Crazy Days of Summer

Oh, my goodness, how did that happen? It's been almost a month since my last post!

This one will, of necessity, be mostly pictures. Lukie turned two, we dorked around for a couple weeks, and then, we spent 2.5 weeks in Illinois! Most of the Illinois pictures were taken with an iPhone, so please excuse the graininess, but we were out and about moving and that meant I just didn't have time to grab my camera very often!

First, Lukie's two-year-old photos. I expect by the next time I take photos, it'll be a little easier to keep him still. Right now, though, not so much.

He's also really into hats right now. He requests a hat every morning by pointing to his head, and then when we put it on, he rearranges it by pulling it almost over his eyes and cocking it to the right. If we take it off, this happens:

...until we put it back on.

House work also continues. I've been working on painting the hallway. It was a nasty color of peachy-beige, which I lovingly referred to as "soul sucking burnt flesh," maybe a little over-dramatic but still fairly accurate. I've been painting it a nice clean white, and I have to say, I love the results.

The white color brings out the woodwork so nicely, and it bounces light around like a light trampoline. It's so much cleaner looking!

Finally, we went to Illinois for 2.5 weeks. It was a long but thoroughly enjoyable trip. First, Lukie had a birthday party at MoMo's house.

He is certainly not confused about what to do when a flaming cake is brought to him. We had to hold him back until we could finish singing.

His cousin Mindy, who has four girls and two nieces and has been waiting forever to buy a birthday present for a little boy, got him a Despicable Me fart gun. It was a hit (maybe more with MoMo even than with Lukie, but Lukie loved it, too).

And he played with his cousins Phoebe and Avery in the swimming pool. The game consisted mainly of jumping into the pool, getting out, running halfway across the yard, running back to the pool, jumping in, and repeating the process for 45 minutes. Where do they get the energy? (Sorry for the iPhone photos.)

Then we went north for a week to see Peter's family in Hinckley, IL. Grandma Cindy threw Lukie a second birthday party.

And Lukie ran around like a crazy person with his cousin Roland (and his other 7 cousins--- the 8th joined us a week later).

After a week in Hinckley, Peter went to Canada with his best friend for a fishing trip and I took Lukie back to my folks' place for 8 days. We had lots of fun.

Fun included Lukie's first trip to Jarlings, a Chambana staple for decades.

That was the gist of our summer trip. We had lots of fun, but as usual, we are also glad to be home among our stuff and in our house with our dogs and bed. We always miss Illinois, though! We are Midwesterners through and through and the whole region feels like home. See you at Christmas, IL!

Summer Vacation Begins!

Last August, I accepted a full-time position at Walters State Community College's library. I LOVE my job- I get to do work I'm interested in and good at, I spend my days with co-workers whose company I totally enjoy, and the place is just, in general, a really great place to work. My new job also came with a nice little perk that I doubt I'll find any other time in my library career:

I work a 10-month contract. That means, as of June 15, I am off for the summer! It's been a strange adjustment, to be sure. It's been a long time since I've had a chunk of time off, and I had almost zero vacation time at my previous position, so it's been a huge relief. 

And here's the thing: we have to continue paying for daycare, otherwise Lukie would lose his spot at school. So, I'm working to find the right balance of extra time with my son and some time to get things done on the house. We have two years of deferred maintenance (ahhh, the child gap) to catch up on at the house. There is a lot of painting to be done, cleaning, organizing, all that fun stuff. Pete has to basically rebuild large sections of the porch and its railing, and we have three outdoor decks to paint, as well. So far, our summer schedule has been something along the lines of Lukie going to school at about 8:00 (after his pancakes and obligatory Mommy Snuggle, which has become a morning routine), I work until after his nap (he sleeps better at school, anyway), and then I get him and we come home and play. It's a pretty great life...can't I just always be a stay-at-home mom whose kid spends half the day at daycare? No?

As Pete put it, it's nice not having a job when you have a job. To be fair to myself, I'll note that I have worked my bottom off while at home. Last week, I painted all the bathroom trim and its two doors, in addition to touching up the trim in the kitchen. I planted a new rose bush and have been keeping up with the garden. On this week's schedule: paint the mudroom, paint the dining room trim and finish painting the new dining room window, work on an embroidery project that's been haunting me for possibly 2 years, process an insane amount of basil, and go through the kitchen for things to donate. Whew.

All while spending Tuesday at the Kingsport Splash Pad with Lukie and my dear friend Rebecca.

