Rollerblading Ballerina Princess

Last Saturday I ran a few errands and when I came home Allison was outside dressed as follows, rollerblading up and down the sidewalk in front of our house.

Honestly, how can you not smile at her free spirit and uber personality?

That’s Our Princess

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Changing Blog

Today I have been playing with changing my layout, background, and header. Some things are working better than others. It's fun to learn how to manipulate these things, and I hope to make it all work soon, but if it looks a little slapped together for a while, just know I'm using my own blog to experiment.

Pinewood Derby

I survived my first pinewood derby last night. We had a little pain and suffering when it came to the weigh-in; the scale we were using wasn’t as precise as some of the electrical scales people had used to weigh their cars, and as a result several of the cars had to take weight off to match our scale. Other than that though, things seemed to go well. There weren’t any tears (that I saw) and the boys had a great time racing their cars over and over again.

As part of the awards I made little trophies for all the boys to put their cars on. This way everyone received something. The trophies were very simple, just a small board for the base with a piece of 2x4 glued and nailed onto it as the upright. Then I spray painted them all gold and called it good.

Here is the base made from scrap particle board.

After measuring two or three times for the same length of board I quickly brainstormed for an easier way. It’s not like my cuts had to be New England-furniture-perfect, after all we’re talking about pinewood derby trophies here. A line on the miter saw at the length I wanted (in this case 3 inches) turned out to be just the answer. This way I didn’t have to measure for every single cut. Halleluiah!

Nineteen 3” wood blocks later (for participation), a 4” block for bronze, a 5” block for silver, and a 6” block for our first place winner and we were done making all our cuts. Next came the “puttin together” stage and I couldn’t quite bring myself to spend the time drilling pilot holes and putting them together with screws, so instead I asked Catherine to share here wonderful nail gun (again). She helped glue and nail them after Sunday dinner at my house. Thanks Cath!

Hunter and Ashton and their award winning pinewood derby cars

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We didn’t win 1st, 2nd or 3rd but we had a great time racing and Hunter was definitely one of the most enthusiastic little racers. Just watch out next year…

Allison's Baptism

Allison was baptized on May 1, 2010. It was a wonderful day and she was bouncing out of her skin she was so excited. All of the Ashton's were there except for Jens who is on his mission in Chile. Grammy and Grandpa Day even came from North Carolina just to be here for the special occasion.
(Note: My camera had something on the lens so some of the pictures have a little blurry spot. Super Sadness! For better pictures see Catherine's blog.)

Allison outside our ward meetinghouse before going in to get dressed and ready for the baptism. She is wearing the new dress she found with Grammy Day just that morning.

Outside the church after the baptism we all gathered for pictures before heading over to our house for lunch.

Allison was baptized and confirmed by Dave. It took two tries to baptize her because her foot came up the first time. I think she might be a little proud of that. At least Dave remembered her full name. The other father in our ward baptizing his daughter accidentally said her older sister's middle name and had to do it over again with her own name. Oops. He felt a little sheepish.

Mommy's Little Angels

Spaghetti Night

Oh yeah, this is why we don't have spaghetti as often as Allison would like. How could I forget?

Kristen doesn't understand why I think she needs to have her face washed. Why would I want to torture her like that? (Loryn hams it up in the background.)

Loryn tried to convince me she could just lick it all off with her tongue.
"See Mom, I just lick it."
I wasn't convinced she could get it off her eyebrows though.

Loryn's Sliver

Back on March 28 Loryn was playing outside and got hurt. She came in crying with a small cut on her foot (we thought). We were concerned there might be a sliver but couldn't see anything. We continued to watch it for a few days in which time it became infected. That Friday I took her to the pediatrician who got about 5 ml of puss out of it and put her on an antibiotic. He said if it didn't get better by Monday to take her to a podiatrist.

So on Monday, April 5, 2010 I took her to a podiatrist. They did an ultrasound but couldn't really see anything and told us to come back on Wednesday. When we went back they were able to get a better ultrasound picture of her foot and could see there was a foreign object they thought was about 1 cm long.

We decided to do out-patient surgery the next day and were scheduled for 7:30 am. I got there with Loryn on time but as I was filling out the paperwork at the check-in desk Loryn found the sippy cup I had hidden down inside the bag. It scared her to death when I turned around and screamed as she sat there gulping down her sippy. After consulting with the anesthesiologist we determined to try to distract Loryn for the next four hours to keep her from realizing she was hungry and thirsty and try to do the surgery around noon.

Loryn and I had a great time going to Brooke's and playing Rock Band and seeing Brooke's law office. Then the hospital called us to come back.

Long story short, they found a 2 cm wood sliver lodged deep in her foot. The poor girl had been hobbling around with it in there for over a week and a half.

She was so mad when she came out of anesthesia. It took me and two nurses to restrain our usually sweet and agreeable Loryn.

This last Monday we finally got the five stitches out but we took this picture right before going to the podiatrist. Loryn's one complaint to him was that she wanted red stitches not blue ones. He assured her he would put it in her file and be sure to use red ones next time. Lets hope it isn't any time soon.Poor Little Loryn

Final Product (for now)--Master Bathroom

I put the finishing touches on the master bathroom last week but after all the hard work I was too tired to do the finished photos until today. We have been able to use the shower for about three weeks now and we are loving it. Can you believe it? We actually use our master bathroom.




As part of the project I also tiled the vanity countertop and painted the vanity a chocolate brown. This picture was taken during the sanding process of the vanity and before I put in the sink. I was going to save and reuse the existing sink, but I put in a new one and a new faucet instead. In case anyone thinks that was wasteful, the old faucet was brass and dripped randomly. The pop-up drain also leaked randomly making it hard to put anything under the sink because you weren't sure it would be dry or not. Now that I write about it I wonder "WHAT WAS I THINKING?" Of course it was a good idea to go new.



During the tiling process I used the floor in my bedroom to lay out tiles to see which ones would work together. Mysteriously other playroom creatures would work their way into the room to see what was happening.

Kristen turned out to by our toy arranging friend on this occasion.

I made the front panel of the tub removable by tiling a sheet of DensShield and then propping it into place and securing it with silicone. It seems to be very secure. This way when it comes time to do the floor or when we take out the tub, etc, we will be able to simply cut the silicone and remove the panel for easy access. It is an experiment.

BIG IMPROVEMENT!
Maybe next year we will go for the floor.