May, where did you go?

Because all that we ever seem to be doing lately is going to the pool, May flew by.

I am officially a swim mom, I think a title that is much more involved than a soccer mom.  At least compared to my past days as a soccer mom.
Swimming takes up every available evening that we have.  Not that we are complaining, we are thrilled that Bayli has found something that she LOVES and is pretty good at.
And Chase is finally starting to love it as well.  Although we tease that he will be a Clown Fish forever (the lowest level).  But at least he is willing to do most of what the teacher asks without screaming. 

Bayli's first few weeks of swim team were...terrible.  She was pretty much an emotional wreck up until she had actually swam a few laps.  She would cry through warm ups and be uneasy about getting into the pool.  She is a nervous Nelly that expects herself to do the very best the first time.

After being her shoulder/leg to cry on, we finally came to a pretty good turn.  We just had to explain that every kid is nervous to start something new, you are here to learn not do things perfectly the first or 100th time, your coach is there to help you so ask all of the questions that you need to, and you are going to make lots of new friends.
Seriously as soon as she starts swimming, she calms down and is fine.  With a bit of bribing, Jed was even able to get her to sign up for her first swim meet.  June 22nd is coming up pretty fast.

I did the Red Rock Relay in Moab with some of my girlfriends.  Seriously, it was so hard. 70 miles of Moab awesomeness.  We were all pretty proud of ourselves.  We did a lot better than we thought that we would.  I was runner #1, so I had a difficult time sleeping the night before.  Not to mention the fact that I was battling a cold.  My first leg was nearly 8 miles.  I knew right when I hit 5.5 miles, my IT bands started getting twingy.  Even with all of my rehabbing, I have only maxed at 6 miles.  But my PT drilled it into my head, don't go past that point or you will give yourself some serious setbacks.  But in a race, you just keep going and run through the pain.  So I kept a reasonable pace, knowing that I had another 3 miler later in the day and it was steep.  Otherwise, I would have pushed my pace and tried for a better time.  I averaged about a 10:30 min/mile on my first leg. Then I puked and peed my pants because running is so fun...Rock on!!! 
My second leg was insane.  3 miles, 6500 Feet elevation with a 1000 feet increase.  Nuts I tell you.  I never saw a single runner run that entire leg.  It felt SOOO long.  And my knees were in so much pain, every step hurt, no matter how I would change up my form.  Even walking hurt, which I did the most of on this leg.  Oh, and it was so dang hot!  If it wasn't for my team mates, I wouldn't have been able to keep going.  I love my Mother Truckers, no girl could ask for better friends. 
We finished about middle of the pack with an overall time of 11 hrs 45 min with 10:50 min/mile average. 

Chase finished off his first year of preschool.  We have loved his teacher Miss Karen.  She picked up on his personality pretty quickly, and figured out how to deal with his grumpiness as well.

I have some new additions to my yard, that my cute little neighbor gave me last year.  Only 4 of about 25 iris' bloomed this year, so next year will be an even bigger surprise I am sure. 

This little cutie is one that my very own plants, with the help of the pollinators, produced on their own.  It looks like a hybrid of my purple and someones white Japanese iris. 

Took advantage of the opportunity to use my bug lens to check out this guy, so glad that Jed knows how much I love bugs and plants!  I have loved the new lens. 

I used it to check out the tiny blooms on my smoke bush as well, lovely.

We have been so couped up lately, that any little or big excuse to get out in the yard is snatched up quickly.  I call our illness basement-finish-itis.  A seemingly never ending project that is making us ill.  Hey, but we are painting.

Last week, Jed came up with a couple of BIG excuses for us to not work on the basement one evening.  Of course it was on a swimming night, meaning that we aren't home until nearly 6:30 and the kids are starving.  Not to mention the fact that Jed had just been diagnosed with a pretty serious sinus infection that had been plaguing him for about two weeks (he was not functioning on his normal brain level, I don't think that he would have undertaken this task if he had been, at least not that night).  At least he has a wonderful brother that answers the call.

