This week we have been hanging around the house again enjoying summer!  The boys have been playing all day and I have been working on my latest project...a new piano! 

It all started last week when I found a piano in our price range on Craigslist....that's right, it was a free piano!  All we had to do was move it to our house, and by we, I mean Steven.  It took a little convincing, and hopefully he will be talking to me again soon, but we are now the proud owners of a piano.  It didn't look great when we got it although the keys work and I figure that's the main thing.  The biggest problem with it is it was filthy!  It looked like it had been sitting in someone's attic for 50 years and it was in this lady's living room.  I never understood the term 'dust bunny' before but I learned while cleaning this thing.  There was even pen and marker on the keys.  Here are some pictures.

Here's just some of the dust and cobwebs.  So gross!  You would not believe the number of rags I went through cleaning this thing!

I was able to get the pen and marker off the keys with a little scrubbing.  I decided to paint the piano since it looked so beat up.  Here it is primed and ready for paint.  You can see the cleaned out inside (from the last picture) at the bottom.

You'll have to wait until the end of the post to see what it looks like now!

Meanwhile, the boys have spent lots of time in the sprinkler.  Gavin caught another frog.

Monday they were out digging in the dirt again and this time they decided to add water to the dirt and they were both covered in mud as well as all the trucks they were playing with.  Since it was time for lunch I told them to go run through the sprinkler and clean the mud off.  Gavin had no problem with this and even used the sprinkler to clean off the trucks which was surprisingly resourceful.

Austin, who had spent most of the morning in the sprinkler, now all the sudden did not want to get into the sprinkler...not sure what this was about.  Here is his reaction upon being told to clean off in the sprinkler.

Yup, that's gobs of mud in his hair.

Eventually I just had to bring him inside and give him a bath in the tub, which got my tub nice and filthy.  He was crying about that too until I finally convinced him it was just a bath.  I'm not sure what he thought was going on but once he realized he was just getting a bath he calmed down. 

Adelaide's been hanging out enjoying life.  Her favorite toy right now...her feet!  She is also starting to roll over from her back to her tummy.

As always, she enjoys mealtime!

Gavin has lost his third tooth in two weeks!

Here is Adelaide in her exersaucer.  She's getting much better standing in it and playing with the toys.

The last couple of days, Austin has spent hours playing with Play-Doh.  It's Play-Doh construction site with the Hot Wheels.

Here's Adelaide just looking cute!  She likes to chew on her shirts/dresses.

This morning we went on the trail first thing before it got too hot.  It was over 100 degrees today and is supposed to be at or over 100 for the next week so we will probably be spending most of our time inside.  Gavin managed to entertain himself by building castles with his blocks.

Adelaide was just happy!

The boys watched 'Midsummer's Nights Dream' by Shakespeare.  It was the black and white version with James Cagney.  Austin wasn't impressed.  Gavin seemed to like it although he was having trouble keeping the characters straight.  I put it in because I was trying to explain how mischievous and unreliable fairies are.  The tooth fairy might have forgotten to leave him money for his tooth again last night.  So far, she's 3 for 2 on the remembering the tooth business.  Not the greatest odds but fairies are notoriously unreliable.  Hopefully she'll show up tonight!

Austin spent all afternoon playing with Play-Doh again.  After a while Gavin gave up trying to lure Austin into another activity and he just decided to join him.

When they were done I sent them outside with all the toys they had stuck in the Play-Doh in a bucket of water and they cleaned them all off and set them on the porch railing to dry.  They have been getting along really nicely the last couple of weeks.  They usually get along, but they really haven't had too many disagreements over the toys lately.

And, here it is...the (almost) finished piano.  There are still a couple things I want to do but it's mostly done.  The scroll at the top is just a metal decrative scroll from Hobby Lobby that I painted to match the piano.  I thought it would dress up the squareness of it and I think it looks nice.  I am going to make a padded cushion for the piano bench.

Not perfect, but not bad for a free piano!