update: this week

I haven't blogged in a little while. I feel like I have been very busy but I really don't think I have. Last week we started potty training. The first day I sat him on the toilet and no deal 5 times and he didn't seem to know what was going on. The second day we had success and now he hasn't had any accidents and goes every time I put him on the toilet. Its funny to me how excited I get whenever he goes. I guess I am just happy I am one step closer to no bubba diapers. Its been a funny experience. We got him a football toilet seat that fits in the regular one and a jar of skittles that sit in the bathroom (I started with Easter egg malts but Daniel finished them off the first day). Alexander is doing great there.

Eva wants to eat everything, well that's not true only everything we are eating. If she sees I am giving her something different than what we are all eating she will throw it down and wait for the good stuff. We have been teaching Alexander to share the toys with Eva because she loves cars just as much as he does so he is getting better. The only problem is that he doesn't understand not to share food with her. He gives her candy and everything.
She loves him and wishes she could follow him around all day getting his treats. I got her her first set of sippy cups today (I don't know why I have taken so long with solids and sippy cups with her, its like I forgot when I was supposed to do it). I just put bottled water in it and she doesn't quite get it but I am sure she will be sucking it down by tomorrow morning. Alexander got jealous so he has digressed to the sippy cup also and is even willing to drink water out of it like Eva.

I took this picture to show that the little kitchen table I had been working on is finished. We found the chairs at a garage sale to go with it. I need a picture to put up above it now. I am contemplating which picture to put there. The picture also shows Alexander drinking out of one of Eva's sippy cups.

Eva is rolling around like a ball these days. She is almost crawling. She cries and cries and stretches to reach for things sometimes it works and she pushes forward with her toes but she will usually just roll back and forth until she finally gets close enough to reach it (it usually takes 3 minutes of rolling back and forth)

Oh random note: On Saturday we went to an all day auction. It was a lot of fun. There was a dust storm in between though so it was rough in the end. I bought a box of 10 large random wooden frames for 3 dollars. My favorite purchase of the week. It also came with 5 prints which I plan on using around the house. I just need to clean and paint some of them and I will be set. Daniel bought an electric acoustic guitar for 35 dollars and I think he likes it. Who knows really. All in all it was a fun day.

I still have a huge furniture and now frames to do and finish list. I found a toy box at a thrift store that I am now refinishing. I am almost ready to paint my Ethan Allen chairs. It all keeps me busy in the days so I like it. Other wise I would realise I am in New Mexico and not know what to do.
That was our week oh and it rained which is the first time. It drizzled all day. Kind of like in Iceland it was even pretty cold.

I will take a picture of the dining room table and the finished chairs when they are in fact finished (hopefully in two days)

Bye for now

If you love dogs

I am posting a link to a story from a writer for ESPN.com that Daniel reads. He wrote a column about his dogs. It is really good but you might need a tissue. Hopefully the link works. Daniel says that Tina, Kathryn, and Jaxon Hoopes (if you read this blog) should read it. Ohh and Jenny and Meleofa should read it to.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090122

chair colors, help

We have decided to paint the chairs a blue color. First we were going to try to strip them and stain them but there is no way I have the patience this year to do that. Plus I would have to use some kind of chemical and I have yet to find one that I like. Then I was thinking they would look good white. But Daniel said he wants them exactly as they are except he wants them blue. I usually get the end decision in the furniture colors but the fact that Daniel was willing to steer away from his traditionalism when it comes to furniture was amazing so I immediately agreed. Thus we need to find a blue that will not date anytime soon. So I decided I want a cold blue lighter but with a grey tone rather than a green or white undertone. I need help. I think I have narrowed it down to these:



(left to right: top row yacht club, Newport blue
middle row winter lake, Bo29, waterscape
bottom row b030, shale Gray

I put the samples on the table that the chairs will be going with so that is what the wood looks like.



I need some opinions. What do you think?

sanding

I have been sanding none stop for days it seems and I am finally done with the three layer peach colored drop leaf table. I need to go over it one more time on certain parts with the finer paper but I think I will ask Daniel to do it because I am sick of sanding. We bought a stain last night. I still have a few little parts to hand sand but I am staining today if it kills me. We chose a stain called golden pecan and it should go on rather nicely. Here are some pictures

Thought provoking Questions (sort of)

I was facebooking today and I saw these on regina's notes and I thought they were funny so I decided to post them:

1. Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a race car not called a racist?

2. Why is the man who invests all your money called a 'broker'?

3. Do bald men wash their head with soap or shampoo?

4. What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

5. Why are the obituaries found in the "living" section of the newspaper?

6. Are one handed people offended when police tell them to put their hands up.

7. How can sweet and sour cause be sweet and sour at the same time?

8. I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks, so I wonder what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?

9. If Fed Ex and UPS were to merge, would they call it Fed UP?

10. What if you're in hell, and you're mad at someone, where do you tell them to go?

Our projects

We are working on some furniture again. We got a beautiful wooden pedestal round table and 4 chairs from craigslist. The chairs are nice and ethan allen but they are a green color and extremely distressed. (they painted them that way)



I don't like the color so we are going to paint them a gray blue color so we have been sanding quite a bit. We are almost done sanding them for painting purposes.



We are also redoing a small round drop leaf table that has 3 THICK layers of paint on it.


The last layer is peach and acrylic so it is bubbling up with the sander and difficult to get through. Here are the pictures of where we are right now. I think we are going to stain the drop leaf table. Its going in the kitchen. We will post a picture of them both when we are all done (It will hopefully only take 2 weeks. I work on these in my spare time and out in the yard with the kids in the day when its warm. They love it. Oh and one of the pictures is of the splinter Daniel got from sanding the drop leaf table. Its a bare bones table and gives huge splinters. I have already had 2 but they were tiny compared to this one.

bath time

Eva and Alexander had a bath last night so I recorded some of it.