33 Weeks with Hyrum

Here I am, 33 weeks along with Hyrum.  

33 weeks 3 days with Kinsley

 33 Weeks with Sadie.

6 and a half more weeks!  

Hallelujah! 

Living Room Entry Table

Okay so in APRIL I blogged about making an entry table from a dining room table, just as a reminder here is the post.

But I didn't like the finish on it so I set out to sand it down and restain it and put a protective coat on it.

That was April and it's September and I've finally finished it.

Wes, said something to the effect the other day that this has been my never ending project.  Or maybe he was just saying it has taken me a really long time to finish and I just inserted in my mind that he meant, never ending, as in "Are you ever going to get this out of the garage?"

Part of the hang up was that I didn't know what stain I wanted to use or paint.  In our living room we have black wood trim on the couch, cherry stain on two chairs and a cherryish walnut on the piano.

I was leaning towards painting it black but seriously after sanding it down, it seemed like a waste of time to just paint it black.  So finally I just picked a stain I liked and guess what, it doesn't match anything.  :)  Someday though, I want wood floors and I want them to look more rustic like the stain I picked.

Here it is, all done.

 It has a little bit of a distressed look, mainly because I was sick of sanding and didn't sand away all the imperfections.  I like it this way though.

I still haven't found anything to put on it.  Today, two sets of girl shoes, a notebook and a toy were resting on it...  Someday it will have "THE PERFECT" home decor on it, you know the kind that totally ties in with the rest of the room, the kind I have no idea how to assemble. ;)  But for now I guess cute little girl shoes are better than nothing.  :)

Novalee's New Bed

Adding Hyrum to the family means adding a bed.  

So we bought one off of a local facebook page from friends. This is actually their picture of it.

We were really excited about it having a built in bookcase because Novalee is a collector.  Really it doesn't matter what, she likes it and she likes to keep it...FOREVER. :)  

She especially loves her journals/diaries.  And she recently started reading books on her own so this was perfect.

Novalee was a little disappointed because it didn't really fit her sense of flair.  I promised her it would be awesome if she would just give it a chance.  She agreed and was actually pretty excited.  

So we got it and it sat in our garage for about a month.  I'm awesome like that.  :)

Then I finally primed it and spray painted it purple to match the bunk beds.  And added scrapbook paper Mod Podged to the back of the shelves.  

Here it is all done, sitting once again in the garage.  

 And finally in her room!

 Do you think she has enough stuffed animals? 

 I've been wanting to try out putting a different color on the back of a shelf for a long time.  I'm glad I finally got the chance.  

Sadie's 3

Three!

So often I think about the future.  

When such and such happens and when so and so is this age.  

Then it happens and I'm caught off guard.  It happens so fast!

 How is Sadie three?

I'm not sure either.

But she is. 

We had a small family birthday party for her on Sunday the 8th.

 Kinsley waiting for the party to begin and wishing she had one of the balloons on the canopy. 

We also blew up balloons and put them in the trampoline enclosure. 

 Sadie had so much fun jumping in it with balloons.

 Doesn't that look like fun!

I might need to do it again after I have Hyrum just for fun! 

 Lately, anytime we have a party Novalee gets herself all dolled up.  

I wasn't ever really like that but I love that she is so girly.  

I love that all our girls are so different.

 Uncle Jeremy was in town from Rexburg.  On Saturday he came to Sky High with us.  I think Sadie holds him in a special place in her heart now. :)

 Papa Larry with Kinsley.

Oh Jared.  We love you!  It's okay, your birthday is just a couple months away.

 Could she be any prettier? 

 Sadie picked out her own birthday cake this year.  

Mainly because I had no desire to make one...someday.

 Things are getting messy 'round here.

 Efforts to get a decent shot of my family.  

I tried.

I really did.

No hope AND they were warned I was going to take a picture.

 Holy Mess Monster!

 "What the problem is?"

 Present time!

 Jared and Novalee were so helpful!

 Novalee has a really cool talent of getting anyone excited about anything.  She really just gets into it, even if it's not her thing.  She definitely had Sadie so excited about every birthday present she got.

 Little thief sneaking in while Sadie is distracted. 

 Ummm, we've had this Mickey toy for over a year taking up space.  I'm so glad we finally got to give it to her and she still liked it.  Sometimes I get things way, WAY too early.

 Kinsley liked it too.

On Sadie's actual birthday the 9th, Wes got a present too.

Welcome to the family Trooper! 

Gardening

We finally had room to start a garden this year! I was so excited about fresh veggies and getting to can for the first time.

In the spring we did a family home evening where we sang. "The Prophet Said to Plant a Garden" and then we dug up a plot in our yard as a family.  When we started digging I didn't think we were going to get very far but we actually finished it that night!  Go Family!

Looks like fun, right?  We had fun!

 Here it is early on in the spring, hence Novalee in her sweatshirt in the kiddie pool.  :)

Making progress.  We never really thought it would grow so well.  The unexperienced (us) had doubts anythign would grow.  We started our tomatoes from seed early, early in the spring inside and they really didn't look like they were going to make it but they just shot up as soon as they were planted outside.  

 Well I didn't grow this butterfly nor is it in our garden but it was so pretty in our neighbors.  

I love where we live!

 

Our first carrots!  

 The neighbors have many sunflowers and over the years birds have spread the seeds all around.  We had a few spring up randomly.  They are pretty cool.

 I grew potatoes from rotten ones that I didn't cook soon enough and they started to sprout.  I just buried them and they grew!  

My first canning experience, GREEN BEANS!  My sister basically did it for me since I had no idea what I was doing.  5 quarts that is all I got from our beans...maybe next year I will pay better attention to the package and I won't buy bush beans.

 We have two blackberry bushes in our yard that have been here for years.  It was so awesome to be able to just pick blackberries from our backyard all summer long. I canned a few pints of blackberry jam and some blackberry syrup. 

Our conjoined cucumber. 

 Being without experience on gardening we weren't sure that anything would make it so we didn't thin anything out as it grew.  So we had cucumbers and currently tomatoes coming out of our ears.  This was just one of the many, many cucumber harvest.  I currently have several bags of them in the garage that will probably go bad.  Next year we will know better.

We also canned three quarts of salsa.  Not much I know but I didn't have gloves for the peppers and worried about blistering my hands.

AND we canned two, yes TWO quarts of pasta sauce!  It took 22.5 pounds and hours and hours later to get those precious two quarts.  I was pretty disgusted after seeing how much work was involved to get so little canned.  Wes asked me last night if we should use one for dinner.  Heck no!  Those things are precious.  We are going to have to celebrate something special to crack those babies open.  

I'm kind of over the gardening thing this year which is good since really all we have growing right now are some tomatoes and some not so hopeful watermelons.  

This year we added grapes, an apple tree and a cherry tree to our yard.  I look forward to when we can enjoy eating apples, cherries and grapes from the yard.  Next year I want to add blueberry bushes and raspberry bushes.  We are quickly running out of yard.  

I wish we could buy property somewhere nearby, pick up our house and plop it down and go from there.  I would be sad if we ever moved from our house but I could deal with more land. 

Plus Wes wants cows, doesn't that seem odd.?  

Wes a cattle herder?  

 Maybe someday. 

 :)