Tess the Tiger Badminton Player!

Tess decided to play badminton this year with her friends Amanda and Cassie. She was good at it and ended up having tons of fun!

Tess, Cassie, Jessica and Michelle chillin' before their matches start.

Russ, my parents and I came to all the home games and quietly cheered Tess on. These games were quite mellow and proper.  No yelling allowed. 

Cassie and Jessica taking pictures of themselves with Tess's new iphone.

Clean Freak!

Normally, I am not the holder of the title, "Clean Freak" in our home (that is reserved for Russ). But I finished my BYU class and had a couple of free weeks before I ordered my next one so I had to find some way to fill the void!

It started with some innocent wiping down of the front of my kitchen cupboards. They were so gross and I was amazed at how clean I got them! So I caught the cleaning bug and I decided to get rid of this white stripe that is inside my oven door that has been bugging me for YEARS! 

Before: Many years ago I was cleaning the oven and I sprayed too much 409 on it and it got inside the door and dripped down the inside leaving this innaccessible white streak. The other day I noticed screws on the top and side of my oven door making me wonder if it was possible to take the door apart so I could reach the blasted streak on the inside.

  

So I took the screws out and the handle came off, the sides and bottom opened up and I could finally reach the streak! I used the evil 409 and really scrubbed down all surfaces inside the door. It was amazing how greasy and dusty it was! But the streak was gone!

The trickiest part of the whole thing was getting the oven back together! It took me a few minutes to get everything lined up right and to figure out the right order to do things, but alas, I did it! Now my oven door acutally looks clean when I clean it! :)

We have had this hole in our ceiling for 3 years because we have had a leak that we have not been able to find the source for and so we have had to leave it open so it can leak onto the floor (onto a towel).

Then I discovered that it was damaging the ceiling in the bathroom too. It was time to finally figure it out. The leak mostly leaks when the dryer is running and the more laundry I do, the more it leaks. After a homemaking lesson on household tips where Robin Hirsche talked about cleaning out her dryer ducts with a leaf blower, and another conversation with the Beasleys, I finally figured out that it was leaking becuase our duct was sooooo full of lint, the moisture from the towels and clothes was getting trapped in the lint and leaking out of the poorly sealed duct!

On the same day that I was cleaning out my oven, I called a duct company, "The Top Hatter" and for $140 they came and cleaned my duct. They said I was exactly right about where the leak was coming from and when they go to clean out ducts, they often find holes punched in the ceiling all along under the duct because of moisture build up just like mine! See the lint on the floor in front of the hole in the wall. That was just what was hanging out of the opening! Another problem was our long silver duct leading from the dryer to the wall opening. It was way too long and kinked and not helping our air flow problem either.

First they blew the lint out from the inside with a huge leaf blower type thing, then they used a big snake and twisted it around inside the duct from both directions. It was soooo loud when they spun that sucker around.

This is what they had cleaned out of the duct. It has been building up over the last 10 years. I guess you are supposed to clean your ducts every two years. OOPS!!!

The next phase of cleaning was to touch-up paint all the areas on my newly cleaned cuboards where the paint had rubbed or chipped off over the last few years. I do this probably every 3 years or so. Russ and I painted these cupboards white ourselves about a year after we moved in to this house. 

These two cuboards under the sink were the worst because of all the water that drips down them, and the grimy hands that are constantly opening them to access the garbage, so I basically repainted the whole thing. LOVE IT!

It looked so much better I even had to scrub down the garbage can so it looked good too!

This is an after picture of my next project. I spent about 3 hours cleaning out and redoing the labels on my sand collection. Before this, the labels were on white card stock and not laminated and the blue writing on them had gotten wet and smeared and the labels were all warped and lumpy. They were tied on with thinner off white ribbon and just looked yucky. I had contemplated throwing it all out and then decided to just jazz them all up and I'm so glad I did! 

This time I used thicker ribbon, different fonts, different colors of card stock and I waterproofed the labels. I also dumped out all the shells and sea glass which were gray with dust and washed them all clean and shiny. I even rinsed some of the sand, and what I didn't rinse, got cleaner just by dumping it into a bowl while I cleaned out the jars. 

Ok! Next on the list was sewing up my splitting couch! I was inspired by the apholstery needles that my mom gave me of my sister, Liza's. So I credit Liza for this long overdue repair. 

It was a lot harder than I thought in some ways, and it was also easier than I thought in others. It was hard to get that needle through the leather but I finally got in the groove!

