Countertop Crisis and a Camping Excursion

Since the end of our big project day last Saturday, we 've been waiting on the door guy to come or even to call us back--hoping he could advise us on our countertop crisis as well--but he's decided not to return our calls. Tired of living without a bathroom sink on the main level, I called around and found a place that could custom-cut a piece of white laminate countertop-- identical to the old countertop, as it turns out--by Friday afternoon or Saturday at the latest. It won't be an upgrade at all, but at this point I just want it put back together again! (And the next-cheapest option, besides not being available for 10 days or more, would be 4X the cost. Maybe if I wanted to redo the whole bathroom, it would be worth it. But not to put in plain white!)

Have I mentioned the impetus for the whole project day? On a date on or around Independence Day, our town has a parade which happens to go right by our house, and it's been a tradition of ours to invite friends over for a cookout...and then we enjoy the free entertainment as it marches by! We'll probably have 50+ people here (mostly theater families this year), so it seems to me that an accessible, working bathroom would be most desirable on that date. Ideally, it would have a working door as well--not one that only our family members know how to close, due to the stripped screws which render the top hinge useless. Which is why I'm pretty ticked at the handyman who won't call back.

In other news, we leave for a camping trip this weekend--sometime after Papa Rooster puts in the new countertop, sink and faucet. (Crossing my fingers and breathing fervent prayers.) "Leave" is a strong word, though, because we'll be staying at a forest preserve a mile from our house, and I fully intend to finish packing after we get there. That's the whole point, actually. Our real vacation is next week, when we're heading to Springfield, IL, for the new Lincoln Museum and other Lincoln sites, and Hannibal, MO, on the heels of our theater group's production of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. We just finished reading the book aloud, too, and we're looking forward to seeing the cave, Samuel Clement's birthplace and museum, and whatever other tourist traps they've got there. (Doubt the kids will leave town without a trip to Becky Thatcher's Ice Cream Parlor....)

So this little excursion is something of a dry run before the real thing, but should be very pleasant nonetheless. The kids will ride their bikes from our house and then around the whole preserve, and we won't see much of them unless they're hungry. We'll go to church, and friends will probably join us at the forest preserve for a lazy Sunday afternoon. We have out-of-town friends coming to camp with us for the holiday, two nights; one of those evenings they'll spend at our house, cooking out and watching the parade with the big group. The other night we'll do a big campfire and s'mores and sing along with a guitar.

Then we'll pull the trailer home, I'll drive into Chicago to pick up my aunt from Texas--who reads my blog (yay!) and is in town for a national organist's conference; I'll bring her back home, do some laundry, make dinner and finalize any packing. The next morning, we run my aunt over to an organ concert in a nearby suburb and then pull out for Springfield.

Seems like we're packing an awful lot into a mere handful of days! So y'all will understand if I haven't got much to say for a bit. On the other hand, Papa Rooster is looking into the personal hot spot technology, whatever that's called, so ya never know. I may get bored chasing Bitty Bantam and Chicklet around the forest preserve.

In between trips back to the house, that is. I'll still be packing, y'know.