually, the part I was most excited about was having a sink.  And a dishwasher.

We knew that renovating the kitchen would be hard.  Awful, even.  I expected that it would be really difficult to cook and feed my family.  What I didn't quite anticipate was how impossible it would be to clean anything.  We had crock pots and our grill has a burner outside, so I could cook in a pot out there.  I just couldn't sanitize the dishes afterward.  We had a laundry room sink, which is where we usually clean paint brushes out, and the kids have a bathtub, which is as clean as a child's bathtub gets, I suppose.  Neither of those seemed sanitary to me.  I kept rinsing all the food off of the dishes and then piling them in the laundry room sink, intending to spend an hour and scrub every last bit of paint off of that sink so we could clean the dishes. Instead, I we were running from road trip to road trip, and I was lucky to keep up on anything.  When my sweet neighbor (who fed us for a week straight in June and will forever be my favorite person for that) called and asked if she could bring us dinner one  night, I told her that the favor I really needed was to run a load through her dishwasher.  She laughed really hard, but I was just so grateful she waved me on over, because I had no idea what else to do.

So when I had running water in a sink, and a dishwasher again, it was like heaven.  I now know from experience that families in a kitchen renovation need meals brought over even more than families with a new baby.  Eating on a real plate with real forks was glorious.

After this point, the progress got a lot slower.  Christopher had been so optimistic with our timeline.  He was sure that we would be 100% done by mid July, but he just didn't count on how much we would be out of town.  (And how much we would wait for counters.)  I was hoping to be done before the kids were in school.  We just didn't count on how exhausted we would be.  Once we got it to a livable point, we needed to focus on our kids and Chris had to focus on his job.  It was time to regain sanity.

So we did little things slowly.  I finished my side project a week later.

The built in bookshelf had been painted a beige to match the brick.  When the cabinet installers finished, the left behind a significant pile of trim and molding left over from their job.  Since the cabinets are truly custom, they couldn't really use it anywhere else.  So I decided that the bookcase needed trim on the front to match the cabinets.  Christopher washed his hands of the whole thing, because the last thing he wanted was an extra project.  So my dad helped me cut the crown molding when he was in town, and we tested the nail gun out on some scrap.

It turns out that an electric nail gun is just not powerful enough for solid walnut.

Christopher eventually bought a new nail gun, and it worked like a charm.

I'm rather proud of how it came out. I am especially glad that the big trim perfectly covered the empty three inches below the bottom shelf. Why someone built it like that, I'll never know.  I think there were originally doors on the top and bottom sections, but all we had left was the screw holes from hinges.  All covered up now!

A week or two later, Christopher installed the final appliance.

I think it was about this time that we picked out and bought the backsplash tile, too.  But we were just exhausted. When anyone asked us if our kitchen was done, we just had to tell them not yet - by choice.  We needed a break.  The only inconvenience left was running extension cords to use small appliances on the counter, since outlets had to wait for a backsplash, but that was mild.

Idaho reunion

My in-laws all live very close to us.  The furthest away is in Salt Lake City, and the most south is Provo.  All seven siblings get together on a very regular basis, depending on what is going on.  Maybe a month or so will go by without seeing someone, but that is rather rare.  This summer hasn't been as much, since my Mother-in-law moved and hasn't been hosting her usual dinners, but we see them a lot in general.

My family, on the other hand, rarely sees each other.  My parents make trips to see everyone every year or so.  One brother in Cleveland rarely travels, and one in Las Vegas has a large family (plane tickets get expensive very fast), so I can count on one hand the "reunions" in the last twenty years.  Grandpa Dance's funeral had 5 of the 6 children, a wedding in 2008 had all 6, graduations in 2000 had 5 and then a different 5, but never all 6, and Christmas of 1995 was all 6 siblings.

I'm so glad that my oldest brother offered to host all of us at his house in Idaho for the week.  All 6 made it!  Look- proof I have 5 brothers!

It was a lot of people on one property, but it honestly didn't feel as crowded as I thought it might.

We drove our trailer up, and there were two more trailers parked on his RV pads for other families to use.  I have heard stories about his place for years, so it was great to finally see it.  I am totally jealous that he has a local person that takes care of the property for him.  His grass was immaculate and plush, and this year our grass at the cabin appears dead because we were too busy to get up there and water it.  The house is great, our RV pad was better than almost any RV park we've stayed at, and the river was wonderful.

Most of the cousins are older than my children.  Kaitlyn is the only one that had a cousin her age, and they were truly inseparable.  I hardly saw them apart the entire week we were there.

Tyler might not have had a cousin his age, but he does have a much older cousin with Autism.  Nathan was really sweet with him, and taught him how to play the video games he had with him.

Tyler also spent as much time as he could with the dogs.

And Jasmine just enjoyed the attention from all of the babysitting-age cousins that liked to play with her.

Most people went fly fishing in the river.

Kaitlyn really wanted to join them, but she was just too small and light.  The current would have whisked her downstream!  So they got to play in the riverbank instead.

