Pictures from the Weekend

Now that all the company is gone, I am madly tearing apart my newly-created storage room, moving out all the boxes so I can vacuum up the drywall dust, lay down pieces of carpet and assemble shelves to line the walls with.

It's one of those cases of "it has to get worse before it gets better"! That's why I didn't start this project till our big weekend was over.

So here are just a few snapshots of our weekend with Grandma and Grandpa.

Trivial Pursuit, anyone?


The two little ones had no trouble filling a "pie."


(Note Bantam9 in his usual cold-weather attire: shirtless!)

We forgot to take pictures of the after-party, but here is one taken during the service for Bantam13. (Father Rooster is holding an important piece of liturgical equipment--a video recorder to tape what the men said to B13!)


You will notice all the books in the background in Father Rooster's office; we are following the Anna Quindlen school of interior design. (She said, "I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.") (Remember how excited I was about this?)

And this next photo is one that Papa Rooster had blown up into poster size as a gift to B13.


Isn't that a cool shot? (The poster version is on the mantle in the first two pictures, I just noticed!)

And since I never really got to post anything about their trip last March, here's another of the two of them.


They had such a great time together. Here's an excerpt from Papa Rooster's words to B13 during the service:

I love you; I am so proud of you. There is a great horizon of possibility for you as a man of God. I will always remember walking behind you in the Grand Canyon for 17 miles in one day. You were a great companion, you were courageous when exhausted, and you went for the glory, even setting a pace that I found challenging, to say the least. And, at the end, even through a little bit of freezing fear [a hypothermia scare], there was joy and gratitude at the wonder of God. May this be true of your journey all the way to journey’s end.

He received many wonderful words of exhortation from all the men; perhaps I'll post a few more excerpts later.

A reader suggested that we be sure and take a picture of me with my mom this weekend, since I've never posted one. I thought it was such a good idea, we took one of me with my dad too.



So who do I favor?

We had such a great time with them. Wish we lived closer to each other!

And last but not least, friends from our old church may recognize our newly ordained deacon, Joel Prather, on his first Sunday serving us at Light of Christ in that capacity. Father Rooster attended his ordination last Thursday (photos here), where he got to meet this blogger before I did!


It was quite a weekend.

Thanks be to God!

County Fair

The kids are all about the rides...





...but Mom loves the animal barns!

Let sleeping pigs lie, I always say.

Had to post a picture of Chicklet with the baby chicks. We couldn't tear her away!

Here we are watching a sheep being sheared. This was no demonstration--just a couple 4-H dads trying to get the job done, while the sheep baaaaed incessantly, blabbing a black tongue out each time. (That's what we're all watching!)


There are tractors all over the fair--for sale, or for display, like this old Farmall that was restored as a 4-H project. It is understood that any tractor at the fair is fair game for kids to climb on!

This water fountain has been a fixture since my dad can remember. There used to be a huge old tree shading it, and I can remember stopping here with my grandparents to get a drink and cool off in the shade (after playing on a half dozen hot tractor seats, probably). They rested on benches nearby and let my brothers and I play in the water fountain...just like my brothers and I let our kids (those are four of my nieces with Chicklet5 and Bantam3).

My dad with Chicklet5.

Third- and fourth-generation fairgoers, heading home.

Just Doing What We Do...Beach Edition

Photos made possible by Papa Rooster doin' what he does--taking pictures!

We only have one of him, and it's so lame I hesitate to group it with the others...

"Say 'CHEESE,' Dad!"

July 3rd, 4th & 5th

Thursday was our low-key, hang-around-the-campsite day, waiting on our friends to arrive.


































When they did arrive, around mid-afternoon, we helped them set up, had dinner together, and then went for a walk.




The three youngest, who were with us, were enchanted by this fearless young deer!




On Friday, after a lazy morning, we decided to spend the day exploring downtown Kenosha with our friends.


We started with lunch at Frank's Diner, which is inside an old railroad dining car.









We've been great friends with this couple for nearly 20 years!






Next it was the 25-cent, 2-mile trolley ride along the shoreline and around Harbor Park.















No one wanted to get off, so we rode it around twice.


Then we did a little walking, ending up at Sandy's Popper, a popcorn and ice cream store. Eating ice cream was about the only event of the day that Papa Rooster didn't document.


He really learned a lot from playing around with the good camera all weekend. He even figured out how to get some good shots of the fireworks!