Now, for some pictures.

Blooming in the garden right now:

Above, those are black eyed Susan vines. They're on a neat trellis Pete hooked to the side of the house. They're right next to the new deck he's building. Below is a picture of the newly painted side door and the brand new dining room window. That's the new deck. Pictures to come when it's finished.

I'm a little obsessed with this flower, below. It's a coreopsis variety called Heaven's Gate. It's pretty and pink and lacy and I love it. I think I'll order a few more next summer...though I need to move this one because it ended up being a lot taller than expected.

I'm also really into this hosta, below. It's an Abique Drinking Gourd, and the leaves have this awesome curl to them which makes them almost cupped. It's in the corner of my new hosta garden. All the plants in here will get much bigger by next year, and whenever we leave this place, I'll definitely be taking starts. This hosta in particular is supposedly really neat when it's full grown; when it rains, the cupped leaves catch water until they are too heavy and then tip it. Apparently, it's like watching a living sculpture. I can't wait to see it next year!

That's also a deck that needs painting. See? Lots of painting to be done.

On to pictures of the inside of the house.

Our house has only one bathroom, but admittedly, it's pretty fabulous. We have plans to possibly add a second half bath upstairs, but they won't be happening this year, I don't think. The trim was poorly painted when we moved in, and over the years, it's taken a bit of a beating. I painted all of it, and also painted the two white doors to match the dark warm gray of the kitchen. I love it when a house flows from one room to another; seeing decor repeat itself in creative little touches makes it seem so much bigger and more cohesive.

The kitchen has undergone a major change or two in the last six months, as well. First, Pete built me a beautiful pantry cabinet for Christmas. Originally, we painted it mustard yellow, but in that small room, it just didn't work. I think in a larger, brighter kitchen, a big, colorful piece like that would have been fun, but in our kitchen, it looked a little forced and a lot too bright. So now, it's a nice charcoal milk paint color that blends with the trim, but has extra texture.

More pics of that to come later; Peter has since sealed it with a coat of polyurethane, so it's darker. I think I'm going to add a house tour page to the blog that I can periodically update with things we work over. So...I guess more on that eventually.

Pete's currently prepping for our big trip up North later in the summer. He bought some new rubber boots to wear when he's fishing in Canada, and Lukas has been very enamored of them.

And finally, I've also had time to work on a project I started a year and a half ago. For Lukie's first Christmas, I wanted to start making a map that would show all the places he visits throughout his childhood and trips we take as a family (and before we were a family). I bought a huge map, and Pete mounted it on foam core. I started embroidering it. I actually put our wedding trip out West on there, and then got busy with life and baby and work and stuff. I finally finished the wedding trip last week, and moved on to trips Lukas has taken. It's going to be fun to see it get filled up with lines as he grows up. Pete is going to build a frame for it, and I have to decide where it will go. I used to think above our bed, but I think maybe the dining room would be more fun, because we could show it to people and Lukie could tell them about his trips!

Above, our wedding trip. We started in Champaign-Urbana, drove to the Badlands, Yellowstone, Craters of the Moon (Idaho), northern Oregon, Cape Disappointment in Washington, down to the Oregon Dunes, and then inland to my Grandma Dot's house in Ashland, Oregon, where we got married. Then, we went out to the coast for a few more days, and finally high-tailed it back, stopping in Iowa before getting to Illinois. We camped the whole way and had so much fun...we can't wait to take Lukas on a southwest version of this trip when he's older. And, Pete and I plan to take a trip to the Northeast next year for our 5-year anniversary!

Lukie's trips, so far, have been mostly local to the South. He's been back and forth to IL a lot, of course, but he's also taken trips to Kentucky, North and South Carolina, and Georgia.

See? It's huge! Pete will be making a BIG frame, and it has to be removable so I can keep up with our vacations. Incidentally, this is not an easy project to embroider. After bruising my finger repeatedly, I finally lighted on a technique of using a pushpin to chart my course and then coming back and flipping the map over and over as I embroidered with floss. There's a lot of looking back and forth, especially since the needle often gets lost in the foam core between the front and the back.

I think the whole project will be worth it, though. Imagine what it will look like when he's a teenager!

Anyway, that's what's been going on lately! I'll be adding a house tour page sometime soon! Lots of things are changing around here!

Pleasant Hill Shaker Village

I promised adventures this summer, and we are having them! Well, generally, time at home just looks like this. Mess, Dad on the floor, Lukie smothering him, dogs trying to escape.

