A little over a month ago Logan, Brennan, Trevor, and I went and picked peaches. They were $1/lb. They were huge and beautiful!! Apparently we got 65 lbs. They added up quickly as they were so easy to pick. The trees were just heavy with peaches.

I LOVE dried fruit. I'm not a huge jam person so we bought these peaches with the intentions of drying them. We had to wait a day for them to really get ripe. Then they all turned ripe at the same time. Logan began to panic, but I wasn't worried. He was reminded of his youth when his mom would get boxes and boxes of fruit for canning.  They would all turn ripe at the same time and his mom would enlist the help of him and his brothers.

 After drying the bulk of peaches, I thought it might be nice to have some peaches we canned this winter. I didn't have any bottles or a water bath canner, so I drove to Target to buy them! I figured it was time to own them. 

 The peaches turned out great - i.e. they all sealed. It's not yet so we haven't tasted them ;)

 After we dried some peaches, made peach puree for Trevor, canned many peaches, we still had enough to make some jam. Logan eats a lot of peanut butter sandwiches these days so fresh homemade jam spices things up a bit.

 Logan made the jam while I was finishing up the canned peaches. He also made some freezer jam! Both of with are amazing. I don't love jam, but I like it every now and then. I had a peanut butter sandwich yesterday and loved it because of the yummy peach jam.

PEARS - - -

Right now our house has a wonderful spicy pear aroma floating about. I'm making peach butter in the crock pot. It's been cooking down all day and smelling delightful.

My friend heard about a great deal on pears. A bushel for $16. I got a bushel and a half. I dried them, of course, and made puree for Trevor. With the extra pears I made puree for pear butter. The first batch went in this morning. I'll probably leave it on low over night (in the crock pot)? It still has a ways thicken up and it's almost bed time.

We didn't take pictures this time around (of the pears). Life has been pretty busy.

Trevor at 6 Months

These pictures were taken from 5-6 months old. Trevor is growing up fast. Today was his 6 month dr appointment.

Trevor is 17 lbs - 45%. He was 70% at 4 months. He is very active and moves around all the time.

        He is 27" long - 75%. He's still on the same curve for height.  He's growing longer and thinning out. He's still a little chunk, but his moving body is thinning him out.

 Brennan loves sharing his toys with him. He's trying to physically put a toy in Trevor's hand.

 He always wants to be on his belly so he can see things better. He started scooting forward yesterday for the first time. He also pivots and rolls around the room like crazy.

He's sitting!! About 6 months exactly he started sitting on his own. He can last for quite a while before falling over.

Pool season coming to an end

I've loved having our pool. Without air conditioning in our house, the pool has been our saving grace during the high heat/humid days. Sometimes Brennan and I would get in the pool 4 times in one day!

I love that the weather is getting a bit cooler now, but the cooler weather means our pool is also cooling down. When it's cloudy and in the upper 70's outside, our pool doesn't get much above 74. The water has only been 70 degrees this past week! Logan jumps in after he goes running, but that's about all the action this pool has seen in the last 2 weeks. Brennan insisted on swimming with him after his run last night. After about 5 minutes, he was shivering and his lips turned blue. These are pictures of the last time we really "used" the pool. Alex, Parker, and Megan had a great time - they got a good whirlpool going by walking in circles around the edge.

Logan still seems to think he wants to get rid of the pool. I disagree. It doesn't really take that much to run and the cost of the pump/water isn't too high. For 3-4 weeks we used the pool multiple times a day, it's been totally worth it!! I hope to have it around next summer. So far though, Logan has done pretty much all of the pool maintenance and chemical balancing, and now he wants me to learn how to winterize it if I really want to keep it. So, we'll see how that goes!

Brennan and Trevor

Brennan and Trevor have been really good kids lately. They love to play with each other! Trevor laughs at Brennan's jumps and silly tricks. Brennan loves to give Trevor toys and lay by him. It's fun to see these boy grow closer together.

All the pictures of them together are on my phone, so I thought I'd post some of them individually.

Brennan's new hat. This bucket goes from room to room with him carrying his toys. It's a stool, chair, catch all, etc.

Trevor is learning how to roll all over the floor. He looks for things he wants and moves his body over to them. It's crazy to have an "almost" mobile kid. I put him on my bed the other day, turned around to get something off my dresser and he was right at the other edge of the bed! Wow. He sure learned to roll quickly!

Half Marathon in October

Logan and I have decided to run the ING Hartford Half Marathon on October 15th!

I really was shooting for the full marathon. I started running 2 and a half weeks after Trevor was born to get back into running shape to complete a marathon this fall/late summer. Our move across the country was the biggest setback. I wasn't prepared for nasty humid hot weather! We have no air conditioning or a shower to conveniently shower off in (i.e. bathroom renovation project), I stopped running. I didn't run for 7 weeks!! June 18th was the last day I ran until last week, August 10th. I'm finally back into the groove of things - which is so much easier since the weather has cooled off a bit in the evenings and mornings to run in.

Logan went running tonight for the first time since June 18th! It was nice to have him running again since we both plan on running.

We took Brennan and Trevor to the park to play while we took turns running on the track. The elementary school play ground is right by the high school/football field/track. It was a family affair tonight. Brennan loves to run on the track and cheer on his dad! He ran the opposite way as Logan around the track for one lap. Logan would pass Brennan every quarter lap rather since they were going opposite directions.

