Joshua graduated yesterday! He is such an awesome brother and we are quite proud of him. Wow it has been so long since I’ve been to a High School grad… it definitely brought back a lot of memories for Air and I of our own graduations so long ago now. That was a big turning point in life. I'm really excited to see where Josh goes from here.
Here are some shots from the night:
There he goes.... off into his future.
Congratulations for making it this far Josh. You are a pretty great guy! We love you!
I've been kinda sad lately. Air and I received new callings on Sunday (Father’s Day). Callings that seem to be a bit less convenient than the ones we've been enjoying for the past while.
The sad part is that I’m leaving Young Women’s—I’m going to miss it so much! I just love the youth in my ward and the leaders I was working with. But here it is. Once again I am being stretched outside of my comfort zone onto uncharted plains. Primary.
Air was called as the 2nd Counselor in Young Men's and I’m the 2nd Counselor in Primary.
Speaking of the word "stretched"... I never knew how often that word would be on my mind while I've been pregnant. I constantly feel my body being stretched. Further and further out than I ever thought was possible. But somehow it always is possible. I think there’s a lesson in this. It tells me that I am capable of much more than I would have imagined. The more I'm stretched, the more I realize just how much I can do. And the better I become because of it. This new calling will be good for me. Life isn’t meant to be convenient all the time, I need to be stretched now and then.
***************
Anyway, here are some iphone photos from our Father’s Day! It was, after all, a very good day.
"This moment is special", I thought as I was rolling paint onto a wall for the fourth day in a row. Row by row, up and down, left to right. My pregnant body aching from my back to my hips. I had already finished painting multiple walls in other rooms in the home, but this room was special to me somehow. The walls in this room had to be perfect. Not a single dent. No mistakes.
This will be the baby's room.
"I must be experiencing that thing they call nesting," Funny, I wasn't sure I'd go through that like I've heard so many pregnant women talk about before. I guess I'm more normal than I think sometimes. We are all, as humans, so similar. You know?
"This room is very special." For years I've hoped that someday, when I had a baby, I'd be able to give that baby it's own room. Not because it's a 'baby requirement' or anything, but because it was my dream. And here I was, in that room in my future. It's here.
The feeling of living out my past's future overwhelms me as I prepare this room for a baby now. Gratitude to God for the fulfilling of the hopes and dreams I've prayed for, that I wasn't sure I'd be blessed enough to receive.
"A baby and a house. Do I even deserve this? Can I handle all of this?" Of course these blessings come with a lot more dedication and work than I'm used to; but whenever I think about it, instead of feeling anxiety, I feel peace. I'm looking forward to finally being a parent.
"I hope we'll be ready when the baby comes". These nine months are going by so much faster than I expected them to. At this moment I still feel a little unprepared to have a baby around here as we're still living in a construction zone. There are so many things that we still need. We'll have to take this one day at a time.
"For now, I'll just focus on painting these walls..."
It's Father's Day! But yeah, I'm trying really hard not to think of Air-bear as a father yet since he wouldn't let me have a Mother's Day last month.
Sorry husband... this goes both ways!
But Happy Father's Day to all of you REAL dad's out there! Specifically and especially to my own sweet, thoughtful, caring, and wonderful dads. To whom I owe a lot.
The most recent examples of their generosity go as follows:
-My Pop selflessly funded our drive to Utah last month! We definitely couldn't have made it down there right after purchasing a home if it weren't for him. We are so grateful that he loves us enough to show us so much generosity.
-Air and I arrived home a few weeks ago and found Papa Goose mowing our lawn (forest) for us! He even gave us a lawn mower. He probably has no idea what a blessing that was for us...
(Also, she isn't a father, but I want to mention that my Mother Goose had weeded and planted these pretty flowers in front of our house too! Such a nice surprise.)
We are so lucky to have these fathers we've got, who make it so much easier for us to be successful. If we get anywhere, or have anything in this life, we really owe it to them for helping us all along the way.
I love you Dads!!
And on a completely unrelated note. I love you Air!
Well, I decided to post about our renovation in parts. As they’re completed. To date, the only thing we’ve started and truly completed is our beautiful hardwood floors. This was something we knew had to be done before we moved into the house. It is such a dirty job!
Our good friend Russell owns a business refinishing hardwood floors and offered to do ours over a weekend for a deal! We are soooooo grateful to him for coming up from Calgary to do this with us!
Here’s the story:
When we bought this home we thought the floors looked alright. Upon further inspection we could plainly see that the guy who owned the home before us had installed them himself… and he had done a pretty lazy job! There were huge gaps along all of the walls (he didn’t even take out the trim before laying the floors!) and big gaps between lots of the boards too. Some of the boards hadn’t even been secured down… Gosh guy!
This hardwood floor extends over the whole living room, hallway, and three bedrooms upstairs.
BEFORE:
We started out by securing down the loose boards and filling in some of the gaps that were much too big around the edges (we were lucky and found an open box of this exact maple hardwood flooring at Home Depot and bought it for, like, nothing).
Then Russ arrived and got right to work on a Friday night. This huge vacuum-looking machine sands off all the old stain. It's awesome, but loud!
The weird thing was the smell of the stain coming off… it was like blueberry pie. Seriously.
**Turn down your volume before playing this video!!**
Next day, Air fixed more of the difficult spots while Russ sanded everything for a second and third time!
Air had the lovely (back-breaking) job of sanding all of the edges where the big sander couldn’t reach with this little guy:
The next step was filling the gaps. Basically just covering the entire floor with wood filler. We chose to go with the natural maple wood color, so we didn’t use any stain at all.
And then there’s more sanding and polishing (and massaging):
The entire house is completely covered in dust at this point. So we had to sweep up and clean EVERYTHING before this final step.
Sealing the floor. Three coats:
………………………………….And I give you…………………………………….
AFTER:
Beautiful floors, indeed. I really love how bright and airy the house is now… Not to mention how awesome it is that there aren’t ANY cracks between the boards.