He brought home four trees, three of which were replacements for my Blue Atlas Cedars (RIP you lovelies in Arbor Heaven, they hadn't fared well since the blasted freeze of Fall 2010).  As much as we LOVE the cedars, we knew that our location was just not meant to be, so Jed looked to his buddy for some better ideas.  He came up with Norwegian Spruces.
My nearly 103 year old Grandma is Norwegian, so they must be a good tree.  Of course we did a bit of hasty research just to make sure, then pulled the trigger.  We treat every plant in our yard like a marriage.  We have to love nearly everything about it, and commit to it.  That is probably why we are so passionate about every plant in our yard, they each make up a piece of our "marriage"  and commitment to our yard, the extension of us.
He also brought home another London Plain Tree, the one by our playground is looking a bit on the ill side.  So we decided to get it a friend just in case it decides to kill over.  We had ordered a 2 inch caliper tree.  It ended up being  a 3.5, which in tree language is ginormous.  The root ball alone was over a yard wide.  It was quite the undertaking.  I wish that I had taken a few pics of that beast before it got into the ground.
A few days later we also added an Autumn Blaze Maple to a spot we have been holding for just the right tree in our front yard.  This Maple is a cross between the Silver Maple, which does terrible in Utah, and good traits from the Red Maple.  We are hoping for success with this one.  Everything that I have read about it sounds pretty good.  And the fall color will be beautiful.  Hopefully it does better than other Maples!

The ginormous tree that better never die dang it. 

One of the Norwegian Spruces.

  Bayli's spark for bird watching has been spreading to the rest of the household.  She has got me on a pretty steady process of adding things to our yard to attract new birds and attempting to identify them.  Our latest little friends who have been frequenting our hummingbird feeder and who we are faithfully putting out oranges for are our Bullock's Orioles.  Not being a huge birder, I would guess that this is a pretty rare treat.  Everyone is in love with them, I wish they visited more often. 

We have also been loving the Say's Phoebe that squawks at us every evening and the other visitors we have spied just a few times, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Western Kingbird, and the family of Goldfinches. 

chickens. or as my husband refers, peckers.

After years of proclaiming his love and desire to have chickens, Jed's dream FINALLY came true.  I finally gave him the go ahead to get some, and let me say that he jumped on that boat FAST.  He must have been pretty worried that I might change my mind.
I gave him some limitations on the birds.  They had to be as far back in the yard as possible.  They are HIS birds, he feeds, waters, and cleans up after them.  And, they are to never run free poop in my backyard or they will be made into soup.  I totally sound like a mom. He has kept his end of the bargain (I have only fed them a few times).

Jed chose out his birds back at the beginning of April.  He picked out an Orpington (the yellow), 2 Rhode Island Reds (obviously the little red ones), a Barred Rock (my favorite), and 2 Black Sex-linked.  Although he asked for hens, we think that the Orpington just might be a rooster, we shall see.

The cute chicks, only a few days old when they came to live in our basement.  I am very glad that it no longer smells like a barn down there.

He borrowed his dad's brooder (box/crate with warming lights).  And he began his hunt for the perfect coop. Of course, he couldn't find the perfect coop to purchase.  Either they were too expensive, or they were made poorly.  So, he began accumulating plans and pictures of coops that he liked and began the process of building one himself.

He began building the coop, in the basement shop.  His tools were all right there, and the weather has been less than cooperative over the last few months. 

And during the building process, he kept getting inquiries from me.  They pretty much entailed, "how in the heck do you plan on getting this out the back garage, turn the corner, go up the hill, turn the other corner, go across the grass, and make it to the back of the garden?"  He got pretty annoyed by these inquiries.  But on my behalf, it was completely a legitimate question.  And, I wasn't the only one asking.

So, on "moving" day, this was his plan of attack:

And let me say, it was a little bit intense.  Not to mention, my blood pressure was boiling as I watched my paint job mess up (I did contribute to the coop a bit-have I mentioned how much I despise painting?  Hey, I have to get my share of the eggs somehow.)

I think I was the most scared at this moment.  Turning that corner is crazy even without a little house on the front loader.

Poor little house needed a few touch ups when the job was complete.  Thank goodness Jed did the touch up paint, I think he might have gotten the hint that I was completely DONE painting.

From this point, on the edge of the grass, I was very interested to see how he planned to get it the rest of the way without the tractor.  He wasn't about to mess up the back lawn and garden.  This is where we definitely are missing a big piece of the move.  Just imagine the house up on stilts with long boards connecting them and 4-5ish strapping young to middle aged men packing it.  I don't know that our neighbors will ever answer the phone when Jed calls again.

Cute little coop, finally complete.  After he got the house back there, he had to patch it up, shingle it, and complete the run/yard.  He was pretty excited when the project was complete.

The nests are inside this door, easy access to the eggs once the hens start laying.

