Between holiday festivities we managed to fit in some more activities and projects. For starters, Jake and I have had an old, old hand-me-down coffee table in our living room. It was in rough shape (chipped varnish, big scratches, "foggy" patches) but the size was perfect and aside from being a little beat up, it functioned really well. So my big project (with tons of help from my dad) was to try to refinish this bad boy over our week in Wisconsin. Ugh, what a mess. The older-than-the-hills varnish on this thing, combined with the gooey paint stripper we tried was a disaster. We sanded, stripped, chipped, wiped, scrubbed... you name it, we tried it. But this table just did not want to look good. By the end of the week, I decided to call it a day week and left the thing in storage until I could figure out what to do with it.
Although we didn't get the table even close to being finished (why did I really think I could accomplish this in a week?!) it was a really good learning experience. I had never worked on refinishing anything before and I really kinda liked working on it. Hopefully I'll have some better luck in the future.
Back on to some more successful activities - we took Alora swimming several times and once again, she loooved it!
Some family from the Milwaukee area came to visit for a few days and my cousin Maddy (whom Alora was IN LOVE with) was Alora's idol in the water. We even got Alora to dunk her head and do some less clingy swimming.
Another highlight of the their visit was the return of my old desk. This desk was a gift from my grandparents and made by my grandpa when I was little. And *a few* years later, Maddy used this little desk in her craft and homework area. When Alora saw the desk, she jumped right on and started exploring while Maddy showed her the ropes. I'll have to figure out some way to mark all of our names on the desk.
So that wraps up our time with the Showen side of things. Thanks for the great memories!
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