Momentary laspe in judgement

Posted by Kimmi:

For those of you that know me well, you may think I lost my mind throughout the following post. I (little ol me, scaredy pants, worry wart, won't try anything new, Kimmi) went zip lining down a mountain in Provo canyon! Therefore, I temporarly lost all sense of well being.

Case in point: It all started with my Groupon of the day email. I saw this deal for the Max Zipline and started talking with my coworkers about it. Then I called Mark about it (purly for information sake since he likes Provo canyon, and even he just assumed I was kidding because he knows me so well). But then somehow, tickets were bought and reservations made.... I started asking myself 'what have I done? Do we try and cancel, get our money back?' Surprisingly, I went along with it. I got a baby sitter for the little man, and Mark and I made a date night out of it.

I wasn't really nervous until we pulled up and I saw the zip line. Can you say steep! Never the less, we got suited up. Helmet, harness, gloves, our own personal breaking system.....

Ok, now I am freaking out! I am on top of a platform, hooked to a wire by carabeaners, and I am supposed to just jump!?? Did I mention that I have to jump off a platform 15 ft in the air??

Here we are on the first platform.....can you see the terror in my face? Mark on the other hand could care less, as though zip lining down canyons was a regular occurrence.

Mark jumping off one of the steepest platforms

Here I am ready to jump (who knows where my face went)

So, I did it. I jumped into the black abyss 5 times and survived. And it was fun in a horribly terrifying way. But hey, bring on the zip lines of Costa Rica!

P.S. We have no plans of going to Costa Rica..... Unless you would like to take us.

We have a one year old!

Posted by Kimmi:

Spencer turned one on October 12, 2011. My how time flies! He continues to amaze me with how much he is learning and growing each day.
Current stats:

• Height 31 inches
• Weight 21 lbs

          He is pretty much a mini Mark...growning tall and staying skinny!

Current abilities:    

• Spencer can sign the words 'eat' 'drink/milk' 'more' 'all done' and 'please'. We are working on 'sleep' and 'thank you'.
• Spencer can say 'daddy' 'momma' and 'doggy'. He says 'ba' for anything that starts with a B (ballon, bear, book, ball, etc).
• Spencer can walk about 5-6 steps at a time. He has to be in the mood to walk, and you have to be on the floor to catch him in your arms. I think he loves the cuddle and excitment from Mark and I more than the new found skill.
• He can give high five's.
• He loves puzzles (maybe I will finally have some one to do them with since Mark thinks puzzles are a form of torture), books, and toys that he can put parts into one another.
• He is still loving Mr. Bear the most.
• He likes anything soft (ie rugs, pillows) and will rub his hand on them back and forth, then lay his head one the item for a minute of softness enjoyment.

Spencer is a great little kid to have around. He is so easy going and usually has a pleasant personality. Family members all say he looks like Mark but he acts like me. I'll take it, because I have been warned that any kid that has Marks personality is going to be a little hellion (ah, the future we look forward to).

We had a small get together for Spencer's b-day. Food, family, and cake always make for a great party!

Spencer made out like a bandit in the gift department. So much so we decided to hide away a few of the gifts and give them to him again at Christmas. (He'll never even notice)

This was the first time Spencer had ever had cake (we still only gave him a piece without frosting) He loved it, but he was ready for bed soon after. He got kind of cranky by the end of the night. 

Call me prideful but... BEST TABLE EVER!

Posted by Mark

Kimmi and I have discovered a very serious problem with ourselves…. Our taste far outweighs our budget. Thus, this has been the problem on our quest to find the perfect dining room table. In my recollection our current kitchen table was the first piece of furniture Kimmi and I bought together. We got it on sale from K-Mart for like $100 while Kimmi and I were still engaged. The table has served us well but is too small for our new dining room. Not to mention it only seats four so any chance of having more than one other couple over for dinner impossible.  In our scouring of local stores and the internet for tables we ran into two serious problems. 1) We have very serious size constraints. We want bigger, but can’t go too big. We must have a table that fits certain size requirements so we have room to maneuver around the dining room. 2) Any of the few tables that we’ve found to fit are generally WAYYYYY to expensive. We’ve toyed with the idea of having a table built custom, but our favorite furniture builders are too busy to make it for us. (Serves us right for referring them to so many people)Thus we decided to take matters into our own hands. Though we’d like to claim complete design credit ourselves, Kimmi in fact came across a blog which highlighted the building of an awesomely cool herringbone designed table. Though it appeared to be very time consuming, I honestly felt I could tackle such a project. Thus my carpentry project commenced!

(seen inspiration here: http://www.designsponge.com/2011/08/before-after-herringbone-wood-dining-table.html) 

First hurdle: Like our inspiration web site I need to find a door for my base. Solution? KSL classifieds. I found a guy who just so happened to live in Bountiful, selling large heavy doors for $15 bucks a piece! I bought two. One for the table top and one for the legs. These doors are HEAVY! So much so that I can’t maneuver them on my own nor ask Kimmi to help cause she’s too little and couldn’t lift the one side. I either had to use a hand truck to wheel it to where I needed it, or call over a neighbor to help. Kimmi was legitimately concerned that our floor couldn’t sustain such a heavy table.  I'm telling you that these doors were a steal at $15!

Second hurdle: Where to get the wood strips to make the herringbone pattern... The girl from the blog used a collection of Ash strips accumulated over the years by carpenter friends and family.  Because I knew of no such person, I had to think of another idea. Solution? I’d make my own wood strips using the left over pieces of Oak butcher block counter tops from our kitchen renovation! Sure I had to cut a 150+ strips, but it was free!