Our mystery Orpington.  Boy or Girl??? We are kind of hoping for a boy at this point.  One rooster would complete the bunch.  He can compete with all of the blankety-blank dogs in our vicinity.

The Orpington and Barred Rock (the black and white speckled one) are the most interested in us.

I will say, that they have grown on me.  But, I still will not include them in my chores. 

Little biddies better be good layers or we'll be having chicken soup!

mad scientist meets carpenter

we started with this

for a long time it looked like this

now it looks like this

Jed's Grandma Atherley (aka Nonna), gave us this table when we moved into our home.  It was one of her old tables.  It was something that we would never have picked out, but hey, it was a table and we were house broke so it worked.  It was your typical 1970s/80s oak table with lovely spindle legs and floral designs etched in the chairs.
Over the years we have looked for a new table, but never found anything that completely met our needs.  Sure we found things that we liked, but they were usually way too pricey, made out of cheap wood, and not very well built.  We also were hesitant to buy another table because as much as Grandma would tell us that she didn't mind if we ever got a new table, she always commented about her table whenever she came for a visit.
So with all of our dilemmas, Jed decided to build a table.  We went back and forth on what we wanted, with many disputes might I add.  Also, we knew that it was still going to cost us a pretty penny, because that is always how things go for us.
Then, Jed decided to check out Grandma's table and see if it were salvageable (by this point the legs were getting pretty wobbly and the chairs had all but fallen apart).
He invested in a few additions to his wood shop (aka the man cave)  he didn't complain about those purchases one bit.  And took to disassembling and stripping the table.  When he sanded down the tabletop, we were delighted to see that the wood was in pretty good shape, and it was solid oak.  Not our favorite type of wood, but yay for durability.   We weren't too worried about the type of wood, we had a plan to improve upon it.
We purchased some new wood for the legs and sides, the only really big dent to the pocket book.  And even that wasn't too bad all things considered.
Jed began cutting and rebuilding the old table top.  He cut off the rounded ends.  We were looking for a style that was more contemporary with a hint of country/rustic.  So pretty much like everything we like, it needed a Pottery Barn feel.
Our home has so much wood tones to it, especially in the great room.  The floor, the cabinets, and our couches are all tones of brown.  We knew that we were going to have to darken up the table to give us the look and feel that we wanted.
But, we didn't want to go for straight black.  We wanted the feel of a dark walnut stain, nearly black but with a lot of brown undertones.  We test stained multiple options and combinations.  But we weren't getting quite what we wanted.  Jed researched a bit on different staining techniques for oak and came across a very strange solution.  But honestly, the coolest of all.  And, a great talking piece.  You take a form of iron, mix it with vinegar to break it down and cause it to rust and oxidize, then wipe the liquid on the wood.  Apparently the tannins (compounds that bind to and precipitate proteins and various other organic compounds) in oak are unique in that they will react with the iron and turn darker, even different colors.  It is often referred to as Iron Oak, at least in the wood staining bizz.  It is totally us because we both go nuts over natural and unique methods, not to mention chemical reactions make us giddy.
In order to get the right combination, we were forced to make a testing area.  Pretty much our kitchen looked like a lab gone mad with how much fun we were having setting up different experiments. 
We decided on a combination of steel wool and vinegar. 
As fun as this all was, and even after all of our testing, we were super nervous to actually apply the mix onto the freshly completed table.

applying the mix to create Iron Oak

We had tried out other finishes on top of the iron oak to get the finished look.  Just applying the iron made the wood have a grayish look which got a little bit darker once you applied the poly finish coats.  But that wasn't quite what we wanted, it wasn't dark enough.  So we tried out other stains over the top of the iron.  We tried dark walnut, but that didn't get us the look we wanted, so we ended up with ebony.
A billion coats of poly later, and voila it was done.  Jed was seriously going crazy when I kept saying the phrase "you need another coat of poly."  For those who aren't privileged enough to have Cars playing in the background of your home, you may not appreciate that as much.

the finished product

Now, if we could only find some chairs.  And no, Jed will not be making those.  Unless he learns how to weave wicker or rattan.  In the meantime our Lifetime chairs will have to do.

a masterpiece fit for a princess

Presenting.....

The Cutest Desk in the world!

Yes, my amazing husband built that.  

Isn't it darling?!!!

He put a lot of love and detail into it.

But kept it simple at the same time.

Bayli is super stoked about her new addition.  
Not only does it give her the opportunity to create with very little interruption, 
it makes a great base for a castle.