But this weekend, we took one of our first family trips...kind of. See, when you live 10-12 hours from your family, most vacation time is spent driving back and forth to your far-off loved ones. We haven't had a lot of time for trips that didn't involve a 4 a.m. wake-up and a day's worth of driving on either end. We've gone to Georgia a couple times to see friends, had the ISU reunion...but this weekend, we got to do something just the three of us that was very "family vacation-y."

A few months ago, our friend from the Agricultural History Society asked Peter to chair and comment on a panel at the annual meeting and conference. I pushed Pete to do it-- keeps his hand in history, it's a topic he's interested in, we would see friends. The conference was in Lexington, KY, which is about a 4-hour drive away. Pete agreed and we said, "Oh, that'll be fun," and then we kind of dropped it.

Well, a couple weeks ago, Peter realized he had missed the deadline for getting the hotel room in Lexington at the conference rate and that we were going to have to pay $180 to stay at the hotel where the conference was happening. Other hotels in downtown Lexington weren't much cheaper...and then I had a thought. We had been wanting to visit the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill (here) for a few years. It's about 45 minutes south-west of Lexington, and since I had looked into it as maybe a get-away for Pete and me to take someday, I knew they operate as a hotel, as well. Turns out, for $50 less than we would have paid to stay in Lexington, we could stay in one of the buildings at Shaker Village! Sold!

Two weeks ago, then, I booked this lovely room on the third floor of the Old Stone Shop at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in Kentucky.

(Okay, this is the Farm Deacon's shop, but it was identical to the Old Stone Shop.)

What a great substitute for a cookie-cutter hotel experience. No, it doesn't have a pool, but there is an old telephone, which, to a 2-year-old, is far better.

On Saturday, we left the house at 5:00 a.m. to make it to Pete's 10:30-12:00 panel. Pete chaired his panel while Lukas and I rode the escalator about 42 times at the conference center, took a walk around the building multiple times, and watched Despicable Me between moments of trying to escape out the revolving doors. We saw friends (briefly-- they were headed back to Iowa, boo) and by about 3:00 in the afternoon, we were at Shaker Village!

Now, in a perfect world, Peter and I would have had lots of time to look at architecture and furniture. We're Shaker furniture geeks-- everything he makes me is somewhat Shaker inspired (how lucky am I to have that guy?). I love the simple lines and lightness (especially compared to Craftsman furniture, which I often find just a little bit heavy, even if it is beautiful). Our house lends itself to Shaker furniture, anyway- it's fairly simple with small-ish rooms but a good amount of natural light, so the airiness of Shaker furnishings complements it well.

So...this is not a perfect world. We saw just a few of the 40+ buildings and very little furniture. But, you know what? Lukie had lots of stairs to climb, rooms to run through, gravel roads to scuff, birds to chase, and fun. Pete and I'll go back and enjoy it our way someday, but in the meantime, it was kind of nice to enjoy it Lukie's way, too.

(That's the Old Stone Shop, where we stayed, behind me.)

(I think we both hoped he'd be into the piglets, since we were, but Lukie preferred the kitties and the chickens. That's okay, too.)

(Small hitch in our happiness: it was really hard to go anywhere. Lukie doesn't exactly follow us on walks very well yet. He's too interested in everything other than getting where we're going. I think everyone was taught a lesson in patience.)

Don't judge me. The iPad is the only way we get to eat our dinner, sometimes, and the kid was tired, hot, hungry, and thirsty. We shut his brain off so we could eat our delicious meal in peace.

Lukie learned that cups with straws don't work the same way sippy cups do. They're hard.

Our night was pleasant and Lukie slept like a log. We got up in the morning and paid one more visit to the farm animals, and then plopped Lukie in the car (after his Benadryl-- whoever discovered that it prevents car sickness should be given a medal) for a nice long nap. We stopped in Knoxville at Trader Joe's to pick up lunch, snacks, and some other TJ staples, and then were home by at 4:00.

Pete and I both felt like we had been gone for a week instead of a night, but I think it was a pretty successful family mini-vacation. We look forward to taking him to these places when he can talk with us about them, but we know Lukie learned some new things, saw some new animals, worked out a lot of energy, and had lots and lots of fun. None of the things we'd look for in a vacation would necessarily be on his list, but his list was completely checked off:

1. chasing birds
2. petting kitties
3. playing in wagons
4. French fries at most meals
5. chasing birds.

That's all that matters, right?