Randoms from June

We were at one of Curtis's basketball games when we received a text from Graydon that he was taking Mabel for a walk. This isn't something Graydon would typically do without being asked by me or Andy. I loved seeing him take this initiative and I know Mabel loved it too. 

After going out for breakfast on Father's Day, Graydon and Curtis played Andy and Bella in a doubles tennis match. Andy and Bella won that match. 

I've never seen Mabel lay in this position before. 

Andy is handing over the soda machine to Curtis now that he will be getting his license soon. This will be a perfect flexible job for Curtis throughout the rest of his time in high school. 

Graydon got a new (to him) truck. He's been wanting a truck and he wants to learn how to work on vehicles and this seemed like a good one for that. I think he looks good driving a truck! 

Curtis's 16th Birthday

We decided to try out some disc golf for Curtis's birthday. First stop: Dunham's so we could actually get some discs!

There are a few free disc golf courses in the area, so we went to one of those. The competition was between Andy, Graydon, and Curtis. (Bella was in northern Indiana at the time and I was the scorekeeper). 

Graydon was the winner!

We were all pretty hot by that point, so we cooled off with some smoothies from Tropical Smoothie Cafe.

We were also hungry, so we got some food from Chipotle.

After this, Andy and Curtis went to see the movie, Obsession. It looked a little too scary for me and Bella and Graydon had already seen it. When they returned, the five of us went out for dinner at Applebee's. 

The night wasn't over yet. . . we still had a birthday slideshow, ice cream cake, and presents to open. 

Sixteen candles!

Happy Birthday, Curtis! It was fun celebrating you! 

Fireplace Glow-Up!

Ever since moving into our house, I've wanted to add stone to our fireplace. It's a little too boring/modern looking for me with just drywall and I knew the stone would add so much character. 

This was the stone I found online that I wanted. But the price tag for what we needed was $1,000 plus almost $500 in shipping, so we decided to shop local instead.  

We visited a local materials center in Hope and found this stone. We didn't want anything too gray (felt too cold) or too beige (felt too boring). This was a mixture of the two and that worked for us and was about half the cost of what we found online (mainly because we saved so much on shipping). 

The drywall wasn't strong enough to hold the stone and mortar, so the first step was removing all the drywall and putting up cement board.

Ran out of thinset mortar to cover the seams, so had to call it quits for the day at this point. 

I carried each block into the living room and tried to sort them by shape/size. 

I tried to lay out the first three rows. After that, it was just one piece at a time. 

Choosing stones was a very slow process and I'm kind of glad we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into because we might not have done it. This was the hardest puzzle we've ever put together!

Part of our issue was that the angle grinder we intended to use to cut down/shape the stones wasn't really working. In order to get the shape we needed, we resorted to hitting the edges of the stone with a hammer. Sometimes that worked great and sometimes in resulted to us accidentally breaking our intended stone in half. This is what we got done after the first full day of putting up stone. 

Day 2 of putting up stone and we rejoiced as Andy placed the last stone. 

Well, we thought it was the last stone until we remembered that we had slivers of stones we needed to cut down and place on the sides. But that was for another day. 

I didn't get pictures of the sides, but I finished them the next day. All that's left now is to add the grout. 

Here's a glimpse at the narrow sides after the grout was added and before it was smoothed out. 

I tackled this portion of the project myself. It was all going well at first, but some of the grout dried before I could smooth it out and I was left with a clumpy finish that looked terrible. I was able to chip away some of it and some of the rest needed to be grouted over. I had hoped to finish that portion of the project in one day, but I ended up running out of grout (due to my error in letting it dry before smoothing it out and due to one of our bags being the wrong color). 

Finally, finally, finally! It is done! 

Before. 

After! 

Wisconsin

I was home from Texas for a few days and then it was time to head up to Wisconsin to celebrate another nephew who graduated from high school. Here is Mabel in the van before we brought her to the kennel. We ran out of dog treats, so Andy stopped in Dollar General to buy some more while I waited with Mabel. She was so excited to get out of the house and explore. 

I meant to take more pics from Charlie's graduation party, but only managed to take a couple. 

Later that evening, we had some family time at Andy's Dad's house. Tom brought out his fire pit and we made some smores. 

The next day we went to a bowling/arcade venue. The bowling was a little different (ex, similar to HORSE in basketball), which made the games a little more interesting. 

Curtis did pretty good! 

Of course Andy needed to scope out the claw machines. 

After leaving there, we headed down to my parents' house to visit with the Benetti side. We didn't go away to Missouri this year, so this was our designated family time. Many people were still working, but the Kreusers were available to venture out to Six Flags with us that Monday. I hadn't been there since college, so it was fun to be back and introduce this place to Andy and the kids. 

Jodi took these after we finished a ride, I think it was the Viper? I love the laughs she captured of me and Bella.  

I think we were all a little worn out by this point in the day. We didn't stay until close because of plans to meet up with everyone at my parents' house for dinner. 

Cousins!

Kreusers and Kilpses - it was nice to spend the day with them.

Three Michaels: MICHAEL John, Curtis MICHAEL, and MICHAEL Benetti. 

Bennett and the big wheel.

Michael wasn't feeling the greatest the next day and was extra tired. While rocking with him, Grandpa Mike also fell asleep. 

Zoe also got sleepy. It's amazing the positions toddlers can sleep in.

We made plans to go to the lake that day. Unfortunately, the weather turned a little chilly and windy. We toughed it out anyway, but it wasn't quite the beach experience we envisioned. 

Andy and the boys went bowling after while Bella and I rode with my mom to Aaron's softball game. We couldn't get a carseat out, so Bella just sat in it. This was extra funny because I was just having a conversation with my brother-in-law about how extra protective I was of Bella, our firstborn, and how we made her stay in a carseat much longer than we did with the boys. Twenty-years-old and she's still in a carseat!  

As we were packing up the van to head back to Indiana, Michael went right up to Andy. So Andy picked him up. Michael then proceeded to lay his head on Andy's shoulder. He stayed this way for several minutes and it was the sweetest thing.