Easter at the Ranch

We spent Easter this year at Daniel's grandparents' ranch in Caldwell.



It is beautiful there, this time of year.  I love it.



There are cows in the fields every morning, and the house overlooks a pond and lots of trees.  It feels like there is space there.  Well, outside anyways.



Sometimes inside the house feels a little less spacious and a little more... cozy.



Daniel's grandmother, aunt, uncle and a few cousins were there, as well.



We hadn't seen some of them in a while, so it was nice to catch up.  I like that when you're at the ranch, you have to "go into town" to get to the store.



So we don't go out much, when we're at the ranch.



We sit around and talk and cook and eat and take pictures.



We reacquainted ourselves with our adorable niece and nephew on Daniel's side, and that was so nice.



Abby is so cute.



Doesn't she just look squeezable?



She doesn't appreciate being squeezed as much as you'd hope.   



And Jonathan's use of the English language is pretty astounding.



Everybody takes turns preparing meals at the ranch.  We eat well there.



Being around other people's kids has begun making me nervous.



I think I have anxiety about introducing a whole person into the world.  What if she makes my life miserable?



I told Daniel it was intimidating to be creating a whole person, and he pointed out that God is creating her, not me.  I took that as an assertion of limited liability, which I don't think was his point.  I'm beginning to meditate on the following:

1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

2 Timothy 1:7
For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.  

Doorknob Deliberation

I stood in Lowe's yesterday, transfixed by the doorknob selection.  I need a new doorknob for the nursery - something that isn't brass.  There are lots of options at the store, but here is the dilemma:

There are doorknobs with "bedroom and bath" on the package.  These have a lock.



There are also doorknobs with "hall and closet" on the package.  With no lock.



I was reaching for the "bedroom" package when I suddenly became aware of two voices in my head:

Are you crazy??  Don't get Lucy a doorknob with a lock on it.  Think about the teenage years ahead.  Do you want to be responsible for enabling her to do all kinds of mischief behind a locked door?

Umm no.  But when I was a teenager, I was so grateful to have a lock on my door.  I didn't even use it much... I just liked knowing I could, if I really needed the assurance of privacy and space.  Wouldn't it be hypocritical of me not to get a knob with a lock?


Who cares about being hypocritical? You can't trust teenagers.  Better to risk hypocrisy than be a grandmother at age 40. 



Frozen in the aisle... I stood there, silently staring at the two packages for a good 6 minutes... and then put them both back and left.

This kind of uncertainty about parenting creates so much pressure!

My sister pointed out that regardless of what kind of teenagers you have, nobody wants a 4-year-old locking him- or herself in the bedroom.  A good point.  So when I go back to Lowe's later this week, I will be prepared: hall/closet doorknob with no lock it is.  Settled.

Visiting the Robinsons and the OKC Memorial

This past weekend we drove to Oklahoma City to visit my SIL and her husband. 



We had a really nice time, and the drives up and back were uneventful... besides some serious wind gusts and traffic on the way there. 



The Oklahoma City bombing was one of the first national tragedies I was aware of as a kid.  Can you believe it's been 16 years since then? 



I wanted to see the memorial, which we did -- and by coincidence it happens to be the anniversary tomorrow (April 19th). 



There are two large gates on either side of a big reflection pool.  One represents 9:01 and the other 9:03 AM. 



The bombing took place at 9:02 AM and is represented by the large reflection pool as well as a field of empty chairs. 



There are 168 empty chairs, and each one has the name of a victim at the base of it.  There are smaller chairs for the children who died - I wasn't aware that there was a daycare in the building.  I wish we could have seen the chairs at night, because each one is illuminated from the base. 
The whole memorial is so well done - striking and sad, but also peaceful and somehow hopeful.   



I remember seeing pictures of this chain link fence wall on the news as a 10-year-old.  They left part of it as a memorial, and people continue to leave tokens of remembrance, though my understanding is that after a while the tokens are removed and stored in the museum's archives.