The corner of the ottoman was the first place to split open many years ago. When it bugged me, I just turned it around so I couldn't see it. I couldn't do that to the arm of the chair though. It was time to take care of it!

Olivia took this pic. of me stitching the seat of the chair cushion. It was so hard to see the holes down in the crack so they got me a headlamp! SO SMART and helpfull!

After! This first one took me about 1.5 hours!!! My hands were soooo tired! But my soul was sooooo happy!

All done seat!!! I need to get an after picture of the ottoman, but it looks fabulous as well!

Besides the reward of having a much cleaner, less drippy, and nicer looking home, was this puzzle that Chloe and Olivia and I were working on. After lots of stitching or painting, I would let myself put it together for a while and when I finished my last project, Chloe and I raced to be the one who put in the last piece. Chloe won!

Another project I worked on but didn't take pictures of, was touch up painting my tan painted walls both down stairs and upstairs. It started out with just a few spots, but ended up being entire walls. Note: if you don't want to have to redo all your touch ups, get your paint shaken up really well at Home Depot before you start your project. I stirred it like crazy, but after my paint dried, you could see a slight difference in the paint color and sheen. I had it shaken and redid almost all of them and it looked better but some I had to do some creative blending. But all in all, my house looks AMAZING!!! 

Now what?!! I need to get my carpets cleaned!

The Nicest Dentist Ever!

     Yesterday my front tooth chipped when i was eating a Wheat Thins Stix (Fire roasted tomato flavored- YUMMY, but dangerous) and all of the sudden my mouth felt funny. There was a hunk of my tooth gone. It's the tooth that I broke as a kid and the fake part chips off about every year or two. Anyways, I called my dentist's number and called the emergency number because the machine said they are not open on Fridays and it was late Thurs. night and we are heading out Saturday morning for a week vacation on Lake Mead!!!! I didn't want to have a broken front tooth all week! Anyways, the emergency number was Ben's cell phone (he's my dentist) and he said he was out of town in Texas but he'd be home Friday  night at 8 and would meet me at the office and fix it then! SWEET!! 

     Olivia really wanted to come, (which was good because it would have been awkward to be there alone) and see how he fixes a broken tooth. So at tonight at 8:30 we drove to his office and I told Ben Olivia was there to see how he fixes a broken tooth. He asked Olivia if she would be his assistant because there was no one else there. She said SURE! He had her hold the little suction tube while he ground off the rest of the composite part of my tooth and prepped it. Then he put glue on and had her hold the little light that dries the glue for him. He even walked out of the room while she was working on me. It was so funny to look up and see my little kid holding the equipment. He showed her where to put the tools and how to turn them on so she could do it all by herself. Then she watched him put the putty on my tooth and shape it into a tooth shape. She thought it was funny that he said he gets to play with play-dough all day. Next she used the light again (3 bursts of 5 seconds each) to harden my tooth while he again left to do something and trusted her to do it right. When she was done she put it in the slot and he came back and asked how much he needed to pay her for assisting him and asked her if she wanted a job. TOO CUTE! And if you know Olivia, she was LOVING IT! 

     Then my kind dentist (who had been up since about 3:00 am) said he was going to run home to take a quick shower and drive 2 hours to then hike for 2.5 miles to where his sons were camping with the scouts!!! I had no idea he was going to have to do this when he offered to help. He is sooo nice! 

FAMILY REUNION!!!!

One of the first events on our Koski family reunion in Utah this summer (Aug. 1-3, 2011) was playing disc golf at the park! Actually- this was the unofficial beginning of the reunion. We headed to the park on July 30th after we got into town. We just couldn't resist the beautiful weather and a chance to play disc golf. Part way through our game the Wilsons, Winters and Stewarts showed up at the park too. It was fun running to greet our long lost family members across the green grass.

My 24 year-old brother, Bill, is by far the best and we all wish we had his skills. Here he is showing us how to put from any angle!

Tess doesn't want to lose a stroke so she throws from the stream. 

Brrrr!!!

Back at the Koski's house in Alpine, Ryan and Olivia practice drumming. Olivia's actually got good rhythm! 

Just chillin' on the front lawn on Sunday evening, waiting for hte reunion to officially start and enjoying each other's company lots!

Bro-in-law's Rich and Daniel with their babies, Peter and Eliza. Precious!

Rustin eating Starbursts with Dorothy. He loves Dorothy lots. When she came to visit in AZ a few months ago, he came downstairs and picked her up and swung her around when he gave her a hello hug! 