Then it was back to our friends, the A--'s house, for the "after-fireworks fireworks." Apparently, this is a big tradition on the farm in Nebraska, where Mr. A is from. The teens in our group thought this display was way cooler than the official rockets.




Chicklet5 enjoyed the sparklers best--more her speed.





Saturday was beach day. Many of us also elected to take an afternoon nap in our campers, along with the youngest ones, and I finished a book I started back before our move.



Doesn't this look like a paparazzi shot?













The little girls were all smiles, though!


No pictures from Sunday, but our friends attended Light of Christ with us. Mrs. R., who sings and plays guitar, helped lead the worship. Then out to lunch and back to the campsite--at Illinois Beach State Park in Zion, IL, by the way--to pack up and move out.

It was renewing, refreshing, and exhausting all at once. Papa Rooster took today (Monday) off, to recover. And look through dozens of pictures!

Thanks, honey!

Oh, and thanks to Heather who pointed out the long sleeves in many of the pictures!  I forgot to mention that this camping trip included a first for me:  In all my years of camping in the Midwest, as a kid and now as an adult, I don't remember ever having to run the camper's HEATER in JULY!  We have had an unusually cool spring and early summer here; I keep thinking it must be the hour further north that makes such a difference, but then my Illinois friends tell me it's been just as cold down there, and my Wisconsin friends assure me that they can't remember such cold summer temperatures.  (So much for global warming??)

News & Photos

We've had an exciting weekend here--filled with tornadoes that fortunately never came too close to us. But the weather men sure were excited--so excited they thought they needed to pre-empt the pre-race interviews and discussion before the Belmont, which really ticked me off, since it's been years since I've looked forward to a televised horse race!

Fortunately we had nice weather for most of the day on Saturday--which I give thanks for, because that was the day we rented a U-Haul truck, rounded up a few of the 14-and 15-year-old boys that Bantam13 and Blondechick15 have become friends with here in our neighborhood, and drove to our storage space to complete the Final Phase of our move-in. Yep, we still had a couple hundred boxes, as well as beds, end tables, bookcases and smaller shelves, all in storage.

We had an old friend from college visiting for the weekend, whose muscles added considerably to the general effort, and we served bagels, grapes, and banana splits at the end. All in all, though everyone got pretty sweaty and I'm sure there were sore muscles on Sunday, the Final Phase wasn't too brutal.

Although for me, it's disconcerting that just when things were starting to feel comfortable, boxes have mushroomed once again in every room of our house! At least everything's here now, so I can organize accordingly. I am so happy to have all of our children's books back in the house, as well as bookshelves to put them on, since Bantam9 desperately needs more reading material. (That's my opinion, not his.) The other kids still have plenty of Sonlight books to finish up for the school year, but the books he's ready for now are ones I packed up last April. That's how long it's been since the contents of these boxes have seen daylight!

And on Friday Papa Rooster came home with a new camera for me. "I noticed it's been awhile since you posted any pictures on your blog," he said.

You may remember that our handy-dandy digital camera went missing a couple months ago. Both Blondechick and I were sure it was in our house somewhere--we thought it had probably been shoved somewhere just before a showing, and I've been praying that I'd find it in some forgotten nook. But it hasn't shown up, and we've become suspicious that it actually was stolen during a showing, as the last places that we saw it were all right out in the open.

So Papa Rooster bought me a camera. (Didn't he just buy you a really good one last Christmas/anniversary/birthday, some of you may be wondering? But it's quite complicated--not a point'n'shoot--and I haven't had time to learn to use it.)

I wish I had used my new camera to take pictures of our house on Friday night! But since the influx of a couple hundred boxes on Saturday...it'll be a bit longer for those. I have my work cut out for me on that front, because besides books, these are the boxes containing all the most easily recognized stuff one can live without for long periods of time, but presumably can't part with. Therefore, the most difficult items to know what to do with! Eh...yeh.

But I do have pictures! (Photo credits all to Blondechick)

Yesterday, at Light of Christ we were blessed by a visit from William and Anne Beasley! Here's a candid of them before the service.


And here are some of us with them at lunch. (Our wonderful hosts were getting dessert ready and didn't make it into these pictures.)




And here is the view from behind the Kemper Center, where our church meets, on Sunday morning. We didn't touch the color settings--the sky was such a vivid blue! (This was the beautiful weather in between tornado sightings on Saturday and Sunday nights.)


Here's one of the first shots Papa Rooster took, trying out the new camera.


