You may say that I am baby crazy, and you would be right. The problem lies in the fact that I am surrounded by the cutest, smartest, happiest babies/kids. I keep looking for one that isn’t these things to ease my obsession, but I haven’t found any– if you know of any I’m sure Steve would be happy for me to spend a few hours with them so he can stop hearing me gush about cute babies.

Last week was nothing but babies, babies, and more babies! I loved it! Look at the highlights of a great week.

Welcome to the world Lola Ann Bateman! I am the proud aunt of another beautiful niece. She was born July 19. She is amazing already.

Look at her, only a few hours old and her eyes are looking around.

My sister-in-law Leslee

We were so happy that our good friends Lizzy and Greg were in town from California and we got to hang out with them a few times and see their adorable little girl for the first time. Lizzy is totally super mom and Pearl is a very happy baby.

Steve and I got to hang out with Missy, Joe, and cute baby Kya on Thursday– they are moving to Boston on the 25th and we are soo sad to see them go. I can talk to Missy forever about babies, parenting philosophies, and love her advice.

And last but not least I spent time with my other nieces and nephews (some are not quite babies any more, but dang cute none the less).

Theodore, McLain, Avery, Brady, Holden (with a big goose-egg & black eyes) and Tabitha

So yesterday I took the first part of my very important interpreting certification test and my brain decided to check out on me. I’m serious, it gave me nothing– I was signing “opportunity” when the person said “permit.” Not just once either- several times. Then when I was voicing, the person on the tape fingerspelled a title and I just sat there– not one word would come out. From that point on I doubt if I made one complete sentence.

Then today I took the second part of my test, and luckily my brain cooperated and I feel like I did well. I won’t get my results for 8-12 weeks so I’m nit sure about it, but I felt much better.

So I thought that my brain and I were friends again, but it turned on me again when I got home today.

I decided to boil some eggs when I got home. While I was waiting for the water to boil I went and changed my clothes and was planning on going right back to the kitchen to watch the eggs. That is when my brain decided to turn off again.

The next thing I know, I am scrap booking (maybe 2 hours later) and I hear a loud pop. I ignore it. A few minutes later I hear another pop. I ignore it. Then I heard a few pops and I walked out to see what was going on. The EGGS! I nearly burned the house down! All the water had boiled out of the pot, the egg shells were burnt and had started to burst open, and the bottom of the pot was black. If I didn’t catch it when I did, the bottom of the pot could have burned through and started the kitchen on fire. Oh did I mention we don’t have smoke alarms?

And now you see why me and my brain are in the biggest fight ever!

I know Steve already wrote about our parade experience this 4th of July, but I wanted to add my own version of the stroy.

For the past 30ish years my family (my mom and aunt mostly) make a float for a smallish community parade. This year our theme was “What’s More American” and we had Abe Lincoln, Cowboys, Indians, Marines, Dorthy (Wizard of oz), baseball players, ect. And yet again my mom and aunt built a award winning, amazing float in just a few days (and nights).

As we made our way down the route this year we shot paper confetti out of air guns- it was a big hit with the audience. When we made it to the biggest intersection, with the most people there, we shot off another colorful burst of confetti– however, this time by accident we shot up a few metallic streamers that coincidentally hit a power line, caused a huge fire ball, and knocked the power out for 15 blocks.

Now if you were to watched the news, you would think that it was some kind of catastrophe and people will be haunted by memories from this for the rest of their lives. This is why I get annoyed with the news, they can be so dramatic and spin things to be sensational. In reality, it happened so fast and people started to cheer, clap, and laugh. We couldn’t believe it either and were laughing so hard we could hardly walk the rest of the way. People yelled “that is the most exciting parade we’ve ever seen.”

I admit things could have ended differently, but no one was hurt and the power is back on. Despite what the news says, this year left me with the best memories I’ve had of this tradition for the past 24 years.

And one last family 4th of July tradition that my mom started about 8 years ago- after the fireworks at SugarHouse Park, as people are walking back to their cars, my mom and whoever else pass out root-beer floats to anyone who walks by our street. At first people are confused why this lady and her family are giving out floats, but it is fun to see the reaction people give. This year we went through 6 gallons of ice cream and 18 bottles of root beer. My mom is so amazing, fun, and a little crazy.

Ever since Steve and I bought our condo I have been wanting to replace the old oak kitchen cabinets. As this is not in the budget right now, I looked for some kind of quick fix. I asked Jake and Ryan around who are “experts” in the field of paint and stain and they said that oak is pretty imposable to stain much darker, but you can glaze them.

It was worth a try and this the process

1. Sand off as much of the clear coat as possible

2. Apply glaze

3. Wipe off the glaze

4. Clear coat

The doors were the easy part, the actual cabinets will be a huge pain.

Now here is the low down if you are looking to do this . It cost about $80 for all of the supplies, and will take probably around 30 hours to complete. Only the grain of the oak became darker no matter how much you sanded. I really liked the results while we were outside, but for some reason when we got them in I wasn’t as happy. It is o.k. for now, but eventually we will probably end up riping them out and getting new ones.