Adam and Heather Hayes

I am continuing to paint so I will continue to post paintings as I finish them. This was a very fun piece to do. It has more of a "classic old oil painting" look to it.

The original painting was done by William Bradford and is called "Fishing Boats on the Bay of Fundy". This one had more small detail and it took a white to figure out how to get the waves to look like actual waves.

I was going to take my painting stuff up to the Quinn reunion (Heather will post on that later), but we filled the car to popping as it was without my painting stuff. The reunion was a blast and now we are in the heat of things with Jaleesa getting married tomorrow.

I figured it is my turn to give everyone an update.

I made my goal of losing 30 lbs. I got back down to 175 which is about the weight I was when I graduated. I haven't been below 180 since before I got married, so I was very surprised to make the goal. I've been hovering around 175.5 and 177 for the past couple of weeks, so I didn't just "bounce" up after losing it either.

I rode my first horse last Friday. We went up to Daniel's house and I got my first ever chance to ride a horse. It was ok. They told me that trotting isn't the most enjoyable and that I should go gallup, but I'm not sure that I enjoyed that any more than trotting, but that could have just been because of how far down the stirrups were. (I have short legs and Daniel has really long legs.) All-in-all it was pretty fun. Darcy threatened that we should go for a trail ride. So we'll see how/when that happens.

T-ball. Heather finished her season (I'll let her tell you about that more herself.) But from my position as designated 3rd base coach, I thought her team did excellent. Heather was soooooo patient with the kids.

Erith and Tric were on her team and they did amazing. Tricity hit two home runs this season (which is pretty hard to do in T-ball.)

Erith keeps getting taller and her long legs kept her ahead of most anyone (even when I thought for sure that she would get out, she always beat them to the base... even if the ball was hit directly at the base she was running to.)

Overall Heather's team had a winning season and I am very proud of her and the girls. 

I've started painting again. I haven't painted in a lot of years, and I've never done oil painting. I did water color when I was in high school, but I haven't done anything since then. I convinced a very nice lady in my ward to teach me how to oil paint. I've been planning this for a while and had asked for oil painting equipment last year for Christmas, so I had most everything I needed to get going. I've completed two paintings so far, one an abstract picture based off of a Paul Klee painting that I really like. The second is a still life of a couple of bottles. I think I'm getting better and I'm really enjoying painting again. I had forgotten how much fun it can be.

Well there is my update. I'll get the pictures out here as soon as I can for people to see. Please let me know what you all think.

Well another club volleyball season has passed. We ended the season with 2 perfect tournaments, and a 85% game win rate and a 77% match win rate. My best season ever. If our setter hadn't gotten hurt during one of the tournaments, we would have even done better.

This team was amazing and I had a great time.

Wow, it's been a long time since we've written. So here is a catchup blog post.

Erith was baptized in January. Everything went marvelously.

Heather decided to dye her hair. It was a very beautiful red. I took a picture right as the sun was setting with a nice yellow glow which really accented her new color.

We went sledding a lot of times over at the "pit". The girls practically begged every day to go sledding. So when they couldn't get enough from our little piles in the front yard, we'd take them over to the pit and have some fun. Watch the wideo at the end of the post for some of the fun.

Volleyball has begun for me and we just had our first tournament. We won 8 of 8, which made me a very happy coach, including a match where we came back from 8-1 down to win 21-25. I also got the opportunity to go play on a co-ed team over in Driggs. It was a blast. Once I get some nice footage together I'll post a video.

Well, here comes another quick update for posterity sake on what I've been up to. 

Work has been going well and I'm scrambling to keep up. It feels like I just run and run. I just signed up with the new family search and I'm loving it. It is my escape now to search for people. We did a quick trial run and got 3 families ready for the temple and then Heather and I did a whirlwind day of everything for one family from baptisms all the way through to sealings. It was really fun to go through for people that I had gotten from family search and turned in. These next ones will be even cooler because I'll have done the research and finding myself.

I also helped out a buddy of mine that needed another player for his city league softball team. I went to 7 games and we won 5 of the 7. It was a lot of fun. We did a couple of games a week, so it seemed like a lot in a short amount of time. I got to play 1st base the whole time which brought back great memories from childhood.

I fixed the deck, (see the other post for in the middle picture). It seems to be holding up well and we'll see what happens after a year has gone by how they hold up.The stain seems to be working so that is great compared to our first attempt at protecting the deck (the paint wore off within weeks in some spots last time)

I also did a number of days over at another friend's house helping them move some trees (little trees from 1 1/2 feet to 7 feet tall. I'm guessing I helped out with 1500ish trees of the 7500+ they moved. It was fun even though I got sore fingers and a couple of blisters out of it. 

Erith and Tricity helped me the other day go get potatoes and deliver them to a bunch of people. One of the farmer's daughters in our stake did a young women's project and gave away a bunch of potatoes. All you had to do was show up, pick them up, and haul them off. Erith and Tric had fun picking potatoes with a little bit of dirt clod throwing (mostly at me).

All in all it has been a crazy summer and I think we've accomplished a bunch.

Well the other day the bottom step of our front deck broke. It has been threatening to break for the past...umm..... 4 years, so I knew this day was coming. Heather and I have a bad habit of not being able to "just fix things". We normally say something like this:

1. You know, while we are at it, we should replace all of the stairs,
   
2. and if we are going to replace all of the stairs, why don't we extend the stairs to be the full length of the deck,
   
3. and since the new stairs are going to need stained, why don't we sand and stain the whole deck while we are at it.

So our simple fix a bottom step turns into quite a large project. However, we are always happy with the results, it just takes longer than a quick fix (just look at our bathroom project to see a similar pattern of just tearing out the carpet to a complete master bathroom makeover.

I just finished sanding the whole deck today and we'll probably be doing the stain tomorrow. The above picture was taken when we finished installing the new stairs but before any sanding began.

We've also done some modifications to our blog. Hopefully pictures from now on should be expandable (horizontal pictures that is) by hovering over them and clicking if a magnifying glass comes up. Let me know if you have any problems with the new feature. :)

Well another club volleyball season has passed.

This season was a little harder because I had my setter in Junior Miss, which took her away quite a bit and limited the days that we could have effective practices. Overall they have improved a lot. We started them running more plays earlier in the season which was a great help. Last year we only concentrated on plays for a couple of weeks.

They are a great group of girls and I'm very proud of them. They played against reigning state champions and went hit for hit, block for block, dig for dig against them. I was SO proud. Because of the much tougher competitors we didn't have the win rate we had last year. This year we won 40% of the games we played.

Well last week Clara decided that she was going to grow up.

She started crawling last week (more of a two armed army crawl, but she is getting up on her knees more and has done some "actual" crawling since then). Also, Heather brought her in and said she had something in her mouth. I looked and she had just cut two teeth. Normally the kids get all droolly, fevery, and down right unhappy. Not Clara. She has been just as smiley and happy as ever.

Now she can put herself in a sitting position from crawling and back to a crawling position. When she does it she gets this big grin and you can see her thinking, "See what I can do." She is also jabbering quite often now. Erith and Tric swear she said "mom" the other day. I think it was just more jabbering, but who knows.