Ehren is turning into quite the handy guy. It took him a few years because he never thought he could do stuff until he tried it and his confidence just grew from there. A lot of people saw the recent thing he built, a sofa table and I found the inspiration on pinterest, of course. We both love the way it turned out and everyone that sees it can't believe Ehren made that. Then a few weeks ago Ehren got some old barn wood from his uncle's barn and went to town on building an entertainment center for the big screen tv. It took some time because he never had a whole day to work on it, just couple hours here and there but it turned out fabulous. It is a lot like the Pottery Barn and stores like it that would sell it for hundreds of dollars. At first I thought I would stain it the same stain we used for the sofa table, but we tried it and it didn't look nice on that kind of wood and you would lose a lot of the character of the wood. So now I have a list of furniture pieces that I'd love Ehren to build :) but it will take some time. I need a similar table to the sofa table for our kitchen to use for all the kids' backpacks and school papers. You would not believe how much stuff kids keep bringing home from school every week and next Fall it will be times 3. And more than anything I hate clutter so we need something like that to stay organized better. Then there is a dining room table I really want but that will be a long project and mainly we need to find barn wood big enough to do a long table.
I just have to say I am really proud of Ehren because it didn't come natural to him, nobody showed him how it's done, but he gave it his best and now he's starting to think of his own projects. The tv stand is something he just thought of in his head, made sure the center speaker would fit right in it and went to work. Growing up with an engineer dad who could build just about anything, even fitting it right in some very imperfect walls, it wasn't always easy to let go of that idea for Ehren in my head. I realized early on that it's just not his strength and I wasn't going to push him. Yet, all of a sudden he is figuring it out and already has done more than a lot of the guys his age, even guys that can build stuff because somehow those projects are usually people's last ones on the list after work, family obligations, and other stuff. I'm glad it matters to Ehren because it is so nice to look at a piece of furniture in our home and say "we built this". I say "we" because I am the instigator most of the times and finding pictures/ideas that looks like what I want :) and somehow I manage to come up with a new project before he's even done with one. I'm sure that doesn't happen to many wives. :)
I also have to mention something about our family's newest addition - a car. :) Ehren's old Malibu is on its last miles and served us so well for 5+ years and we only paid $1500 for it so it was a really good investment. But now we were in a situation that if it all of a sudden died we would have to just buy whatever car we'd come across and so Ehren has been looking for different deals out there. He always loved nissan and he was looking at nissan muranos but they were a bit too much money most of the times. This one that was for sale a couple weeks ago was a good deal, below its value. It's a 2005 and has a lot of miles on it but Nissan can have a lot of miles on it and still be great. So we pulled the plug on it and now Ehren has a new car. It is his 40th birthday present and he really deserves it for working so hard to provide for us. It is by far the nicest car he's ever had and he couldn't be more excited. Actually, I have to say I love it too and whenever I can I want to drive it. When I'm in it I just feel like I'm in someone else's car, that it can't possibly belong to us because it's so nice. Ehren and I were just talking about how much a lot of people in TRF are so hung up on having brand new cars. People get these outrageous cars with huge car payments, and they live in a house that's falling apart. That is a little bit of how it feels and I am the odd one when I never really cared. I love my older van and I never even wished to have a brand new car, only to maybe have more seats so I can drive all the kids to town when there's no school. So now it feels very strange to own this nice car. To many it probably isn't even that nice because it's older but to us it is like being served as a king. :) I feel very blessed that we were able to get it and at the same time I want to make sure we don't take things like that for granted. Our kids know that this is our nice car and they have to be very careful in it. Ehren already made that very clear to them. :) At the same time, I really want to get up every morning and be ok with losing any of our posessions. Be ok with losing our beautiful house or cars or whatever is from this world and when we are ok with it, we are in the right place. Because you can't take any of it with you when you die and the really important things in this life are not the ones we own mainly because we never owned them in the first place. It's nice to keep reminding ourselves that whatever we have is from God and is His, it's not ours to keep and was never ours anyway.
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| the sofa table |
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| tv stand |
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| the Murrano |
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| Lake Bemidji - Kason loved climbing this rock |
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| Lake Bemidji, on our latest trip to the cabin |
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