Kitchen Renovation: The Kitchen Table

This project was EXTREMELY overdue, and was one of my highlighted projects of my maternity leave.

It felt like I was sanding for a short eternity, to be honest. It took a LONG time to get down to the base wood of the table. I chose to only do the top surface and not the legs and sides and what not. (I cannot even remotely imagine how long doing the rest would have taken me!)

I had initially thought that Teak Natural would be the perfect color stain for the table, but after doing 3 coats of stain and three coats of poly, I noticed it looked significantly more orange than the rest of the table, so after also having an issue with the poly looking like it needed to be re-done, I decided to re-do the whole thing again.

This time I went with Antique Walnut, and the match was significantly better. We LOVE it, and it's really nice to not have food particles getting stuck in the gaps that had worn out and for paint to actually be staining the wood in the parts where the poly had completely gone missing.

May Recap

I'll just say right now, I don't think there will be a month in the near future where I'll probably not start with, "We had a busy month". They're all busy. All the time. We're busy. We have 3 kids under the age of 5. Three BOYS under the age of five. We're busy.

I tried my very best to soak up the last six weeks of maternity leave, and some days, that was easier said than done. In its entirety, my maternity leave was wonderful, but looking back on it, I can't believe I got SO much done! We fully anticipated that Mark would be in the field for part of the month, but we weren't expecting planting season to drag on as long as it did this year.

Here are the highlights of the month:

Highlights:

• Sick Days (May 3-4) (recap here)
• Steff and Kent Visit (May 7) (recap here)
• Celebrating Grandma Pam (May 7) (recap here)
• Mother's Day (May 8) (recap here)
• Birthday Supper with the Studes (May 14) (recap here)
• Fun Evening with the Dibbles (May 16) (recap here)
• Picnic at the Farm (May 18) (recap here)
• Ryan's 2 Month Checkup (May 18) (recap here)
• Sheldon with Friends and Worthington with Family (May 24) (recap here)
• Wisconsin Dells Vacation (May 19-22) (recap here)
• Ryan's 1st Night in the Crib (May 25) (recap here)
• Memorial Day Weekend (May 27-30) (recap here)
• Mark's First Softball Game (May 31) (recap here)

Photo Highlights:

You're in for a treat! Being on maternity leave means I'm almost caught up on my family scrapbook for 2016, so instead of a barrage of photos, you get them all in scrapbook form :)

Looking Ahead...

I never thought I'd be saying this, but I hope we're done with getting the crops in this month. It's JUNE! Lots of rain this past month has pushed it back quite a bit this year. Mark's involvement is pretty minimal at this point, but I'm sure there'll be a few trips to the farm still, since there is still clean up once it's in.

We can't wait to go strawberry pickin' in the next week or two (Cashel especially can't wait!), and then we begin our summer with lots of time outdoors at the local parks, in the little pool out back, and hopefully on some fun adventures.

The 4th of July is always a fun time, although we hope the boys enjoy the fireworks a bit more this year. We'll have a weekend visiting my Mom at the farm the weekend after that, and then Mark and I will have our first overnight alone the weekend after since Ryan was born!

At the end of July, we'll have our week-long trip to Alexandria as a family, which I think we're all excited about! Granted, the boys just want to go back to "Consin Dells" haha The boys start swimming lessons the first of August, and while I'm certain Cashel will do great, we're just hoping Kendrick passes level 1 again, as he's still a little shy in the water.

My sister and her family are headed on a couple little trips this summer too, so we'll be down visiting my Mom and helping care for her while they're gone, as well as hopefully getting a chance to visit with them at some point too.

Summer, ho!

Mark's First Softball Game (May 31)

We were thrilled to be able to catch Mark's first softball game of the season, as it was an early game this time. Last season, he had only a couple games that early, so we were excited that we got to go out on such a perfect night to see him play! The temps were in the upper 60s, and while it was a little damp around in the grass from so much rain lately, the fields were dry and there were no mosquitoes. Mark's team did great, and he got to bat a lot, so although I spent most of the time chasing the boys around from the playground to searching for rocks in the dirt, I still got to see him hit 4 times!

I hear there will be a day when I'll be able to actually sit and watch a full game again, but for now, we all enjoy going, even if it is just to play in the dirt.

Memorial Day Weekend (May 27-30)

We went into Memorial Day weekend not quite sure of our plans, but our weekend certainly filled up quickly!

Of course, the weekend started my absolute favorite way in the world; with a big, family breakfast :) It seriously melts my heart to see these boys all bonding. They always want to sit together at the supper table. The one caveat: They have a really hard time leaving Ryan alone and actually eating ;)

We had decided to tackle potty training with Kendrick this particular weekend, but after an entire day with zero successes and an entire washing machine full of wet clothes, we decided it wasn't the right time for it.

The rest of the weekend can be broken down into two sections: The part we knew about, and the part we didn't!

The Part we Knew About

We had planned to have Dad, Pam and Jess up for lunch on Saturday, but that morning we thought we'd see if Uncle Dave and Aunt Chris wanted to join us, and they ended up doing so. It was fun to catch up with them, and we were pleased that our boys were so well behaved and actually allowed for us to visit for a bit.

We didn't do anything too fancy; just chicken and pork chops, fruit salad, potato salad and some chips. It was great to catch up with everyone :)

That evening after naps, we got the new pool set up and the boys played in it for a while.

The rest of the day was pretty average. The next day brought the surprise!

The Part We Didn't Know About

Mark's sister and her family made a surprise visit up from Omaha for the weekend, staying down in Worthington. She let us know she was in town Sunday afternoon, and we invited them up for the evening to grill out and just catch up a bit.

The boys had SUCH a blast playing with their cousin Johannes III (J3). We hadn't seen him since Christmas time. Kendrick and J3 were really into racing around the upstairs with their tractors and trucks :)

We called it a fairly early night as far as family visits go, but planned to meet up the next morning for swimming and a pizza at the hotel.

We made it down there around 11am and got right to swimming.

Ryan and I left to get the pizza around noon, and we enjoyed visiting a bit while eating in the room, then as the boys started getting more and more ready for naps, we made our way to Chataquah park to burn off some energy before heading home.

Sometimes those unplanned weekends end up being busier than our planned ones! But we had a great time visiting with so much family and catching up!