"We come here to remember those who were killed, those who survived, and those forever.  May all who leave here know the impact of violence.  May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope, and serenity."

After the memorial we went to this nice park and walked around.  Very peaceful.  Beautiful weather.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend, too! 

Laying the Floor: Days 2, 3, and 4

 Praise the LORD we are finished with the floor!



We installed Mayflower Sundance Hand Scraped Birch engineered hard wood, from Lumbar Liquidators. 

Day 2 (Sunday) started off much better than Day 1.



We only had a few hours to work on it before going to our Sunday night group, but we made about 4-5 feet of progress and generally had a much easier time of it than on day 1.



Amazing what a little experience can do for you. 



Day 3 was in the middle of the week, and it consisted of about an hour's worth of work and 3 rows of progress.  My mom came over to help, and I was glad to hear her acknowledge that it is, indeed, more difficult than it sounds.  It's helpful to have somebody else there to keep you laughing (instead of cursing) at how ridiculously tedious it is.



It was a pretty busy week for us, so we didn't have time to work on the floor together again until this morning.



But today, we finished!  I should have taken a picture, but we had to switch the saw blade from the miter saw (used for cutting each plank to the appropriate length) to the table saw (used for cutting length-wise along the planks) for the last row.



I'm glad Daniel has had a little experience with woodworking (thanks, Grandpa McKinney!), because the saws are intimidating to me.  But Daniel does great with them.    

 

The last piece!  Now we just need to buy a piece of T molding to make the transition from the hallway to the bedroom.  I'll look for it sometime this next week.



Next up for the nursery: baseboards!  I was looking at this forum about baseboard heights and am pretty sure we'll go with a 6-inch height.



I'm on the fence about whether to do quarter-round shoe molding in addition to the baseboards.  I may wait and see how it looks with just the baseboards, and then decide.

Laying the Floor: Day 1

So... the flooring!  Big job.  Hard job.   

We chose a birch engineered hardwood with a glue-down application.  Sounds easy, right?  The videos you find on YouTube informing you how to glue down engineered hardwood make it appear easy.  It's not.  (But it is doable.  If you find yourself in the position of wanting to do this project, don't worry.  With a positive attitude and a lot of sweat and help from friends... you can totally do it.) 

On to the steps of this process. 

Step 1: Prepare the subfloor.  This basically means getting up the carpet and nail boards, cleaning the concrete, and making sure the floor is reasonably level.  We got all this done a few days ago. 

Step 2: Put these little spacers around the room on all four walls.  These are supposed to maintain the "expansion gap" around the flooring planks as you install them.  They are a nice idea, but sort of a joke. They tip over every time you push the planks up against them.

Step 3: Saw the bottoms off of door frames if they will be in the way of the flooring.

Step 4: Begin applying glue to the concrete slab.  The type of trowel you use is specific to the type of flooring you are installing, so you have to check that beforehand.
 
Step 5: Lay each plank so that the tongue-and-groove edges fit together nicely, using a tapping block and mallet as needed.
 
It sounds so straight-forward, right?  I took this photo in the darkest moments of the project's first hours.  We put the first plank down backwards (oh, and subsequently the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th planks as well) and had to turn it around and re-position it.  Doing this caused copious amounts of glue to ooze up between the planks.
 
I can't tell you how many curse words left my mouth in the relatively short span of time it took to lay this amount of flooring.
 
Thankfully in these types of situations, Daniel tends to brighten his tone in a manner that is inversely proportionate to my darkening outlook and language, and it wasn't long before I took the hint and began to keep my mouth shut if I didn't have anything helpful to say.
 
It was at this point that my MIL arrived with sandwiches and a really positive attitude, and that helped immensely.
 
She also began sorting the planks according to the degree of their bowing (not a good quality in a floor plank), and that was great.

Daniel was the official plank saw master.
 
Before long, we were laying the planks and tapping them in fairly quickly and with no cursing.  We ended day 1 with this much progress.  Not bad, huh?