New Tricks

Kenna is full of new tricks this week. Maybe it's the time she spent with her cousins in Delaware, but it amazes me how quickly she learns new things. One day she is just hanging out as usual and then the next day she is showing off new tricks. This week she has learned to roll across the floor, eat her toes, and babble using all kinds of new sounds. The toes are pretty funny. She only eats them when they are bare. Otherwise, she just pulls her socks off.

She is getting to be more and more fun every day! We spend a good part of our day laughing at the things she does. I never knew it could be so fun to be a parent. She is a blessing in our lives.

Usually I fill the bath and then bring her in. At Grandma's house she discovered running water and loved it! She kept putting her hands and feet under the faucet.

Thankful Buzzard Day

I am just on the tail end of spending a week with my girls and boy could I get used to it. My job allowed me to work remotely all week and we took full advantage of it by driving up to Delaware on Monday night. We would have left earlier but McKenzie had to work on Monday. And thus the roles were reversed. Sunday night I got up with the baby, Monday morning I bid farewell to the spouse who was going off to work to feed my family, and Monday afternoon I welcomed home a wife whose first question was "What did you do today".... Apparently I ask this question when I get home from work every day but Kenzie tells me that my "tone" isn't friendly and is more like I am interrigating/judging her. I was tasked with the simple responsibility of packing for Delaware while Kenzie was gone to "work" at her "job" and I failed. There were too many bottles to be washed/diapers to change/babies to play with and I didn't get it done. When she asked me what I did today I told her that I didn't appreciate her "tone". Take that Kenzie. Motherhood was a handful but I loved spending time with Kenna. Although, I am glad that Kenzie does it all day everyday because apparently I had the childs clothes on backwards when she got home. In my defense there were not any tags to indicate front or back. I was also informed that I used baby shampoo as soap in her bath. In my defense it was already in the bathtub and the real soap was in a decorative baby bath basket. There are too many rules for me to be a mom. I will stick with daddyhood.
Delaware was lots of fun. We enjoyed eating lots of food with the family, sitting around doing nothing, eating more food, followed by more sitting. The entire Winn clan was around along with a few stragglers (cousins) so the house was very full. We managed to get three xbox's hooked up and played some riveting games of Halo old school style. Sad to say my video game expertise has diminished as of late.
I received the official nod while in Delaware that my book is for sale. It will be in all Deseret Book locations in 5 days and is already available online. It was a LOT of work over a long period of time to get this book out. I am glad to finally see the finished product and I really do hope that it helps people as they approach Isaiah. Here is a link to see my book posted on Deseret's website. After a week or so I expect to get rave reviews from anyone reading this blog! I was really tempted to write the first review myself and say something about how great or inspired I was, but I figure I should wait until someone can actually read the book...

Here is the link or you can google Nathan Winn. Weird...

http://deseretbook.com/auth/19940/Nathan_Winn

We came back down to Richmond on Friday to finish up the last coat of paint on the kitchen and enjoy a day of relaxation before real life starts again. We have lots to be thankful for. Friends, Family, Jobs, a House, Cars, BYU beating Utah, and I agree with my niece Alli who was most thankful for Jesus. I am just as grateful for the two beautiful girls in my life. Kenna makes me smile more than I could ever imagine (even when it is 3 am) and she has taught me a new depth and meaning in life. Kenzie is my best friend and a fox. She supports me in everything I do and is the best wife ever. And she is a fox. I am thankful for you two girls.

Oh Christmas Tree!

Once upon a time, several years ago, I wanted to buy a Christmas tree for our very first (well, actually second) Christmas together. For whatever reason, I got the idea to do this in October. Nate, being the wonderful husband he is, told me I was crazy and drove with me to Walmart where they did in fact have a very small selection of Christmas trees available. Being the fiscally conservative beings that we are, we went with the 20 dollar tree, and that has been our tree ever since - a five foot "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree. The branches were completely bare and the pole up the middle was very obvious. It did not come close to resembling a real tree. We decided that when we had a house we'd buy a real one.