Bathroom Remodel: plaster + hot humid days = slow progress

I've slowed down and started studying more. This last week I have been working on PLASTER. I've never taped a drywall seam so I had to watch a video on that. Paper tape is tricky stuff. Who would've thought that up? Some of the conventions of home construction seem so random, like, there's gotta be a better way. But then we just end up doing it how we've always done it because that's what we know, and those are the most readily available, cheapest materials.

I did a bunch of plaster work on Saturday and it wasn't fully dry until Tuesday! Doesn't help that we're showering in there and it's been 90% humidity. Then more plaster Tuesday and now waiting for that to dry. I had a friend help with the electrical hook-ups and re-positioned the outlets and light fixtures, which required cutting into the old lath and plaster, carefully chipping it down to the bare lath, then patching over the lath with 1/4" drywall. Not sure this is how you're supposed to do it but it worked well.

Heather and I went to Home Depot again and picked out towel rods, TP dispenser, hand towel ring, paint colors, and looked at some very expensive mirrors and medicine cabinets. I hope to have the vanity and sink installed this weekend! It will be tricky getting the plumbing and duct work, not to mention the sloping floor and wavy walls, to fit together and look good with a perfectly square and perfectly finished vanity. We sort of splurged on the vanity/sink/countertop setup. Pictures to come soon!

I am also mostly done with the baseboards, wainscoting, and chair rail. How convenient that the majority of the lath/plaster defects were within the lower 3 feet of wall, now covered with elegant-looking wainscoting and trim work. I opted with the cheap particle-board trim boards and so far they've been going in nicely, with the help of my wife's staple gun to set the corners together tightly.

Bathroom Remodel: success! Functional shower & toilet

Grouting the tile turned out to be a more tedious job than I anticipated; we did the shower tile together one night and it kept us up until 2am. I made the mistake of not wearing gloves and rubbed my fingers raw scrubbing with the sponge and rubbing the grout smooth with my finger. Heather wore gloves - smart. The results were perfectly satisfying, however. The next day I installed the shower fixtures and applied caulk between the tub and tile:

Our brand new, fully functional tub and shower! We love the ability to control temperature and flow separately, which allows you to turn down the pressure and save water, or get a full-on environmentally UN-friendly tsunami. The detachable head is great.

Shelves coming in handy already.

I did some research about caulk and learned a few things. (1) the new acrylic caulk holds up better and bonds better than the silicone caulk, and is easier to work with. (2) the caulk allows your tub to move a little as it settles with a full load of water then springs back as it's emptied. I've noticed grout between the tub and tile in a few of my relatives' bathrooms, and more often than not there was a section of grout missing, cracked, or bulging out. It just doesn't flex like caulk does. (3) You have to FILL THE TUB with water and caulk with it full! This was bizarre to me until I realized the concept: you want the crack filled when it's biggest so that it has to deal more with compression forces rather than stretching forces. I don't know how much this will matter in our case as I secured the tub to the wall with multiple steel brackets, plus it's on a very solid bed of cement. Nevertheless, it's satisfying to know I've done it right.

As I mentioned before there's a slope to our floor - nearly 1" from one side of the room to the other - and this was a challenge when laying tile, to get the 12" tile to match at the corners elevation-wise. In fact, where the slope changes, it's impossible to get it to match without breaking a tile in half. Thus I chose 1/4" grout lines which helped to cover up the small elevation changes.

Heather, Alex Hay (her niece), and I did the floor grout on Friday night in about 2 hours. We worked quickly and I think it went quicker having learned a bit about grout from the wall tile. Or maybe it was the motivation of the Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie awaiting, and the movie Source Code (great movie, fairly clean for a PG-13). We chose a darker color for the tile to hide dirt and, I guess, make it feel like a floor.

Here's proof Heather did help with the project! Turns out she's a natural pro grouter.

You'll have to trust us for now - the final result is great.

Yesterday, I stumbled through a toilet installation. First hook-up only took an hour or so, and I had the toilet assembled and working. Then I noticed a small leak from the old supply line valve (which, I discovered, was missing a small brass ring required to achieve a water-tight seal). Ran to Home Depot for a new valve (and got side-tracked in the plumbing aisle and purchased a fridge ice-maker supply line kit), and came back to see that there was apparently a leak from the base of the toilet as well. After THREE wax rings and some adjusting of the PVC replacement flange that the toilet sits on, it finally sealed well. Finally, finally, no more sewer fumes in my face!

Then as I was tapping in some shims to help stabilize the base, I knocked the rim of the toilet ever so slightly as I was moving a hammer from one side to the other, and CHIPPED the rim!!! So, our brand new toilet has about a 5mm chip on the rim, clearly visible even with the lid closed. When wiping down the toilet after installation, the dirt on my rag turned that chip a nice dark brown color. Totally obvious. Feels like a brand new car with a ding on the door. I guess I'll buy a porcelain chip fix kit next!

Our Kohler toilet. (No you're not supposed to fully assemble it before placing it unless you really want a back workout.) Oh, here you can see the finished grout and how dark it is when wet, vs. dry. And there in the corner a crumpled up wax ring and the little wooden shims I used to stabilize the toilet (they'll be hidden by the caulking)

Now we can SHOWER and TOILET in our upstairs full bath! Yay! After a month without a shower in the house, it feels great. But we have to use the tub to wash hands after toileting, and the vanity, sink, and mirror await electrical wiring, which I'll have to learn about because I've never done that either.