July is better

Where June was a month to get past as fast as possible and never look back, July has been just lovely. I could stay here for awhile. 4th of July was not just an awesome day but an awesome entire week. Aaron's birthday was the next week and we had a great time. This last week my brother came. July has treated us well.

Aaron is my big three year old now. That kid. He's fabulous. He's mischievous and determined. He is a problem solver. He uses whatever tools he can find to get what he wants done. He's obsessed with bums right now. Potty humor is his jam. He's a great little hiker. He loves to climb on anything. He is loud all the time. He carried the bug net the entire hike on the Appalachian Trail on Friday just because he wanted to catch bugs like his uncle. He has an innate handle on comedic timing. He got that from his dad and it's hilarious. He talks up a storm but he still has a bit of a baby voice so it's surprising sometimes what he comes up with. That mind of his is noticing everything and making a million connections a minute. He loves the color green and his Goonie stuffed animal and wearing his swimsuit and riding his scooter. He equally pesters and loves on his siblings. He's totally not above a cheap shot to the head and he's getting more and more into wrestling with Spencer, which Spencer both loves and hates. Aaron will snuggle up to me and be completely content. He still naps daily, though it means he is usually wired at bedtime. I prefer that to cranky from 5-8pm. This kid is just a treasure.












My brother came into town to visit us last week. He came all the way from Utah to do some bug collecting in Tennessee and was only going to be three hours from us, so he came that much further. We had a fabulous time, including staying up all night the night he arrived talking, taking him to our favorite local waterfall, and driving up to Tennessee to hike on the Appalachian Trail where he was searching for the bug he wanted. It was all great fun and I'm so glad he came.























Bill's mom sent the kids new swimsuits. They love them. They also fail miserably at taking pictures in them, lol.



And Chloe fails at taking a smiling picture in her cute new dress. 😊

Turning a corner

June was a month. Boy howdy was it a month. I got an IUD. It didn't agree with me. I'll leave out the details but it took the entire month to fix that and it was unpleasant in the extreme.

I started to get trigger thumb. I did a 12-day diminishing steroid treatment. That fixed it for the most part. Yay!

I got stung mowing my lawn. First time bee sting. I made it 34 years. Thankfully I'm not allergic. At least not in the anaphylactic shock sort of way. But I have a beastly local reaction. Then I got stung the next week I mowed. Then the week after that I got four stings. Turns out we had at least two yellow jacket nests in holes in that area of the yard. They've now been gassed. Hopefully that fixes the problem. I took another three-day round of steroids to help with that. Today was the last day.

I finally got the hospital bill for my kidney stone surgery back in January. It was for $2,000, bringing the total for that little medical surprise that happened the day before my anniversary and four days before my birthday up to $3,000. Weee!!!!

Chloe got a cold and passed it right along to me a few days later. I'm now on day ten of it and it's finally winding down. Hers turned into a middle ear infection so she has ear drops and amoxicillin for it. And Spencer needed drops for a similar infection earlier in June, then Genevieve got an inner ear infection mid June. Aaron hasn't gotten the memo thankfully.

So yeah, June was a beast! This year has been a beast. Who am I kidding? 2017 is only halfway done and it is already going to go down in history as my worst health year ever.

But never fear. July is looking up. My brother is coming to visit. I am nearly back to full health. I started running and biking and yoga back in earnest about ten days ago in the midst of all the health disasters in some sense as a reaction to handle all the crazy and I have crazy amounts of energy coming back. I love how exercise does that for a person. There's something magical about the self-discipline a quality exercise routine brings to life. It seems to beget more energy and more can do attitude. Maybe, just maybe I'll be able to kick the last 10-15 lbs of baby weight from Chloe. But even if not, I feel better already and that is enough for now.

And this has been a fabulous week. We took our kids to their first fireworks show the 3rd of July. Clemson sure knows how to throw a good party. The festival beforehand was the perfect amount of fun for us. The fireworks were amazing.

Yesterday we went to our friends' annual 4th of July pool party. We've gone every year since we moved to South Carolina. Every year has been fun, but this was by far the best because my three biggest put their vests on and I didn't have to worry a bit about their imminent death by drowning. Hahaha! I just put Chloe in a baby floatie thing and she was happy as can be. Both Bill and I got a chance to sit and shoot the breeze with friends. That has never happened before. We always have a good time at this party but leave feeling totally worked over making sure our kids didn't die.

