New fireplace

I have disliked our fireplace/mantel since we moved in.  The mantle is just a plain piece of dark rough wood – you can’t even dust it because little pieces of cloth or paper towel just get snagged up in the rough service.  The brick color is just ugly and has too much variation.  We’ve been discussing what to do for a long time and came up with several options. 
Then, thanks to wonderful Pinterest, I came along this tutorial and knew we just had to do this to our fireplace!

Source: askannamoseley.com via Marissa on Pinterest

So, after being gone a week, Jeremy surprised me yesterday at Lowes, we were there doing the fire truck workshop you just read about, and said, do you want to stain the fireplace today?  Um…yeah!  So, we headed to Home Depot to get the concrete stain they used in the tutorial made by Behr.  Side note – we love Behr everything and only use their paint.  So after purchasing the concrete stain and an extra brush we headed home to get to work.

Jeremy cleaned up the fireplace really well!  And of course Tyler helped with the vacuum.  Here is the before – UGLY! Notice the wide variations in color and boring grey mortar?

After!  Beautiful dark brown and updated!  And all it took was one coat of Behr concrete stain in the Loden color.  So if you hate your fireplace – get some concrete stain and change it!

Now, just imagine and beautiful white mantel sitting on top.  As soon I can make some space in the garage for Jeremy to work – that is the next project.  That and finding some gas logs to hook up to the already existing gas line.

Fire truck workshop

Yesterday we went to Lowes for our first grow and build workshop. Ty
got to build a fire truck so it was perfect. It was so cute. They have
little hammers just his size and he end product was a red fire truck
with working ladder. It's hard to tell in this picture but they also
give them Lowes smocks and an iron on patch for each project you do.

Don't you live how they both have safety glasses. It they aren't
really over their eyes?! Ahh. Just like daddy!

Gotta love fall festivals!

Last weekend we went to a festival called Celebrate St. Peters at Lakeside 370 park.  We were there for 4 hours and definitely got our monies worth with the unlimited rides wristband for only $10/person.  We discovered Tyler likes rides a couple weeks ago when we went to Silver Dollar City in Branson thanks to the Johnson’s and their season passes!  It was your typical festival with booths selling all kinds of stuff, yummy carnival food, and rides, but there was also a Home Depot workshop where kids could pick what kit they wanted to build.  Of course Ty picked a truck.  Bass Pro was also on hand with fishing poles so Ty got to fish for his first time and actually cast it on his own a couple times. 

Daddy is very trusting here as Ty hammers in the nail.

All finished and so proud!

Let’s catch a fish daddy!

And now onto the rides…we discovered we can not stomach as many rides anymore…at least not more than once.

Ferris wheel!

Oh yeah and there were two jump houses and an obstacle course!

Look at that face!

up and down…up and down… Ty just screamed and giggled the whole time!

Waiting patiently in line for his turn.

On a side note, during the drought this summer and since we weren’t here we lost our pretty rhododendron plant so Jeremy cut it down and here Ty was “helping” cut it into smaller pieces.

Labor Day

What a great weekend with family!  Karissa flew in last week so we met up with her in Houston Friday afternoon to visit with our grandparents and cousins that we hadn’t been able to see in a year or so.  It was great catching up and I wish we were able to get down there more. 

Eating our fries with Aunt Karissa.

Four generations – mom, Ted, me, Ty, and Karissa

After that quick stop in Houston we headed to Springfield to spend the weekend with Jeremy’s family.  Amanda and Pete came down from Columbia so the whole family was there. 

Tyler went crazy with the boys – it’s never quiet when they are all together and someone always gets hurt.  This time it was Ty, though surprisingly it didn’t happen until the last day.  There were quite a few tears but it’s all better now and he just ended up with a scratch behind his ear and bruise on the edge of it. 

Saturday we just hung around the house relaxing and catching up while it rained all day.  Sunday we headed to Silver Dollar City in Branson with the Johnson’s.  Both Jeremy and I haven’t been there in probably 15 years.  I don’t remember much and it has changed a lot.    We had a great time and we discovered Ty loves roller coasters.  The first one we went on was called Fire in the Hole.  It’s a pretty tame roller coaster, but parts of it are in the dark – Ty didn’t really like those parts but when I asked him if he liked it afterwards he said yes.  They had a great kids section too.  Ty was tall enough to ride at least six of the rides plus the river raft one.  We might have to purchase the Six Flags season tickets for next year.

Everyone else had the same idea – go to SDC the only nice day of the weekend – it was packed when we got there, we were in parking lot 5 and Ty was so excited because our shuttle was actually a school bus.  All three boys sat together.

Waiting in line at Ty’s first roller coaster – Fire in the HOLE!

Sometimes it’s hard to tell – but look I have proof – they really do like each other.

Ty’s second roller coaster!

Spinning in the teacups!  This one made me super dizzy – not sure I can do this one still.

Brent and Caedman riding at the top of the big pirate ship thing – glided up and down.  We are sitting with Ty in the middle of the boat.

Flying dumbo!  These were pretty neat.  They went around in a circle and you had control of going up and down by pushing a button on the elephant’s head.

In an attempt to get the boys out of the house Monday and burn off some energy we went to Nathaniel Greene Park, but it was just too hot and muggy to stand it for too long.  After a yummy pizza lunch we hoped in the car and headed home.  We put Ty to bed early and he slept until 8 this morning! Thanks for wearing him out Caedman and Keagan. 

For an example of how tired he was – I went to bed around 10:30. Shortly after I laid down I heard a thump….kinda sounded like Ty falling out of bed but I talked myself out of that since I didn’t hear any crying.  15 minutes later I’m still wide awake and worrying whether not that was him, so I got up to check.  Yep, he had fallen out of bed in his sleep and was fast asleep on the floor.  So I picked him back up and put him bed – he never even opened an eye or made a peep. He was exhausted!

Project #1 – complete!

So, before moving back Jeremy and I made along list of projects we wanted to do on the house or just things we wanted to do once we were back.  Well, the moving back in, unpacking, organizing took a little longer than both of us thought it would, but we finally tackled our only outdoor project on our list – replace the retaining wall around the tree in the backyard.

Before

Sorry, couldn’t locate the before photo, but it was ugly…and leaning.

Ugly wood removed…

At the end of day 1….ugly wood removed, base layer dug and leveled out, gravel down, first layer of stones in place and leveled.  Already looks 10 times better than earlier that day.

We woke up early Sunday morning and put the rest of the stones in place before church.  It started raining after we got home from church before Jeremy could fill in caps in front of the retaining wall, so he had to do it in the pouring rain so the rain wouldn’t create a rut and wash all our gravel away from under the wall.  He was soaked!

Beautiful finished retaining wall.  Now we just have to figure out what to plant up there by spring.  Any suggestions?