Stay-cation

Zac took off the first week in July, and we had a great time staying around here (minus the very quick trip to Bartlesville).  We did something "fun" just about every morning.  I had been dying to go back to the Wilderness Safari now that Mason was old enough to enjoy it.  I went with my family when Mason was a baby while Zac was working.  I think he enjoyed it more than the boys. The only thing that we missed out on was being able to play with a monkey.  They said there wasn't enough workers at that time to let us hold and play with one like we got to previously.  I guess we'll just have to go back...

 The kangaroos are my favorite!

 I was really surprised how well Mason did.  I thought he might get to scared to feed the animals, but he wasn't-even after the donkey accidentally bit his finger!

 





 As most probably know we LOVE living in NWA!  One thing we are really excited about is that they are building a 36 mile long trail going all through nwa from south Fayetteville to Bella Vista.  Parts of it are completed so one day we took a family bike ride on the section near us that goes up into Rogers.

 We rode for a total of about 10 miles and Paxton was passed out cold by the end of it!

 I took advantage of Zac's being home to get a couple things done around the house.  When we got married we had this end table that was Zac's great grandmothers.  I wasn't thrilled about it because it wasn't a pretty color and it was in really bad shape - the guys never used a coaster.  So when someone I knew needed some furniture about 6 years ago I jumped at the opportunity to let her borrow this.  Well we just got it back from her, and I started feeling crafty.  Thanks to some help and supplies from a friend at church I think it turned out really nice!  I still need to find handles for it because one of the originals was broken.

Another thing I wanted to tackle was our front door.  It is a cheap, nothing special, metal door.  It was white and needed to be painted anyway since we made a couple big gashes on the front of it.  I decided to go with black.  We learned the hard way of what NOT to do. I saw on pinterest you can spray paint the doors.  What I didn't realize is that when you spray paint the primer it needs to go on thick and evenly.  I just did a quick spray so that it created different textures which then showed up even after we used 10 cans of rustoleum spray paint. So we sanded it down a bit and then just rolled an oil based black paint.  It's not perfect which really bugs me, but it does look a lot better than it did!  By the end I was just ready to be done with it.  At least we know for next time.  I was happy with the way our door knob turned out - we spray painted it with rustoleum's oil rubbed bronze. 

 

Mason took swim lessons for two weeks, and one of the weeks was during Zac's staycation.  He loved it!  It was a class of 5-3 year olds and she had us parents help in the pool.  I was so proud of what he accomplished those two weeks.  By the last day we was able to swim for a little bit by himself. 

Here is his teacher Mrs. Dana and her daughter/swim assistant on the last day.  We had a great week, but as always it went by too fast!