Then last night we hosted some friends over to another bbq and roasted marshmallows and our kids ran wild and we ate good food and it was just lovely. I had to run to the store to get some paper plates and plasticware because I really don't know when the last time was we had friends over. I love hosting parties but my heavens, the first year with a new baby is a total black hole and we haven't done anything lately. It was so nice to do that again.

Today I took my kids to their first ever movie in a real theater. Our local place does free movies every week and this week it was Kung Fu Panda 3, which my kids have seen and love so I knew it'd be a home run. They loved it, of course. Chloe even fell asleep on me so I was able to watch too without wrangling the one year-old who isn't even remotely interested in watching a movie. My kids laugh so loud. Haha! Especially Genevieve. I hope she never loses her amazing cackle of a laugh.

After last month and let's be honest, this whole year, I feel like something has changed. Chloe is walking. That's a huge deal. That's when the new baby black hole ends for me. I still carry her a lot, but I don't have to. She can follow along and it only gets better from here. It's like I can breathe again and that feels really good.

Aaron turns three on Monday! Time to party for him! We have four summer birthdays we get to celebrate and it's so fun.

It's crazy but we only have six weeks of summer left. And this week has been so fun already. I want more of that in the next six weeks and I think this newfound sense of energy will help make that happen. So goodbye health problems and colds and stress. Hello enjoying the rest of summer. Maybe we'll make it down to the beach. We'll certainly do lots of hiking. It's going to be great.

One More Piano Post

This is kind of the project that will never end, but the wheels finally came in the mail on Saturday and Bill and I put them on the piano last night. It involved him lifting a side up, me sliding a cinder block under it to hold it up, then laying all over the floor in the dustiness attaching wheels to the underside. It was not my favorite part of the process but they sure look good on. Though of course, in the spirit of never being done, we checked to see if it was level when we were done and it is on the long side but the front wheels are a bit shorter than the back, so it slopes forward about a quarter of an inch. Garrr! So I'll be making a little block to lift that up, and repeating the process another day to fix that problem. But not today. And it's not that bad. So it will keep until I'm ready to finish that last bit.

Things of interest this week

Spencer gave a talk in primary today. I may have teared up listening to my eldest read his whole talk with naught but three or four words he needed his dad's help to read. Learning to read has been one of my favorite milestones to day in my kids' lives.

It took me 34 years but I finally got stung by a bee, probably a wasp, yesterday while mowing the lawn. I didn't realize what it was until today. I thought I had gotten hit by a piece of wood kicked out by the mower, but it felt like a needle hit my ankle. There was no stinger so it didn't occur to me until this morning when it was all red and puffy and obviously a small allergic reaction. Thankfully it turns out I'm not deathly allergic to bee stings. Check that type of dying off my list. 😁

We took the kids to the lake yesterday afternoon. They loved it, of course. Chloe was delighted to float around in a little baby inner tube. We came home dyed red from the clay soil. Thankfully it washed out because our poor swimsuits were pretty worked over before I washed them. 

Friday I took the kids hiking at one of their favorite train tunnels nearby, and then blew their minds by taking them to a waterfall they didn't know is in the same place. They blew my mind at how capable they were at climbing mountains. Aaron especially. Spencer led out and did a fantastic job leading. Aaron was ultra confident, but smart about it. He's not quite three, so he's still pretty short. Whenever he couldn't reach going down the steep slope to the waterfall he just turned around and slid down holding whatever handy root he found. That's not a skill that always comes natural to kids. I was impressed. We'll be doing more hiking this summer. They loved it. 

Chloe has decided she's a full time walker as of this week. She's adorably slow and looks like a pint-sized frail old lady walking, which is adorable beyond reason, but she walks as often as she can. She'll still crawl if she's not certain of the footing, but she's doing it less every day. 

I just finished making my own face cream. Not oil with just a blend of oils, but genuine lotion with a water and oil blend and a preservative and all sorts of fun powders. I haven't put it on my face yet but the little bit I put on my hand mid process feels amazing. 

Bill and I went on a real live date Friday night! I think that would be a first for 2017. It's been a rough year folks. Our anniversary and my birthday were overshadowed by my kidney stone surgery. But our good friend came over after our kids were in bed and we spent a quality couple or three hours away from home just the two of us. It was heavenly. And we took this picture. Obviously we had a great time. Haha!

The piano

Settle in friends. It's a bit of a story.

This story really starts 8.5 years ago when Bill and I got married on a Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend because we didn't want to wait until summer and we didn't have time to go on more than a couple days of honeymoon.

We watched a bunch of presentations for things we didn't really want to buy and got loads of free gifts. One of them was a hotel stay in Cancun for a few days. We made all these amazing plans and got to the airport the morning of the trip only to find that my name didn't match on my plane ticket and passport due to married name change and Delta wouldn't fix it. I can't even tell you how irate I was. I haven't flown with them since. We missed the trip. It was awful.