Well, this is our first Christmas in a house and I decided to cash in on my promise for a new tree. We went to Lowes, where we found out just how expensive a decent tree is and decided to wait another couple years and I didn't think about it again.

We drove home from Delaware the Friday after Thanksgiving so we could get home, get settled, and relax. Kenna didn't sleep very well in Delaware, so Nate sent me to bed early that night to catch up on some sleep. I tossed and turned for a while and finally fell asleep when Nate busts through the door and tells me he as something on a computer game that he wants me to see because it was really cool. I was a little baffled, but he seemed very excited so I put on my glasses and came downstairs with him. To my surprise, there was a beautiful, pre-lit Christmas tree assembled in our living room. Nate told me he found one on sale and wanted me to have a nice tree. I have the best husband in the world and he is constantly surprising me. Its a good thing i stifled my urge to yell at him for waking me up!

Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!

This is a video of the latest thing Kenna has learned how to do...scream for fun! It's not a great video because she stops making the noise when she sees a camera, but the noise is still pretty funny. She is also rolling over pretty consistently and has found her toes. She's working on trying to get them into her mouth, along with everything else she touches. She is still happiest when she's naked.






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Winns 1 Kitchen 0

There is officially mustard on all our kitchen walls. The do-it-yourself projects will officially hang up their spurs for the Thanksgiving holiday and hopefully the spurs will remain hung till Christmas because I am tired of doing them. We decided to not be lazy and to finish the trim, caulking, baseboards, quarter round, and painting that needed to be done for the kitchen to be finished. I must say, it all turned out very nicely. It took most of our day on Saturday, but we are happy with the results. Get out your popcorn and enjoy the kitchen....



Now for the good stuff. How bout a little insight into our marriage and just how swell of a guy I really am. This kitchen improvement almost drove me to return my wife. Let me explain. First there was the shelves. Just to the right of the oven there is 9 inches of space. Just enough room for a 9 inch cabinet. When we bought our first set of cabinets, we accidentally bought a 12 inch instead of a 9 inch. So off to the store I went to exchange the cabinet and get a 9 inch one. I brought it home and asked Kenzie if she was sure that she wanted this cabinet and not some shelves. She assured me she wanted the cabinet and that it would work great and match the other ones. On the Saturday that Kenzie's dad showed up I was about to put it in when Kenzie said, "Maybe I want you to build me shelves there....Yeah I want shelves." Because I am so wonderfully patient, longsuffering, meek, willing to build shelves, and overall just a great guy I graciously obliged and off to Lowes I went to return the cabinet for a second time and find stuff to build the woman her shelves. 4 hours later, the shelves were built.

Then there were the lights. Over the sink there was a nasty florescent white light that just hung there and illuminated its disgustingness. Out it went. We went to Lowes and Kenzie found that she liked the hanging lights. I said whatever and picked up the BLACK light set and she said, "No no, get the bronze." Me, being the all around great guy and incredibly obedient husband that I am, said "OK dearest love of my life. PS your hair looks great" and we checked out. But when we got home Kenzie decided that she wanted to get the BLACK one. Off I went again to return the light set. It was so bad that the dude at Lowes asked if I was done the kitchen yet. I laughed and told her almost and then I asked her if I could return my wife. She said I could if I got a receipt when I got married. I checked my scrapbook when I got home, no receipt. The wife is here to stay.

To all you kids out there, get a receipt when you get married. You might need to take her back.

Our victory meal

Kenna helping us paint aka exersausing

Some fat chef's self portraits?And last but not least, a special thanks to Brig for flying all the way out here to help me redo the kitchen. Best...Father...In...Law..Ever. And Kenna learned to Kung Fu him too....

Job #59x323niner

Client Summary for Job #59x323niner:

Job #59x323niner proved to put my carpenter skills to the test. The client, Mrs. Winn, proved to be fairly adamant that she wanted the kitchen redone because she was not satisfied with her current 13 inches of counter space, even though that is more than enough for any wife or mother in my professional opinion. She also wanted more cabinet space and did not like the four feet of empty nonethingness that was to the immediate left of the fridge. She also put in for a new paint job as the red kitchen was overpowering. I put a bid on the job and she unfortunately took my bid, largely because there were not any other offers.

