We had a family reunion in Pinetop, AZ, and there were over 115 members of the family present. It was awesome, and there lots of great activities for everyone.
There was a fun little playground next to our cabin. The girls and their cousins had so much played there for hours.
We celebrated Shay Shay’s birthday. It was a lot of fun with everyone.
There were lots of games and crafts for all ages.
We went as a family down to Schnepf Farms to pick some peaches. It was a bunch of fun! We walked through the orchard looking for big and ripe peaches. When the girls found a peach they thought looked good, mom or dad would come by to check it out. Then the girls would pick it off the tree and add it to our box of peaches.
After we finished picking peaches, we sat down on some hay bales to enjoy some of the fruits of our labors. They tasted really, really good! We love peaches!
During spring break, we were invited by some friends to join them on a trip to the Salt River. We all had so much fun exploring and visiting with our friends.
One of the things we have wanted to do in preparation for the arrival of our new baby has been to enhance a few of the visual aspects of our homes interior. This involved completing a few projects.
Since we moved into our home in September, one of the things we had not done yet was to put our pictures on the walls. They have all been sitting nicely packed in a box in our garage. The biggest reason why we hadn’t put them on the wall (aside from the craziness of life) is that we were not sure where we wanted our furniture and future furniture to go. After living in our home for 6 months, we now have a better idea of where we want things to go, so the pictures can now go up.
One of the fun things Dayna decided to put together was a nice picture collage in our hallway. While it is still not completely finished (can you find the sideways picture?), it looks great and we look forward to putting the last few finishing touches on it.
Our computer and screen have been in our living room since moving in, but they have always stood atop some boxes of food storage (spaghetti and rolled oats to be exact). While this worked, it was a bit too mormon ghetto for our taste, so we began looking for some type of entertainment center.
We checked out Ikea, and there was one thing that might have worked but we didn’t necessarily love it and it was a bit more than we wanted to spend on this. Then, while Kent was cruising through DI, he saw the perfect cabinet. The only problems were 1) it was the wrong color (a light pine-ish finish) and 2) it had lots of deep scratches all across the top. All of which is fixable. So $15 later, we had a new entertainment cabinet and a much bigger project than we had envisioned.
We picked up mahogany stain and some varnish and started sanding. We sanded, and we sanded, and yes we sanded some more. Once we had sanded more than we thought was possible, we finally had something that was ready to stain. Unfortunately, we learned that stain accentuates any imperfections, so we had to go back to sanding. After much work, we were finally able to get the cabinet finished and it looks beautiful.
While it was a lot more work than we had planned on, it turned out great. It is perfect for our living room, and it was a great learning and work experience. (Note, in this picture, we still hadn’t replaced the nobs, but these now look much better.)
On New Years Eve, we decided to hike a new part of South Mountain in Phoenix. It was a beautiful day, a great hike, and a good way to close out a year.
Anna, Elise, and Kent were able to make it to the ridgeline and the top of a couple of the peaks.