On Monday morning (Aug. 1) the reunion -that was planned by my sisters Emily and Katie, officially started! We headed out for a hike to slide down, "Sliding Rock"

There was a big NO TRESPASSING sign. Maybe we should have listened!

Kole, Rustin and Shane on top of the fence. 

I just love these three little cousins! Claire, Katie and Abby trecking up the hill. Notice they all had their sweatshirts tied around their waists? I had mine around my waist too, that was our group's "uniform" as we hiked up to the waterfall together. These girs were cracking me up. They are all about 8 years old. 

When we got to the end of the hike and I saw this waterfall, I thought to myself, "Why are we stopping? This is clearly NOT what we are sliding down!! That is WAY too steap and rocky!!!"

But, I was wrong. This was it! And surprisingly it didn't hurt that much going down. I didn't believe it until I did it myself!

Rustin just slid down the waterfall behind him and is freaking out at how cold the water is. When you hit the pool at the bottom you pretty much get submerged and it is shockingly freeeeeezing!!!!!

Kenny is also quite a bit cold and maybe just a little CRAZY!!! :)

The trickiest part of the whole thing (almost), is working up the nerve to climb this rock on your way up to the top off the slide. Here Tess is helping Andrew scale the wall. Shane and Clark are waiting at the bottom.

Our lovely mother came out of a scare she had, relatively unscathed. She accidentally went head first over the little waterfall pictured below when she was reaching for Clark's flip flop that had escaped him and was swirling around in the water. Rich and Anne were right next to her and could tell she was off balance, reaching too far. Rich reached out to grab her just as she fell into the water, went over the ledge and fortunately got stuck in a bunch of sticks and logs and was thus prevented from going over any more ledges.

Russ was at the top of the big waterfall with me and I could tell by the yelling and everyone running dangerously fast along the water's edge that someone was hurt. When I heard them saying it was my mom, I made Russ hop on the waterfall and get his doctoring skills down there! Rich and Daniel and Mark were already pulling mom out of the water when he got down there and she was miraculously just fine other than a scratch on her back and a hole in her shirt where one of the sticks grabbed her and held on tight. We were shocked that she hadn't hit her head or hip or something and immediately wondered if Liza had helped make her little fall a little less scary by protecting her in some way or another. Thanks little sis!!!!

All smiles again after our scary few moments. Tess, Steve, Russ and Rich getting ready to hike back down the hill. 

I was so proud of myself, I got one of the only pictures of Kjerstin facing the camera and actually smiling!!! Love you girl!



While we were gone sliding, the little kids were getting faces painted. This is my nephew, Jack. Is he cute or what!!!



That night was our big family reunion event at the church building.
Here he is with his silly sister, Jane, later that day at dinner.

Nephew, Jake, sure is working hard at the alphabet beads. Good thing he has those safety goggles on! 

Here is Eliza all face painted and glittery after I did her "Glitter Toes!" Precious!!

Me, Jen and Mj. The oldest three Koski girls. 

Tess wearing one of her little cousin's (Kolbe) hats. She looks so little!

Rustin playing the Koski version of "Guess Who"that my sister, Katie, made with pictures of our whole family (even the little fetus in her belly)! 

Chloe working hard on some thumbpritn art in one of the other rooms. So many fun projects to do!!

  Some of the cousins, uncle Bill, and Aunt Katie,  playing outside games with the kids while the rest of us cleaned the gym floor. You'll see why in a minute.

Aunty Em' and Olivia showing of their t-shirt headbands (and arm band).

Chloe, Grandapa, me, Mj and Liv, crafting away!

Grandpa playing with his youngest grandkids earlier that day. So cute!

Beautiful Karianne wearing her favorite shirt. It was Liza's "Sunmaid Raisin" shirt. 

Time to chow down with the family! Taco salad!

Snitching is very tempting!!

Olivia got caught! (ok. this was actually posed. Liv would never do something like that)!

Rustin caught eating McDonalds instead!

Me and my Kj!!!!

My sisters with the matching hair. So darling! Anne and I feel so left out (not really) but are not willing to part with our locks!

My sisters did such a great job coming up with fun activities for the kids. Olivia is displaying her t-shirt craft. It's a headband made out of braided strips of old t-shirts that we cut into strips and stretched out before braiding and adorning with beads. Olivia made about 5 of them. Belts too!

Russ just chillin' and playing some sort of game on his phone while he waits for something exciting to happen.

Anne making a speech before saying the opening prayer for dinner. 