My brother has a lot of four-wheelers, with tracks all over his property to zip around on.

One day, I went with a group on a long four-wheeling trip while Christopher took the kids to Craters of the Moon, a National Park nearby.

Most of the trail was a regular road, but the last section was a fun climb up some rocky areas with a few small water crossings.

The kids loved Crater of the Moon!  I'll have to go check that place out myself some day.  Looks like an odd place.

Christopher took his turn later in the week.

We took a short lived boat trip, too.  There is a lake nearby, but the water was pretty cold, and one of the boats wouldn't start.

So we went for ice cream instead.

All five of my brothers and a good portion of their families love competitive sports.  I went to a lot of football and soccer games growing up, and now we are a family that fills downtime with games.  There was badminton, soccer goals, bocce ball, and especially KanJam, a Frisbee game that was probably the most popular that week.  Not to mention a few trips to the golf course.

There was also a campfire every evening.

The only thing our cabin has going for it above my brother's is that our smoke from the firepit always blows exactly one direction.  The cold air comes down the canyon each night, and that means you never have smoke changing direction and getting in your face.  Since some people didn't like the smoke in their eyes, they found a creative solution.

We had a lot of good laughs around that fire!

We took a walk one day with Grandma and Grandpa to a very old cemetery they found.

Kaitlyn and Megan were testing how long they could stay there without getting wet.

So pretty!

We got to see a fantastic fireworks show that a group of neighbors pool together for.

Christopher spent hours chopping wood for the woodpile with everyone.  The pile was huge!

Our kids were thrilled to feed a baby calf at their neighbor's farm.

And at the end of the week, there was a parade for the ATV convention in town that weekend.

There was a contest for the best decorations on them, and some people really went all out!

My kids loved all of the candy and hats they tossed out.

We even played with perler beads in some downtime.

What an amazing week!  I hope we get to go again some day.

Trek

I have to admit that Trek was the last thing on my mind.  I knew that I needed to prepare more than we did, and I felt guilty about that.  We just had so much going on.  We were either out of town, or up until 2 am working on the kitchen.  My house was in shambles. So when we were packing for Trek, I felt like I needed it like I needed a hole in my head.

In the end, though, I am glad we went.  We really did have a great time.  I was nervous because it can all come down to who is in your "family", but we had great teenagers.  They were truly awesome kids, who thanked us for every little thing we did, and did everything they could to pitch in and help.

We were assigned to be "Ma" and "Pa" on the handcart trip, and assigned 8 "children" to walk with.  As we were piling out of the buses, I thought we looked rather ridiculous, but three days later, it seemed perfectly natural to walk with hundreds of people in pioneer clothing.  Our family dynamic fell quickly to sarcasm, which suits my husband just fine.  (And me, too some days!)  But it was a good, fun sarcasm, and to be honest, I don't think I heard an actual complaint out of those kids the entire time.

On the first day, we went down a hill that many pioneers mentioned in their journals as being especially tough. Backing a handcart down a hill was more difficult than I thought, but we made it.  Only to be told that the Indian chief (one of our leaders in disguise) said we couldn't cross this spot and had to go back up the hill, or else face his warriors.  (Cue the sarcasm: "I think we should take them.  I've got my pocket knife.  You got your pocket knife?  Yeah, see, we got this.  No need to go back up the biggest hill ever.")  We made it up, only to be told that we could give them two cans of food in exchange for safe passage back down the hill.  That was a really tiring day.

They were all tiring days, actually.  But spending them with great people was worth it.  It ended up being a last hurrah for my husband, who has been working with the youth in the church for years and just switched to work with adults.  He's happy about some parts of the change, but seeing him with those boys gave me an appreciation of how much he enjoyed working with all of the boys over the years.

Sewing lessons

I've been thinking about running sewing lessons in my house for years.  I taught Kaitlyn when she was 6, and she has been begging for more lessons ever since.  We just never quite carved out enough time for it.  The appeal of teaching a sewing class was mainly because I had grand plans of what I wanted to teach her, and it seemed like a waste to create worksheets and lessons for just one girl.

So this year, I went for it, despite our kitchen and house being in shambles.  I had planned on having the class in the dining room, but I had to settle for the basement.  I'm glad I did.  Being right next to my sewing area really helped.

I didn't take a lot of pictures, because it kept me really busy to have 4 sewing students working at a time.  I learned a lot about what to change next time.  For example, I had one 6 year old in the beginning class, and she was probably a bit too young.  (Though her mom said that she loves it and talks about it constantly.  So at least she got an appreciation for it, and some basics!)  I will certainly change up my intermediate class to be longer next time, since we ran out of time every day.  But overall, it was a big success!

And most importantly, Kaitlyn had a wonderful time.  She filled her zipper pouch with sewing supplies and took it everywhere she went for weeks.  Having sewing class scheduled into my day really helped us both.

Happy students were an extra bonus!