The project started 2 weeks ago when I contacted an associate in Delaware who had a large truck (Excursion) available for transporting the cabinets. I took the client and the clients dependent on the journey to obtain the said truck and drive it back down to Richmond. I arranged for a dependent supervisor (our babysitter Sarah) to watch the child on a Wednesday night while I took the client to get the cabinets. We sat in Home Depot for a good hour ensuring that the blueprints drawn by the client matched the specifications of the manufactured cabinets. We had to make a few minor modifications but were soon able to take our 5 flatbed carts to the checkout and buy the cabinets. By then it was 8:37 and the store closed at 9. We loaded up the first 5 cabinets in the pouring rain and realized we would need to take another trip. We had to drive like a crazy couple, but we were able to get home, unload the cabinets in the driveway, had our dependent supervisor help us get a dropcloth over them so the water wouldn't ruin them. We tore out of the driveway and got to the home depot just in time to get the rest of our cabinets. We got all of them home and stored them all in the client's guest bedroom until our project officially started.

Client and Dependent survive the mess during project

On Monday demolition officially began. Client's top cabinets were removed after I struggled to figure out how they were attached. There was much heaving and hoing. The top cabinets were removed successfully and the client played hooky the following day to do the priming and painting. We put up the top Cabinets on Thursday and then I looked under the sink and realized there were pipes under the sink that were providing drainage and water to the faucet. My current experience did not permit me to touch anything plumbing related so I had to contact a consultant of mine in Utah (Kenzie's dad). The consultant was eager to fly all the way out here and help with my little project, mostly because he wanted to see the client's dependent. He arrived late Friday night and immediately began his consulting. We were able to shut off the water, mostly, and install the base cabinets. The consultant proved invaluable when measuring pipes, cutting counters, or cutting a hole for sink. After gluing, cutting, prying, banging, hitting, building a custom shelf because the client decided that she wanted shelves instead of a cabinet, more hitting, cutting, and banging, the client's kitchen is complete (minus some more painting and touch up work).

Contractor and Consultant having disagreement

Caulking the cracks.....

Client was very demanding and failed to recompense myself or the consultant for our efforts. She would often make my crew re-do several aspects of the project because they were not up to her standards (which she will claim are things like unchipped countertops or "level" cabinets or "running" water) Additionally, the client's dependent proved to be very needy and distracting. The dependent was constantly distracting myself and my consultant from the task at hand. I would recommend that contractors avoid putting bids in for this client.

Before

After

Rice Cereal Take 2

We tried rice cereal again this morning. Kenna was very insistent on holding her own spoon. For the first five minutes, she kept grabbing my spoon from me, so I finally gave her her own. This worked out well except I had to block her spoon while I was trying to feed her. Occasionally she gagged herself too, but all in all, it worked out well.


Here is a video of her eating cereal and of the latest noise she likes to make:

Rice Cereal

After waking up from her nap on Halloween night, we decided Kenna should try some rice cereal. She was a little shocked at first, but after the first couple bites, she loved it! She ate quite a bit of it and Grandma Nancy said she'd never seen a baby eat cereal that well on their first try. The doctor told us we'd be surprised at how messy it would be -- and we were. Kenna kept putting her hands in her mouth and then rubbing them all over herself. At one point she grabbed the spoon and tried feeding herself, which didn't go over so well. It was very cute and I'm glad she enjoyed herself.

Happy Halloween!

Kenna spent her first Halloween napping, while her cousins went trick-or-treating, but she didn't seem to mind. She made a very cute monkey for her pictures, and spent the weekend sporting various festive clothes sent to her by grandmothers. She got to hang out with her cousin, Hailey, who tried to steam roll her once or twice. I guess it comes with the territory of being the younger cousin as poor Hailey is still trying to learn to get away from Taya. Kenna also got to meet her great Grandma and Grandpa Holderness this weekend. We had a fun weekend, but as always, it is good to be home!