Re-staining the Deck and General Conference

But before I get into that, here's a random picture of Rachel that I can't figure out how to tie into anything else. One morning, Sam and I went for a run, and decided to add a little distance to our workout by walking up the hill to the park and letting the kids play. (We walked up the hill, pushing our double strollers and kids). Rachel got out and was playing, but she was shivering so badly that I wrapped her up in my sweatshirt and in her blanket and snuggled her for a little bit. But she loves the swings, so when everyone headed to swings, I just stuffed Rachel in the baby swing with all that bundling. Yes, literally stuffed her in. She still had fun though:

 Okay, on to the deck. Right before we moved in, the selling agent's husband, who (at the time) lived in our neighborhood, painted the deck to help the house sell. After less than a year, his paint job was already chipping. We knew that we would need to re-stain it this fall if we didn't want to replace the entire thing next year. And we wanted whatever work we did to last longer than a year. After doing a lot of research, we decided to remove all the paint and stain it.

So, we made a plan to split it into two weekends. Brian would pressure wash it one weekend, and we would stain it the next weekend. And we figured that we could stain it while we were listening to General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The day of the appointed pressure washing (September 27), dawned cloudy and miserable. But since Brian was going to be wet anyway, we figured it would be okay. So off to Home Depot we went to rent the pressure washer. And then Brian got to work, trying to finish it as fast as he could.

And I watched from the warm house :)  He got completely drenched. At one point, he asked if I could take over. I feel like a jerk, but I told him, "No way." He was a champ for being hunched over like this for 3.5 hours. Ethan and I rushed the pressure washer back so we wouldn't get charged, and got a little wet in the process (It was pouring). I whined about being cold from that little bit of time I was in the rain. Yes, Brian was the hero of the day once again. 

So, that next Friday, I tried to make up for it by getting the sanding finished. Read: Not very fun. We borrowed a belt sander from my fabulous Father-in-law and bought sandpaper and all the supplies so we wouldn't have to make any Home Depot runs the next day. I was determined to get the rest of the paint sanded off that night. Thankfully, Michael was excited by the project, so I let him use my orbital sander,  and his enthusiasm helped me keep going,

  --until I ran into some trouble replacing the sandpaper. I thought I had done it, but then the paper kept slipping off the sander. I was convinced that I had broken the sander, and I was so bummed out about that. I convinced Brian that we would need another belt sander to finish the job. So, after unsuccessfully trying to borrow one, we decided to head to Home Depot and buy one. Yay. Now we are even more grown up :)

The next morning, (October 4) we got up first thing and started sanding. It was after 8, but I still felt a little bad for causing so much noise for our neighbors. At 10, we headed inside to listen to the first session. 

Side note about conference: I've always wanted to have cool Conference weekend traditions like cinnamon rolls or something special like that. I imagined Conference Bingo and treats. Well, I forgot to buy treats for the Bingo game, so I raided the cupboard for anything that would work. Michael decided to mark his bingo card with his dry erase marker and then get to pick a candy when he got a Bingo. And I busted out leftover M&Ms and popped some microwave popcorn. I figured I'd kind of treat it like a SuperBowl party---just lots of yummy treats and snacks to veg on while we watch. 

 Here's Rachel's M&M face (she's a mess eating M&Ms) and here's the popcorn. 

 We listened for an hour and then got headphones and listened to the rest of the session on the Mormon Channel. We decided that we would do as much sanding as we could, but then call it at 2 p.m. when the second session started and just stain it. So that's what we did. Decked out in our finest painting attire, we finally got to work staining the deck:

  We stained the top quite quickly. But since you can see the bottom of the deck from our patio below, I also wanted to stain the bottom. That was awful, but we laughed our way through it. And we only stained just over half. Oh well. We finished just in time for Brian to turn on the Priesthood Session and watch it. Didn't it turn out great?

And the next morning, we limped around the house like old people and watched more Conference talks:

 And perhaps when my kids are older, I'll get more out of Conference again. Good thing that they record and print the messages so I can re-read or re-listen to them again!