However, it did set me up to get a piano later that year when I got called as a choir pianist. We picked up this little number for the price of our refunded tickets and it's served us well for years. It's a nice little digital piano that is good enough to enjoy playing on but not so nice that I would want it forever.

I haven't been actively looking for a piano, but then again, if one were to fall into my lap, I'm all over that. Wait, what? A piano could fall into your lap? Why yes, yes it can!



Behold, the first picture of the piano that fell into my lap.



My friend had the good fortune of having her parents give her their piano and she offered hers up for free on the ward Facebook page. I jumped on that faster than I've done anything lately, lol.



The piano came to me black with this black/white bench. There was a section on the side that had peeled off and while the piano had looked lovely in my friend's living room, I wasn't in love with the flat black color in my house. I picked at that spot a bit and was shocked to find it peeled off in huge chunks. Shocked, but super excited. See, I already have experience refinishing furniture, and I immediately started dreaming of how I could make it look.



Turns out not all the paint came off so easy. It took many, many hours to get the black off. The underside of the black was yellow against the wood, which is really odd. That took ages to get off in some places.



Once I had scraped off as much as I could I got down to the business of stripping. I typically use an orange stripper solution to begin with and then an acetone/paint stripper blend and steel wool to get down to the raw wood. I decided to skip the orange stuff at first and went straight to the blend with steel wool. I got about this far, the leg and a bit of the side and changed my mind. It was backbreaking work scrubbing that stain off.



This is what it looked like with the orange stuff on it. You put it on, leave it for a few hours, then scrape it off and the varnish mostly comes off with it.







The legs ended up getting double duty on the stripping and were way whiter than the rest.




I was so excited with how well it was going I jumped right into staining. I had a red oak color I started with but I wanted it more red, so I did a second coat of red mahogany. I was happy with the color and went on with my first coat of tung oil finish. That's my favorite clear finish for most furniture I redo. But refinishing furniture disaster struck! Turns out the red mahogany was the end of the can and a bit thicker than it ought to be. When I put the tung oil on it, it smeared the stain all around and left it looking patchy. I was heartbroken. I don't even know how many hours I'd put in thus far. Weeks and weeks of work interspersed with my normal crazy schedule. These pictures don't do it justice, but itreally was kind of splotchy. I stopped work for a day or two and just looked at the piano because I really wanted to finish, but I wanted to love the result too.





And eventually I decided that I really did love this piano and this wasn't a temporary piece. When we first opened it up we discovered it was a Baldwin, built sometime during the 1970s. It has a lovely sound and is solidly built. Once I had stripped it I was surprised and pleased how little damage it had. I didn't have to patch anything. The corners are a bit worn in places, but I like the charm it adds. So I figured if I wanted to keep it forever there was no reason to rush this process and regret it for years.



Thankfully the stripping went way faster the second time. I was able to make sure it was even and ready to stain. Once I finished the whole stripping process I actually left the main piano alone for a few more days because I didn't want to risk messing the finish up again. It had its own beauty with all the previous stain and paint removed.




I did go ahead and remove the foot board, the lid, and the piano bench cover and carefully stained them outside in my carport. They each took the color a little different, but I love all of them. They're so gorgeous.



I learned a lot about the staining/finishing doing those parts separately. I've done lots of re-staining projects but it's been a couple years since I'd last tackled one. I relearned some tricks of the trade and finally got the courage up to tackle the full piano.



This time it went so much better. I made sure the stain didn't get too thick. I didn't rub the finish in too much and make the stain streaky again. I was patient. I had to wait 12 hours in between each clear coat. I actually waited 24 hours.



This is actually the backside of a piece of wood that holds the keys in place. That green felt replaced some old gunky red felt that had soaked up some of the stripping solution. I removed all of the keys early in the process after accidentally gooping them up with stripper solution and that made things more accessible.



It took me five days to put six coats of clear on top of the two coats of stain. I reassembled everything yesterday. I picked up some pretty knobs for the lid. The only thing left is to get some wheels. I have a set I thought would work, but on further thought they're not heavy duty enough. Otherwise it's done. I vacuumed out all the dust and grit, and this baby is beautiful, it sounds nice, and it's clean. I checked my pictures to see when the whole process started. April 22nd. Wow! Six weeks of work for this beauty! It was worth every day of that time. I have never been more proud of a piece I've created. It's the most satisfying thing I've done in years.