Life

The past weeks have been packed full of work, pneumonia (JD), sinusitis (JD), a nasty cold (Q), sap boiling, wrestling (Z), horseback riding & a birthday (R), a George Strait concert (me), and diy projects.  Today is good.  JD is with Zeke at a wrestling tournament, Quin is napping, and Ryley is at a friend's house.  I've been trying to get the house into a presentable state for our company tonight.

We didn't get a lot accomplished while JD was sick- we were all in survival mode.  I'm so thankful that he's healthy now!

We tapped nine trees behind our house and spent several evenings boiling small quantities of it down.  We boiled a few gallons at a time and ended up with almost a gallon of pure Vermont maple syrup.  We set up a turkey fryer connected to a propane tank and did the boiling in the garage.  Most of the batches were finished off in the kitchen where we kept a closer eye on it.  It's delicious!

I finally finished redoing the hutch that we bought in the spring.  I'll post pics once we finish the new baseboard behind it so that I can put "stuff" on the shelves.  I can't wait to open up the Crate & Barrel boxes full of new white dishes that have been serving as a nightstand by our bed since Christmas!

We had 8 girls over for Ryley's birthday.  It went pretty well with only a little 3rd-4th grade girl drama. I didn't get very creative with her cake this year, but we did have horse-shaped brownies with our ice-cream sundaes.

Notice Quin bobbing around back there.

Zeke has enjoyed wrestling.  His first tournament was last Saturday.  It was local, so JD took him, and then later in the day, I went with Quin.  After about an hour, Quin was ready to leave, so JD took him home and I stayed for the rest of the tournament.  Zeke had 4 matches and won 2 of them.  He ended up getting third place in his weight class for K-2 kids and was pretty happy about the medal he received!

In between matches- one of Zeke's teammates kept saying, "He looks just like you!"

Quin is definitely keeping us on our toes.  He is a stubborn little dude for sure.  In the picture below, he is trying to get his coat down to go back outside.  He had gone outside with his boots, a diaper, and his coat, and was seriously ticked when I brought him inside.

He's not sleeping in his crib any longer, but isn't exactly sleeping in his bed either.  One of us lays down with him at bed time and he falls asleep pretty quickly in his bed.  At some point during the night, he ends up in our bed- sometimes between us, sometimes at our feet, sometimes on the edge of the bed.  He has also been known to climb in Ryley's bed, play with the dog, or play with his trains during the night...

We started staining boards for baseboard, and then decided to replace the trim around the doors as well, which lead to replacing at least one door casing.  The sad thing is that our house isn't even five years old, but due to inferior materials, we'll be replacing things slowly for quite a while.  

Quin's on his way down the stairs; that's my cue (Q) to get off the computer!