Such a busy week!

Monday of last week we painted the counters with a gray coat of paint in preparation for installing the new countertops.

Tuesday morning Gideon started throwing up - he was sick all day, but by Wednesday he felt better. Baby Elizabeth also was possibly sick, however, it is hard to tell with babies - perhaps she was just throwing up with babyness.

Tuesday during the day we had the arborists come over to chop down the dead spruce in our front yard, and the trees of heaven on the south side of our house. They made short work of the trees, but apparently, they dropped a branch on one of the trees owned by our southern neighbor, and he was unhappy about that for a while. He got over it, and nothing came of it, however.

On Tuesday night Caitlin and Sal came over and helped us to apply the first layer of epoxy to them. This layer had coloring, sparkles, and various types of paint added to it in order to make it look like stone. It ended up looking good by the time that we were done with it (even though the process was pretty long and messy.)

Wednesday night we sanded the counters (they were hard enough to bear that abuse) in preparation for the final coat of epoxy.

Thursday at 2:00AM Mike applied the final coat of epoxy to the counters, and then we left them for the rest of the week, only returning late Saturday night (after dinner).

SaltCon started on Thursday, and so we went up then so that we got to attend the entire thing. We spent a lot of time checking out many games and playing them as a family and as a couple. One night Mike went to participate in a Race for the Galaxy tournament. He lost quite handily but had a fun time anyway.

Mike and Alison's favorite game this year was Chrononauts. It was a small game that we had just never played before. It gave Mike a few ideas. We also played Photosynthesis for the first time this year, but we didn't like it as much as we through that we might.

On Saturday we painted miniatures, which ended up looking very good, and we also hung around until all of the awards were over in order to see if we had won a copy of "Echidna Shuffle", which was a kids game that we played an entered for a chance to win (because we all liked it.) Whenever Mike went off in the evening to play in a tournament or present his games to people, the rest of the family went swimming and hot-tubbing. The kids also watched a few movies.

The kids want me to report that Alison won a copy of a game (as a door prize type thing) and that we invented SaltCon car ride traditions.

Sunday after church, Timmy and Gideon both started acting sick, so who knows what this week will be like. Either way, we had a crazy and fun week this last one, so we can't imagine that this next week will live up to it.