May displaying her very long dread lock, I mean, t-shirt craft head band.

Kenny and Alex and Andrew playing Ninja, my favorite pary game ever!!!

One of our other super fun and creative games (and messy) was a marshmallow war with our own homemade marshmallow launchers. They were made by cutting a hole in the bottom of a dixie cup and taping a balloon (uninflated) over the entire bottom of the cup where the hole was. Then you just drop a marshmallow into the cup which falls down into the balloon, pull back on the balloon and let her fly!

Note: Do this game OUTSIDE!!!! Everyone stepped all over the hundreds (probably thousands) of mini-marshmallows and smeared them all over the gym floor. I'm talking about 44 people smashing them into the floor!! It took about 8 of us over an hour to clean the whole gym with mops and towels and plenty of elbow grease!!

Just as we were finishing spit-shining the gym floor, we ate a yummy dinner of taco salad. Then my parents, who had recently returned from their records preservation mission to The Azores (Portugal), gave us a cool presentation about their adventure. They showed pictures from their trip on Dorothy's big screen, and brougth a TON of items from their mission for the kids and family members to look at and read about. See all the pink tags behind dad on the table and green tags by mom on the table?

There were also tables in the back with different colored labels and tags and little explanations. Great job mom and dad!!

 In addition to brother-in-law, Shea (with an owie thumb) being there, my mom's brothers and sister came and a bunch of our cousins!!! SUPER COOL! Our big family reunion of 44 got even bigger!!!

Mj and Dorothy on back row. Ryan, Claire sitting on Karianne's lap and May in front of them.

Don't blame Luke for falling asleep, he has already seen this presentation here in AZ right after they got home last December :)

Just had to add this cute picture of Chloe playing "Littlest Pet Shop" with cousins Kate, Jane and Lucy  on Sunday afternoon. 

The second day of the reunion, Tues. Aug. 2nd, was our big trip to LAGOON!!!

Here we are heading in for our adventure!

Here the next group comes! We had a whole pavilion reserved and used most of it up! Here come the troops to set up camp.

The three biggest boy cousins, Alex, Steven (brothers) and Rustin.

Rustin and the next biggest boy cousin, Ryan. Love that smile Rudy!!

Karianne, Russ and Steve getting ready to blast off on the ROCKET!!!

Here we are! This is just after eating a big lunch and ready to head out and see if we can keep it down or not. Our Rollersaurus shirts were such a great thing to wear at Lagoon. There were 42 of us in our yellow shirts and we were sooooo easy to find. In face, we became a little famous! People would talk about us and point when we walked by. A lot of people asked us what the Rollersaurus was for. We told them about our precious Liza. Someone asked us where you can buy one of those shirts. Some girls took a picture of themselves with Rustin and Alex in their shirts. Then when Anne was back in Idaho, teaching high school 2 months after the reunion, one of her students saw her wearing her Rollersaurus shirt and said, "Hey, were you at Lagoon this summer?" YES, in fact, she was!

Heading up the Rollercoaster full of the Rollersaurus gang. Tess gives us the I LOVE YOU sign.

Taking the tram. Hoping we can spot Liza up in the clouds or maybe "living in a tree, drinking nettle tea." Olivia could not resist shooting her hair rubber band onto the roof of a building we passed over where there were about 15 other rubber bands looking like they needed one more pal.

Tess telling us she loves us again on the Octopus ride. Claire not looking like she's having much fun.

Kjerstin and Olivia having fun with Tess and Claire coming up behind.

All done. Nice one Katie!

Liv, me and Abby

Chloe got hold of the camera again.

Tess's shot going up the old rickety white rollercoaster. She might have thought it'd be her last!

Our main Wed. activity was an awesome tribute to our little sister, Liza, who had passed away six month  before, in January 2011. We went up to Silver Lake in the Utah wilderness and brushed (cleared or widened) almost a mile of trail, just like she did for Northwest Youth Corps in Oregon and Washington these last few years. Anne set this all up and it was abosultely wonderful! Liza's favorite shirt was her famous Rollersaurus shirt so we had them made for this family reunion. We all wore them and hope that she noticed!!!

These were our guides, Scott and Curtis (?) They were so fun to talk to and Liza would have been buddies with them in real life I think.

Getting some really good instructions about NOT chopping off your fingers or slicing other peoples heads etc.

