Road Trips, Birthday Dates, and Projects

 On Monday the boys and I made our way back to Colorado. The 7.5 hour drive somehow feels a lot shorter than the 8.5 hour drive we made so many times from Fresno to Cedar City. But, Camden does not like the car much at all and he cried basically the whole last leg. He's my covid baby -- stays home, doesn't see strangers, only knows masks out in the world. He was pretty content if I handed back a steady stream of cheerios, which is not easy when you're the driver, but we made it. It was so fun to see Ali and Matthias' new house, and especially to see Lewis get baptized, and to have a few more days just being with family.

We got a coupon flyer in the mail from my realtor for a restaurant nearby that had a bacon cheeseburger on it. Westin held onto that after checking the mail (he handles that job solo around here now) and declared that THAT was what he wanted to eat on his birthday date. He's been changing his mind all the time about where he wants to go for that, but the cheeseburger picture sealed the deal. On Saturday we took him to C.B. Potts, a restaurant on a golf course by our house, and he ate a bacon cheeseburger and an pizookie. We actually ran into our realtor there, which was funny. Bennett and Camden had fun with Claudia, though I think Camden cried quite a bit for her. That kid... I'm grateful he was so content for my first few months of painting my house but he's far from content now. He looks and acts just like Westin at all stages so far. It takes both me and Michael to put him to bed right now because you have to work hard to get him laughing if you want a chance at getting him down without him screaming.

We worked a lot on our dining room board & batten project this week, Michael helped me a lot on his day off. I spent so long at Lowe's one night trying to figure out the plan while Michael was home with the kids. The planning and prep and figuring out what to buy is the hardest part of projects for me. The cutting and nailing and seeing it to come to life is the best!

Babies saying goodbye before we hit the road!

Love this girl!

Don't mind my wake-up-and-go hair or grandma's crying eyes :) :)

These boys loved Ali's little bridge, especially when grandpa is a pretend troll!

My view from our Little America stop.
I see many pit stops in this spot in our future.

Did I snap this pic while all three boys watched me pee in a tiny stall?
Yes. Yes I did.
These road trips are WORK and I never want to forget the accomplishment that solo travel is.

Back in his own bed!

He slept in until 9:30. That's for sure the record sleep in time for any of my children ever.
This pic is blurry but his tired eyes were just the cutest thing to me.
Travel day wore him out. That's what happens when you only sleep 45 minutes in the car and go to bed super late.... Oh Cam Cam.

Michael did some of Westy's online school with him one day and took this picture to be his Microsoft teams profile picture.
This is what I love about Michael. I do so much of the day in day out stuff, and Michael is really helpful, and when he is helpful he usually does a better job than me because I feel like I'm in perpetual survival mode. Dads are the best.

Westin wrote another message on the bones of this house while we did board and batten when Bennett was at school. These boards officially covered the LAST BIT OF YELLOW in our home.
I have thrown over 30 gallons of paint on the surfaces of this place.
Adios, yellow!

Took advantage of my late night Lowe's trip to just do a full puzzle on the floor of the aisle with 12- and 9-foot boards. In the end they didn't have exactly what I was going for and I had them rip a few pieces in half lengthwise to make my vertical battens. The guy was so nice to make all those cuts for me once he understood what I was going for and he didn't even charge me for all the cuts. I spent almost two hours there and it was so nice to get it all purchased without kiddos. Only about 20% of my brain goes to what I'm working on if my kiddos are around.

That lumber van life.
I've loaded this thing up quite a bit and she does a good job.

Favorite meme of the year.

Boards are up! This was the most tedious part, with cutting out outlet squares with the jigsaw and around vents and everything. Michael is the problem-solver and I'm the vision and final detailer. I keep saying that caulk is my best friend and worst enemy.

Laid these out and gave them a coat of paint before going up.

We paused all we were doing to watch President Nelson on Friday.
I liked that his challenge to turn social media into gratitude made for a more uplifting space there,
but sometimes I wish we were called to literal action more. We're such a huge church. I hoped he'd encourage wearing masks even more than the church has. That he'd talk about ways we need to fight the effects of this pandemic on those hit the hardest. Gratitude is the first step toward those things, and I know we should be pursuing those other ways of helping ourselves, but I was hoping we'd be mobilized together. Light the World has some of that coming up -- I'm just craving a direct response to the pains of 2020 by an entire unified church body.

Baseboards and top trim up! Matthias was so nice to take my baseboards down when he was here and help measure all these boards with Ali for me while I was at Lowe's. They're the best.

Deciding on that top rail or not...

My helper when I want to see things myself from far away.

Westin's been waiting patiently for his birthday date and changing his mind about what he wanted to go eat a million times (that's the most fun part, I think!). This flyer came in the mail and he immediately said he wanted to eat that bacon cheeseburger on his birthday date, so that's what we did :)

Looking so big! And so serious in pictures lately haha. I told him so, so then we got...

This, haha

Figuring out vertical batten placement post-bedtime.

And it's up! Time for caulk. So much caulk. And a couple layers of paint.