And here's a shot of the bike trail behind our house. Isn't it beautiful? We went for a two-mile walk on Sunday afternoon.



So now maybe I'll inspire myself by promising a picture of each room in our house as I get them unpacked and organized. Now that I have a camera again...!

Before...and Before...and After

Since last April, we've been hard at work getting our house ready to put on the market. The frustrating thing is...there's always more you can do!

Take our living room, for example. Here's the best I've got for "before" pictures. Note the ugly wallpaper (now removed) and the green walls (now butter tan). Note also the couch position--and the cute children, if you want.


This (below), for many years, was my office area--right here in the living room. That's a couch to the left, facing the TV in the other corner of the room. We sold the rolltop desk and I worked very, very hard to condense everything into my other desk upstairs in the bedroom, and into one small filing cabinet in my closet.


With half the furniture gone, we rearranged and wow!



But we weren't done yet, as it turned out. Here's the family room:



(See the CD shelves on the two ends of the wall unit? This past weekend, I packed up all but a few of our CD's and we removed those two towers.)

A realtor suggested we switch the couches in the two rooms. The leather couches seemed oversized in the family room...but they look great in the front room:



And I finally went picture, mirror and valance shopping for this room. (It looks like our TV grew a little since Christmas, too...!)

Back in the family room, we kept the two couches all through the holidays, but just a few weeks ago, I decided to chuck the one. It was in terrible shape underneath the slipcover, it weighed a ton, since it was a sleeper sofa, our last guests on it slept terribly, the slipcover over it was always a mess, and I wasn't planning on moving it, so why not toss it now?


We brought up the leather chair from Papa Rooster's office...and our biggest room finally looks big! (What a difference between the summer and winter lighting, huh? I sure can't wait for summer!)


Now this was one of my earliest projects. (That's the landing on the stairs heading up to the second floor.) All of this--gone. Either given away or packed up and on its way, as I type, to our storage space in Wisconsin. Yep, Papa Rooster rented a U-Haul and we emptied out our garage tonight; two of the kids went with him to help unload.


And this was one of our most recent projects. I forgot to take "before" pictures of the powder room; you'll have to imagine white wallpaper with teensy blue flowers all over it. It was a blue and white bathroom before, and it's still a blue and white bathroom. Only without wallpaper.


I was very happy with the color choice. Here's why I didn't go with something more neutral:


I figured that the more I tried to ignore the blue floor, the blue-er it would look. But if I embraced the blue...it might look less dated and more like we actually chose it. And now I'm hearing that blue is the new "in" color!

Oh, and here is one of my other recent projects. I don't have a real "before" picture (the one with the stacks of books on the floor on both sides of the bed, on both nightstands and on top of the bookshelf), but here's the one we used for the listing last year:


And here's the "after this past weekend":


It's amazing what less furniture can do!

And remember the mauve blinds? They're still there (I close them every night so the light doesn't wake me as early in the morning), but now they're hidden by a lovely Battenburg lace-edged valance. It was hard to get a good picture of them today--there was too much sunlight. (What a great problem to have!)


And now, the job I'd been hoping I wouldn't have to do...

Try to ignore the hooligans celebrating a 16th birthday for my oldest Bantam a year ago, and note the wallpaper. It's pretty nice as wallpaper goes--I picked it out myself a decade ago, and I think it especially looks good with the floor:


But the realtors all think it should come down. The rest of our house is now so nicely neutral that they think this room should be too--and wallpaper is out. So I guess we have another big project ahead of us.... (No wonder this hasn't been our best year of homeschooling!)

What do you think of that corner bench? Would you assume it's built-in? Friends of ours (who had 9 children) insisted we take it when they were moving, and we never dreamed it would look so good in our dining area. It actually saves space too--we can push the table closer to the wall than with chairs there. (Oh! Now that Easter is over, we can remove a leaf from the table and a chair or two!) I don't know if we'll be able to use it in our next house or not, but perhaps I need to say "corner bench negotiable" or something.

And now for the 64 million dollar question: What color should we paint the walls after we strip the wallpaper? This room is in between the off-white family room and the butter tan living room. We've got the butter tan everywhere--going up the stairs and into two bedrooms--so we can't continue that any further, I think. It needs to be neutral--of course.

See what I mean? It never ends!!

No, wait--the real big money question is: How can I keep my little kids from standing up on the bench and touching the wall after we paint?? The great thing about wallpaper is--it's WASHABLE!!!