Third hurdle: I’ve never actually built a table before. Solution? Pretend I know what I’m doing and wing it. Thankfully I never screwed up to bad that couldn’t be fixed.

Lessons learned: “If I were ever to do this again” (Which I won’t because I’m not crazy)

-I would probably invest in a better table saw. The $65 Ryobi I bought off KSL a year or so ago works great for little projects but for cutting 150 strips of 1 ¾ inch think oak butcher block took its toll on the poor little machine and it wasn’t the most accurate. Some strips were thicker on one end then the other. Ect. I sanded most of the problem areas out but still it would have saved me a few days of sanding.

-Apply the wood filler BEFORE you spend four evenings sanding out the edges, because you’re just going to have to spend another 3 evenings sanding off the excess wood filler! I really could have killed two birds with one stone on that one.

-I probably would have taken the extra time and mitered the trim joints. At the time I didn’t really think of it but I will also chalk this up to laziness. After I finished the trim Kimmi asked why I didn’t miter the joints and all I could say was “I don’t know…. Why didn’t I miter them???!!” Oh well, it doesn't look bad. 

Anyway, from start to finish it probably took me a month and a half to finish, working an hour or two in the evenings and a good number of hours on the Saturdays. 

Enjoy a few photos of our journey. 

So this is one of the tables we bought. They were brand new, never used, other then the obvious cutting of the door knob hole. 

To make my 150+ strips I had a few left over butcher bock pieces to choose from

This picture doesn't do justice to the size of the sawdust pile under my table saw. it was at least a foot high. I cut each strip about 1/4" thick and the strips were cut in two lengths. 7" and 8.5"

Spencer enjoyed eating one of my reject strips of wood.

I would paint the back of each strip with wood glue and then use a finishing nailer to secure the strip to the table. Kimmi helped a great deal at this point in the process. I needed my wife's OCD to make the strips perfectly uniform and even. 

The end result.

I then used my circular saw to cut off all the hang over. 

After many hours of sanding with 80, 120, and 220 grit sandpaper

Installed the trim around the outside of the table. You can also see my two table legs off to the left. I used the second door and cut two pieces to the desired size. I then used 1/4" thick oak plywood and laminated it to both sides of the legs. I finished it off by using left over hard wood floor pieces cut to 1/4 inches thick strips as the trim around the legs. The legs are then attached to the table with 8 bolts per leg. This thing is SOLID. 

After the stain and sealer. 

The final product. 

We got a piece of clear glass cut to size as a protection for the table. We figured it would make it easier to clean and deter future children from carving their names in the wood. The chairs are new from Ikea. The decorations were for Spencer's Birthday.

Though this was a very time consuming project, We really couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. Now it's off to the next project!

Photo session

I'm sure you will be seeing more of these pictures later, but we wanted to share with you the sneak peek we received.

Saturday we had one of our good friends come over to take some one year old pictures of Spencer (she also the photographer who took Spencer's infant pictures) She snapped a few of Spencer and a few of us as a family. As I'm sure you will agree, she did a great job.

http://dcphotobooth.blogspot.com/2011/10/dibb.html

If you or your family needs pictures taken, give her a call. she's very talented.  

Wait.....I am Old Man River!

Posted by Mark:

At the ripe old age of 28 I've started to notice something alarming. I'm getting old. Some of you (Those older then 28) might laugh and say "Wait till you get my age!" And that is probably true, but I just wanted to point out that I'm starting to see the signs. Let me run through a few of my more recent old man traits.

1. For the first time in my life I added to the grocery list "TUMS" ......TUMS??!! that's something my grandpa puts on HIS grocery list. What happened to the days that I could eat anything and everything with little to no effect. This thing called heartburn sucks.

2. More and more people address me as Sir......

3. Now when I get injured it takes me a lot longer to recover. A few weeks back, while playing Basket Ball, I took a really hard knee to the thigh. Not only did I limp for 3-4 days afterwards but the thing didn't stop hurting for at least 2 weeks!

4. 10pm is now late. In my college days I never went to bed before midnight. In fact. 2am was my usual time to be in bed.

5. On the same token, I can't sleep in as late as I used to. Now I'm lucky (after pretty much forcing myself) to sleep in till 9am. I remember when I could sleep in till 1pm. Those were good times.

6. I'm starting to get really annoyed with the high school kids who drive past my house going 100mph with their loud cars. (I used to BE that annoying kid) Particularly there is this one gray Dodge Magnum who is my current arch nemesis. Every day, with out fail, he flies past with engine roaring. I am quite tempted to throw a rock through his front windshield but then I change my mind cause I'd rather not get arrested. 

7. You know all those sitcoms and movie characters that seemed so old when you watched them when you were young? Well in watching them now I realize that all of them are portraying 25, 26, 27 year olds. For example: I'm older then Ross Geller in season one of Friends!  

8. I find that I have to get up in the middle of the night to use the little boys room more often.

9. Remember when I used to have blonde hair? My hair is getting darker and darker every year.

Anyway, I'm predicting that it's only a matter of time that I'll be sitting on my front porch to spray punk kids with my hose who even think about walking on my lawn.

 In closing I'd like to quote my late grandfather, George Dibb when he expressed his feelings about aging to my dad after a long day of helping my dad move.  "Roger, getting old is Hell." My grandpa was a very wise man.