2011 Dance Festival

Last week our kids had their dance festival at the school. My parents were able to come watch it also. The kids all did great. The weather wasn't too bad either. Usually it's sweltering hot, but it's been kind of cold and rainy for May.

We used a new video camera for these. It's a little Xacti camera that records directly to an sdcard so it's tons easier to get the videos on the computer. It was pretty cheap on Woot a few weeks ago. Hopefully we will be able to upload more videos now that the process isn't so involved.

FHE at Trafalga

A week or so ago we saw a great deal at GroupOn for a year pass to Seven Peaks, the Trafalga parks, Orem Owlz baseball games, and Utah Flash basketball games. After a little deliberation, I ended up buying them and we picked our passes up at Seven Peaks yesterday. After we picked them up, we grabbed a cheap pizza and then went to Trafalga to ride the slick track go-karts and do some miniature golfing. The kids had a ball riding the go-karts. None of them had ridden them before. Valerie and Scarlett got to ride their own and the other two had to pair up with us. I got some fun pictures of Becky and the girls, but I didn't take any pictures of us boys since I was driving. We ended up playing golf in the indoor course because it was a little cold outside and our kids hadn't dressed for it. The indoor course is pretty cool since they have added all the black lights and neon paint.

Lost His First Tooth

Lost His First Tooth
Originally uploaded by mrklaw

Dante had a loose tooth yesterday and was completely beside himself with excitement. This morning he decided he couldn't wait for it to come out on its own and asked me to pull it out. It popped out pretty easily and he's been showing everyone.

Carving Pumpkins for Family Home Evening

We carved pumpkins for Family Home Evening this week. The kids each designed their own and I helped most of them scrape out the insides and I helped them carve when they needed it. They are (from left to right) a half happy half sad face (Ella), an eagle (Valerie), a kind of happy/scary face (Scarlett), and Luigi from the Nintendo games (Dante).

My latest project

I had been looking for chairs for the table we bought last October (from Ikea) ever since then. Well, I finally found some chairs. In July, we were yard sale shopping and I found a set of 4 chairs with an alder table all together. I didn't need the table, but thought I could refinish the top and maybe sell it or something (the top was really needing to be refinished, it was scratched, drawn on with permanent marker, etc...). I guess that the table grew on me, because now it is in our kitchen! First we sanded the top and re-stained it. Then I took a break from the table and painted the 4 chairs. We have been using the chairs for about a month. I finally decided to finish the table, so in the last 2 weeks, I have been priming, painting, and sealing the table legs. I finally finished, and now we have a fantastic new kitchen table! I'm so happy with how it turned out. The table is stained with a mahogany stain, and the chairs and legs of the table are painted green (obviously) with a glaze over to antique them. I love it. We forgot to take before pictures but the table top was only polyurethaned and the legs were red. The chairs had a natural wood seat, the rest painted red. They actually didn't look bad, but I liked the green better. It was a fun first refinishing project for me.

Memorial Day Fishing

Memorial day was pretty fun. The morning began with some homemade cinnamon rolls, then I took the kids fishing in Provo canyon (Valerie caught a trout), followed by grilling burgers and then some Carcassonne after the kids went to bed. Becky had fun with her mom who visited with us for a few days.

Cherry Hill Competes at Amateur DanceSport Competition