Do You Play Croquet?

Recently, I did more work for the King James Bible documentary, and this time, my duties included props and set dressing for the pickup shots that we had to do. We were able to borrow and buy most things, but we did need a croquet set that looked like it could have been played with in the 16th century. Well, I bought this one at Wal-Mart: 

 And made it into this one:

I was very happy with how it turned out! All I did was sand parts of the mallets, especially the bight colors, so it looked more dull and used. Then I put a coat of a darker wood stain on them. Calvin and I banged and scratched them on the concrete to also look more used. For the balls, I bought brown paper machete balls from Michael's and just used Mod Podge over tissue paper to put a stripe on them. A layer of Mod Podge over the whole ball made it look more wooden.

So there you go! An antiqued croquet set fit for decoration in your rec room.

Summertime

It finally feels like summer in Provo and we have been taking advantage of our Pass of All Passes which gets us into the water park, the fun centers, and the baseball games for free! We have also been making trips to the library a few times a week to participate in activities there and listen to storytime. Calvin loves picking out books and using the computers to check them out.

Today's activity was miniature golfing! He seemed have a hard time grasping that the clubs aren't hammers and that the balls are not really to be thrown, especially not into the surrounding bodies of water. It took some work, but he seemed to get the object of the game by hole 17.

He ran straight for the biggest puddle he could find.

Looking to see where his ball went after it entered the lighthouse.

Figuring it out!

Hole 17- he gets it! But why do I say "Can you golf it into the hole?"



His prizes that Kayla bought him with some tickets she won at the arcade. He spent the entire car ride home having his 2 monsters growl at each other.

Two of my sisters are staying with us right now and it is so much fun. Sam is doing an internship for the summer here, and now Kayla is visiting for 2 weeks!

Calvin has been cracking us up lately. He is such a good talker lately and his ideas and comments on things are just so cute. My favorite thing is when he does something he knows he shouldn't do, like throw a toy across the room, and our conversation goes like this:

Me: "Calvin!"
C: "Mommy happy now?"
Me: "No, Mommy's not happy because Calvin threw his toy."
C: "Oh, sorry, Mommy."
Me: "It's okay."'
C: "Mommy happy now?"

This conversation repeats probably 20 times a day after various episodes. Here is another favorite conversation that we had lately:

Me, upon seeing a very focused expression on his face: "Do you need to go poopoo in the potty?"
C: "No, not poopin. Only tootin."
Too funny.

In other news, we're getting ready for baby number 2! I still have a couple more months, but I am starting to look and feel very pregnant. Calvin is very excited to have a little brother. He puts his hand on my belly all the time and says "Feel kickin!" Precious.