August is Here!

The first weekend of August we camped up Payson Canyon with our friends, the Porters.  The boys had a blast and it was good for them to get out into nature!  We went to Payson Lakes and Easton was a crazy swimmer.  He was the only one in the water and he desperately wanted to swim across the whole lake, but we discouraged that since we weren't going in after him!

 The Jensens and Gordons joined us for dinner and campfire chatting.  It was so fun to catch up!

 The 6 boys loved to play together!  Between Tyson and his little group of friends there are only boys!  I think there's something in the water in Payson!

Callan could have been happy for days as long as he had his shovel.

That weekend we also celebrated our sixth anniversary.  Time flies when you're having fun!

Kitchen Nightmares

I once had this crazy idea to paint the cabinets white.  It was awful.  I don't recommend it to anyone.  It took FORever and was absolutely no fun.  Tyson was right.  There was really nothing wrong with our cabinets in the first place...

I started the project in March. I bought a Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations kit and did the bottom drawers and cabinets along with the bottom of the table that I was refinishing.  It took forever.  It didn't cover well.  I wasn't a huge fan, but it looked fine.

Then I took a 4 month break.  I needed one after the bottom half.  For the top I decided to try regular paint and see if it covered any better.  If so, I would take advantage of the 100% satisfaction garauntee on the Rustoleum kit.  It did cover better, but the yellow oak stain came through the paint even after sanding.  We started over using a stain-blocking primer called Gripper and it looked great.  We were spraying so we had the entire kitchen taped and tarped.  Highly inconvenient.  We were so excited to be done with it.  We sprayed a top coat of polyurethane and took off all the tape and plastic.

 The next morning we woke up to find all the cabinets had turned yellow.  Not manageable antique-looking yellow-- awful, drippy, nasty yellow.  Apparently polyurethane has this effect.  Nice if I would have researched that before hand.

So we started over once again.  We sanded them down and started from square one, this time finishing with lacquer.  The lacquer was much better although there was some very slight yellowing.  These boys were troopers while mom and dad spent weeks being angry over this stupid project.

 We had the cabinet doors out in the garage where Tyson was working on them.  The sprayer attachment broke so he decided to brush on the lacquer, but brushed it on too thick so the doors yellowed really bad.  So we started over on those!  This time we used polycrylic and found that to be the best choice in top coats for this particular project.

And now they're done.  Overall, it sucked.  Don't do it.  Even if Pinterest tells you you can, you can't.  If I had to do it over again, I would save my money and get new cabinets!  But if you're not going to listen to me, at least don't do white.  Do grey, or black, or stain, or anything that won't turn into a yellow mess!

Pioneer Day

The week before Pioneer Day we visited the church history museum with the Cook family and Anderson cousins for FHE.  The kids love it there!  If we lived closer I would probably go all the time.  They enjoyed learning about the pioneers and climbing into the bunk beds of the pioneers' ship.  Callan was really confused about the whole thing.  He kept referring to the pioneers as Nephites and the oxen as yaks.  It was actually dang funny.

 The next week for FHE we acted out putting things in our red wagon and traveling around the sidewalk pulling all of our stuff.  At that point Callan was calling the pioneers the missionaries.  So confusing for the poor little guy!

We went to the annual ward pioneer breakfast.  The kids played tug of war and sang primary songs to earn pennies to barter at the store.

That week we also went to the Spanish Fork Rodeo.  We stopped at the carnival for a few minutes before the rodeo and found Grandma, Amanda, and Crew!  Small world!  Having Crew made it a lot more fun for the boys!

 The rodeo was HOT and LONG!!!  Maybe won't be doing that again for a while...

 The boys loved it and Callan is still saying, "mom.  remember that bull? It had poop on his butt.  And it was green."  And they laugh and laugh.  Boys.

On actual Pioneer Day we celebrated Uncle Trace's birthday.  Katelin threw him a party at Soccer City and everyone had a great time!