Summer 2012-Stockton, CA

 

We started this summers adventures at my parents house in Stockton. We did a lot of swimming.

 And jumping

We visited the Jelly Belly Factory

 Swam some more

Visited Mickey Grove Zoo

 We saw some friends

This is Anna and Brenden Now

 This is Anna and Brenden in 2005

Crafty valentine

I haven't posted forever but I wanted to show off all the crafts I have been doing. I have bren having fun with ideas from pinterest.

Pre birthday celebration

Annas birthday is on sunday, so I took her out to lunch at taco bell(her choice). Then took her to get her ears pierced. I was amazed when Peter said he was ok with doing it this year. And Anna was shocked when we told her. She did awesome. Didn't cry, she said it didn't even hurt. (In fact she is singing about getting her ears pierced right now in the shower.) Then I took her shopping. She wanted clothes. It was a super fun day, with my big 7 year old girl.

Apple picking

We went apple picking on saturday. We had lots of fun and got a lot of yummy apples. We mostly got goldens but also got a few reds, braiburns and a kind called banana apple.

When we go apple picking we go up to Wapato where peter has family with an orchard that we gleen at.

I have already made apple sauce. Yummy! I love things made from apples.

Peter's Project

I (Peter) have been working on another woodworking project. This one is larger than any I have previously completed. I'm working on a 6-section built-in for our master bedroom. It will combine 13 drawers, an entertainment center section and lots of bookshelves. The design is my own. That is both god and bad. The good part is that as I go along and make mistakes, I can often change to plan to accommodate those mistakes. The bad part is that I fear getting towards end of the project and finally dealing with all of those little measuring errors and the faults I find in my plan. As always, I learn a lot when I work on projects. By the time I am done with a particular project, I have almost all of the knowledge and skill that I should have had at the beginning of the project.

This is a picture of me spraying a piece of wood that will become the side of a filing cabinet. I am using a HVLP spray gun with a 1.5mm tip. The paint is an oil-based paint (using alkyd as the resin), thinned with mineral spirits so that it will run through a Ford #4 viscosity cup in 45 seconds. I also added some Penetrol for optimal leveling and a smooth texture. After I have the right viscosity, I let it pass through a 125 micron strainer to keep my gun from clogging. I run a 2 quart remote pressure pot set at 3 psi. The remote pressure pot and 12' hoses allow me to keep my pot over by my air compressor as opposed to on top of my spray gun. I can also spray at any angle and get the same paint flow and atomization. Yes, I like to get nerdy with my projects. It took me several attempts to get everything dialed in just right. As a note, I typically spray with a half-face respirator for safety purposes - and because my nose hairs turn white and get sticky if I don't wear the mask.

This picture shows a little bit more of my work. In the upper-right corner of the picture is the bottom and middle portion of the cabinet. This will house 8 drawers, sized to fit DVD and VHS cases. In front of the big cabinet in this picture are the sides, tops and bottoms of the two cases that will be installed on either side of the central cabinet. One of these will be a 2-drawer filing cabinet and one will have 3 drawers to store whatever will fit in them. As you can tell, I think drawers are a good storage solution. They are also one of the biggest pains to build and install well. The cream-colored item in the back of this picture is Anna's dresser. I bought it a while ago and just got around to painting it.

Bathroom Project

I recently,(after almost 6 years of living in our house) finally painted my master bathroom. I painted it this awesome green called Agave. Then to add to it I got white curtains and rugs. I also got these frames from Goodwill for some art and jewelry.

Here is the before of the frames

And here they are hanging in the bathroom.
The art is by local well know artists. The left one is by Anna last year
in kindergarten, and the right is by Carter 3 years ago in nursery.
I am hoping to add to more to my collection once I find some more frames I like.

And here is my jewelry frame that I have been wanting to make for a few years.
I am glad that I waited until I painted my bathroom.

And just because they are so stinken' cute,
here is picture of my baby girls.

