You know you’ve reached the pinnacle of life as an adult when ordering new eyeglasses, installing a garden shed, and replacing half of the windows in your house make you so giddy you can barely stand it. That’s the story of our Spring.
Let’s do a little catch-up. At the end of January I turned 35. I’m I’m honestly pretty pumped about the year ahead and had one of the best birthdays in recent memory.
At the beginning of February we journeyed to Utah County (Lehi–30 minutes south for you out-of-
towners) for a belated birthday/cousin bowling extravaganza. Jason and I brought our 3 boys (5yrs, 3yrs, 1yr), Misty and Curtis brought their 4 (almost 7yrs, 5yrs, and 3yr old twins) and Ben brought his two girls (8yrs? and 6yrs?). For those of your keeping track at home, that’s 9 children under 10yrs old. If not for Lee and Marion evening things out a little, the adults would have been ridiculously outnumbered. There’s nothing cuter than little kids in little bowling shoes! We followed up bowling with lunch and belated birthday cake. Then our two older boys played with Lee and Marion so Jason and I could get a few errands run with only one tag-along. It was a great day.
Over President’s Day weekend we moved part of our garden north to make room for the new garden shed. Jason and I (with the help of cousin Ben) spent the better part of Saturday digging, leveling, and
installed edging blocks to get the site ready. It was an exhausting couple days but it made me super-excited for the Spring fun we’re about to have. Our new garden shed was installed during a snowstorm–of course we chose the one week it decided to be winter again for a minute. It’s a 12’x16′ shed with 8′ sidewalls and a nice 6′ double door. They built the pieces prior to arriving on site, and the whole install took about 6 1/2 hours (in the snow!!). We painted it to match our little starter house from our old neighborhood. It took us more time to paint and install the window shutters than it did for them to put up the whole shed. I guess I know why we’re not in the shed-building business.
Thanks to everyone who voted online for my new glasses frames. Here is the winner as chosen by popular majority (and my immediate family all liked them): 
This month our new windows were installed! They look amazing! The project would have been finished in a day, except one of the windows came in the wrong color from the factory, so we have a re-order/hurry up and wait situation while they get the last window built. At least they put the wrong-color one into the existing hole for the time being so we’re weather-tight and don’t have a window opening covered with a piece of plywood. Also (thankfully) the unfinished window is on the back of the house so it isn’t on display for the entire neighborhood. Looks like this project will be wrapped up in the first week of April.
On the 15th of March, my parents flew in from WI. Temperatures were in the teens the morning they 
flew out of Chicago and when they landed it was 75 degrees in Salt Lake City. We tackled a project list (more on that later) and threw a 1/3/5-year-old birthday party for the boys. The boys requested “balloons” and “a cake from a store”. I don’t think they were disappointed, as there was plenty of cake and balloons. As a surprise to everyone (except for my mom), my brother (Jim), sister-in-law (Jen), and niece (Clara) flew in and surprised us at the party! It was AWESOME! This is the first time everyone has been to Utah to visit at the same time!! Even though we celebrated all 3 boys, the party happened to land on William’s birthday (3/18). Salt Lake City had record high temperatures for the day with temps climbing into the upper 70’s. A beautiful
l day to eat cake and run around in the yard!
On to the part about projects. I took some time away from work, my mom helped watch the boys, and we got SO MUCH DONE! I wish I would have taken more pictures but we were moving too fast. The first project was to shorten one of our kitchen cabinets so that it is counter-top height instead of awkwardly tall. I say awkwardly tall because it sits next to the stove, but you couldn’t set anything on top of it, or you couldn’t open the upper cabinet door above it. Shortening it not only gained us some counter space (which our kitchen is sorely lacking), but allows us to use the upper cabinet in a more functional manner. Yay! Next up was installing rain gutter and rain barrels along the new shed and back patio. They look wonderful, and as luck would have it, it rained the entire day after my parents left so we got to test them out. We also did a plethora of painting projects. Jim and Jen painted my back porch railing and patio posts. They were formerly pink and trending towards rusty, 
so some grey “hammered silver” paint greatly improved them. We also refinished a dresser and headboard for Andrew’s room. I’ve been wanting to do that project since we had William! It is amazing what difference you can make with a little paint and updated hardware. I painted WAY. TOO. MUCH. WINDOW. TRIM! I painted the interior trim in all three bedrooms where the windows had been replaced, and painted the exterior trim on all of the remaining old windows in order to match the aluminum wrap of the new windows. I also painted the garage door. You’d swear for as long as it took me to paint that old wooden beast that we’d have a 6 car garage–don’t be fooled, a two-car garage door just seems enormous when you’re brushing it by hand. I also spent some time scraping old paint off the glass of the garage door windows. (An aside to all home owners who may paint/get paint on glass: If you clean it up shortly after it dries, it is really easy to scrape off. If you leave it for the next guy 5-10 years down the road he/she will be cursing your name.) My dad also removed two built-in screen from the doors leading to the back yard, allowing us to clean, and replace/re-glaze the glass. My only complaint is the brand new clean doors make the picture window between them look very dirty. This is how projects snowball out of control!
My parents’ trip involved a lot of work, but we also tried to mix in some fun. In addition to the boys’ birthday party they had the chance to spend part of the day at Red Butte Gardens, and take in the annual Great Salt Lake Woodcarver’s show and competition at Wheeler Farm. It was sure fun having them here, so I hope they had a good time. It was sad to see them leave, but I’m looking forward to our trip to WI this summer–our last trip while none of the kids are in school!!! William starts kindergarten this fall!
I will be writing birthday blogs for each of the boys in the coming weeks, so I won’t do a lengthy update about them for this post. A good summation of our house these days is constant noise and perpetual motion, sticky fingers and not enough baths. Crazy but fun.
Til next time!
S.~