We had different assignments. Some of us "lopped"with these big loppers (That's Tess in the pic). This was Liza's least favorite job. We all remember her bemoaning hours and hours of lopping up in the wilderness. I think it was boring and hurt her back. Amen to the back hurting!!!! We had so much fun "Lopping for Liza!" It wasn't boring to us.

Another picture of Kjerstin but she did manage to hide behind the water bottle a little too well.

One of the other jobs is raking and chucking the leaves and twigs and stuff the other people lopped. You take the big metal rake called a McCloud, and just run it along where the people were lopping and pull everything into the middle of the trail, and then pick it up and chuck it out into the woods as far as you can throw it. This was hard work too and I didn't like it as much as Lopping.

  Here Rich is lopping, I'm chucking and behind me, Katie is raking.

Now we're just posing :)

 Chloe and Aunt Katie (who is pregnant!) working hard!

Alex, Emily, Kjerstin, Tess and May

Olivia was all worn out. After a while I gave her the job of gathering up the water bottles and snacks and making sure they stayed with us and didn't get left behind as we slowly headed up the trail, clearing as we go.

May and Tess showing us the tools of the trade.

My sisters Katie, and Dorothy. So pretty!!!

Brother-in-law Shea is one happy trail brusher!

Karrianne trying to get at the root of the problem. HAhahahaa!

Steven with Loppers and May with a McCloud. Look at all that greenery!

Rustin and Emily working away. Bill a little further up. Way to go!!!

Emily worked herself into exhaustion (we all did) and then took a snooze in the middle of all the commotion at the Koski's house. This reminds me of when she was a little kid and we had a big party with lots of family friends over and Emily slept through the whole thing. I think she might have even been out on the couch!

Dad trying to get a snooze too. Good luck!

Little sister, Anne is tired too (actually this was on Monday)

Rich doing what Rich does best, entertaining about 5 kids at once.

The whole family (except our baby, Liza) at the last event of the family reunion, a big family picnic! 

We have to have a goofy picture! Pretty easy with all us goofs!!!

We had so many activities at the park it was crazy! We had lawn games like Speedminton, Bacci ball, disc golf etc. There was bingo- with tons of cool prizes, some of which Kolbe is hanging from his neck in this picture above...

BINGO!!!!!!!

The duct tape crafts were a HUGE hit. Chloe with her duct-tape head band (she did make tons of cute flowers and more)

Camille, Kate and Kolbe just digging in the sand of the volley ball court. Love those grins!! Kate lost her "snaggle tooth" a few days before this when her dad accidentally elbowed her in the mouth when climbing into the back seat of the Suburban. Ouch and Yay!

The ones who started it all, Mary Anne and Kent (aka Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa)

May trying to get her dad, Mark to make a funny face. Nice try May!

Me and my Deeds :)

My big bro, Steve, cooked us up some yummy sausages and hot dogs

Anne with her yummy fruit salad.

Of course there was some delicious food for dinner and the best company anyone could want!

Olivia and i stranded on a very small island in a very small stream. 

Eeeeek!

Mom, Dad and the kids.

Book ends again. I'm holding up my necklace with my picture of Liza on it cuz she's always part of our family.

Right after that picture, Dad wanted one of just the girls only. Seeing as how we were one girl short, and would be for the rest of our mortal lives, Emily -and then the rest of us, just broke down and cried. This picture used to be sooooo fun with our little Liza, now it just sucks without her there! I love how we are hugging and crying and smiling all at the same time.

We dried our eyes and did our best (I snuck Liza into the picture again) to look happy. This was our first family reunion without Liza and it was hard. We will never be the same. 

Love you Liza! Hope you are having a great day up in Heaven! Can't wait to see you again!!!

After the official reunion was over, we headed to BYU on Thursday with the Wilsons and the Koskis. Here Chloe is picking some poor man's nose at the science building on campus.

Some things never change. When Steve and Jen, and Russ and I were here, this same enormous pendulum was here and it is still swinging today.

There were tons of little experiments you could try. Most of us failed to hook this little floater, but Clark did it!

Olivia thinks this sculpture of books at the BYU art museum was soooo cool! Hopefully no one's gonna make her read them all!

Most of the books are LDS publications and from the Utah county area.

Rich saying a little prayer before he throws the ball!

No trip to BYU would be complete without some bowling in the Wilkinson Center!

I very slyly took this picture of Kj with the camera down on my lap so she wouldn't see. She was shocked later on that I snapped this without her knowing. 

Mwaaahaaaa haaa!!

We were so glad Jen came with us to BYU! She was one great hostess with all of us swarming around her house the way we do! Love you Jen!