Susie shows off

Susie wanted to celebrated in her birthday suit. while standing on her chair at the restraunt she pulled down her pants ( she kept her panties on, thankfully) then pulled up her shirt.  When I turned and saw her I was slightly shocked and might have said "Susan!" Rather loudly, which made a few heads turn that might not have seen her otherwise. What a girl, I don't know what I am going to do with her.

Susies cake

Susie asked for pink and a panda bear. This what I gave her.

Susie is 3!!!!

Can some one tell me where the last 3 years went?

To funny not to share

Found this on face book and had to share it. Made me laugh so hard.

Sick girls

Rebekah was up last night throwing up. And now susie fell asleep on the couch with a fever of 101.2. Oh, the joys of motherhood.

Fun with photo shop

I have been having fun playing with different effects on photo shop.

we tried

We tried to take some family pictures in Sunday. Ha, why?! We made a good attempt and with some photo shop I got something that is OK.

Before photoshop(keep an eye on carter and anna)

and after

Its not great but it will do until I can afford something better. I don't like studios and privet people are soooo expensive.

1st day of school

Summer 2011

Here is my long awaited summer post. Enjoy, we did!

We started our summer trips with a trip to Banks, OR for the blessing of our nephew Eli.

Rebekah loved the hotel beds, but she also fell off twice.

Then we drove south to my parents house in Stockton, CA.

We got to my parents house on the Forth of July. We did some swimming.....

...and some fire works

Doing sparklers

and pop-its

My sister and the kids watching the fireworks

We took a day trip to San Fancisco. This is all we saw of the Golden Gate bridge.

We toured all the old boats

And of course lunch at Fishermans Wharf

We went on the Duck Tours. If you haven't heard of them before it is and amphibious bus tour. They tour the city and then the water.

Before launching into the water we got the speil about water safty and how to use the life jackets. We didn't think we would actually use them. After we drove into the water we thought all was well and good until the captain jumped on the the hood of the bus and threw the anchor in, then jumped back into the bus and threw it into reverse. Nothing stopped use from hitting a pier. So on went the life jackets, the very dirty, never been used before life jackets. We sat there for about a half hour before they got us back on shore. So we missed the water part of the tour.

Gotta love this face!

We ended the day with some yummy icecream!

Anna and Hope watching the big screen

Bekah really became a water baby this summer.

Susie spent a lot of time like this
This year was my grandmas 89th birthday.
We all got together to celebrate

My Sisters family

My aunt Kimmy's family

My dad and my brothers family

My Dad and two of his 4 sister

our family

All the great grandchildren

I helped the youth in our ward get ready for the pioneer trek.
We didn't go maybe next time.

Peter's dad got married

Some of the peaches from our tree. I spent hours peeling and cutting only to end up with 4 jars of OK looking peaches and a very sticky kitchen.
Never again!!

Cousin swap
We did a little child swapping this summer. We left Carter with Peters brother and took their eldest daughter Katie for a few days. The girls had a blast!

I love this girl and her toothy grin

Speaking of toothy grins
Anna is missing a few teeth and more are getting ready to fall out.
I love Spaghetti face!!

I went to 2 weddings and 2 receptions this summer
a total of 4 couples entering wedded bliss

This is my high school friend Amy and her new hubby
I am so happy for her.

Rebekahs First birthday Cake
For her birthday she had some chocolate chips

Anna and Carter where camping with my parents . So I only had Susie and Rebekah
for a few days. On Bekahs birthday Peter had to go to Idaho so I took the girls and joined the rest of the family camping. We celebrated up there.

Rebekahs birthday balloon pitMy cousin made this great cage or play-pin for the kids
so they where not in the dirt all the time.

I didn't let her dig into her cake on her birthday because we were
camping so we had some cake when we got home.
She did amazingly well and ate almost the whole piece of cake we gave her.

A bathing beauty.

We had a very busy but great summer full of adventure, friends, family and travel. All in all we did about 66 hours of driving. And as fun as it was I am so happy to be home with no plans to travel in the near future.

Now that my summer post is done maybe I can get to more recent things.