A Day and Night in Deere Country

For literally four years we've been wanting to go and visit my brother and his wife in Pennsylvania, but we haven't actually done that until this weekend. (That doesn't mean we haven't seen them; they've been here to visit us, and we've seen them at my parents' house too.)

So the kids have been looking forward to this visit for a month. They love Uncle Dan and Aunt Kelli and their new little cousin lots, but it doesn't hurt that they have a pool in their backyard either. 

It worked out that Grammie and Grandpa joined us, as well as Aunt Janelle and her girlies. So here are some pictures of the swimming...

Dan being silly...and all I could think was "big guy, little jacket!"

Stephen decided to build Elsa a raft out of the pool noodles.

Here's Elsa on her raft.

...and our evening at the Deere Country festival (lots of family members work at Deere Country). 

Jocie and Elsa

Elsa's first face-painting experience

She was a little kitty-cat.

Tractor-racing

Cade enjoyed some ice cream.

Miss Kitty-Cat did, too.

The boys spent a lot of time corralling this girl as she's prone to wander.

Little Miss E was getting sleepy.

Uncle Dan and Emma

Piggy-back rides for Elsa

Caroline finally let Grammie hold her!!  Hooray!

Going for a "ride" in the John Deere

Elsa was impressed with the buggy outside our hotel.

She wasn't so sure about the orange.

Caroline didn't like the cow.

Another snuggle with Grammie for Caroline.

And a snuggle with Emma-girl.

Projects: A Long-Time Comin'!

Yesterday I finally got to a project that has been in my mind for a long time. For literally years there have been food stains on our dining room chairs, and I've wanted to re-cover the cushions. They were a whitish muslin fabric, and they stained easily. With lots of littles around here, we decided on a fabric that will allow stains to just sort of blend in. And a good coat of Scotchgard.

And since I was covering one set of chairs and the kitchen chairs were in need of the same, I figured I might as well do them too. They were even worse than the dining room chairs. So we did those too. And when I say "we", I mean I did them while Elsa made a fort out of the cushions that weren't being covered at that moment, Caroline napped, and the boys were at Samurai Warrior day camp. 

So here are the before and after pictures. 

Old and new kitchen chairs (see the stains?!?)

Old dining room chair

New dining room chair

And now they're done! Safely Scotchgarded, and hopefully no stains will show up anytime soon. 

We've got the basement project going on again. Stephen has been working on electrical wiring (along with an electrician) for the last few weeks, and today the work passed inspection. He's slapping up some insulation, and then we'll have the drywall guys come in next week. Hopefully we'll soon be moving our school room to the basement...maybe even before we officially start school! And that means another trip to IKEA is looming in my future...better start the list now!

I've been doing some painting around the house too. Nothing big, just the wainscoting in the foyer and the baseboards around the kitchen. I need to do the same in the living room and dining room still, and when the drywall is up in the basement, there will be plenty of painting to do down there. Not really looking forward to all of that, but it must be done. I'm so glad to have two responsible boys to watch the into-everything-toddler while I work on things around the house. I sure am missing them while they're at camp this week!

Only three more weeks before it's back to school for us, so the projects are rather pressing. Once school starts, it's really hard for me to change my mindset from school-mode to around-the-house-projects-mode. Guess I better get busy!

Independence Day

No parades or fancy celebrations here. Our day was spent working in the basement for the most part. But we did enjoy a nice walk as a family in the evening before downing some popsicles, putting the little one to bed, and heading outside for some driveway fireworks. 

The kids enjoyed the sparklers first, and then Stephen lit up the fire-crackers with names like a Storm Warning, a Gator Whistle, and other various noise-makers. I decided to give a go at catching some of them on camera. It wasn't too bad, though I did give these a bit of tweaking on the laptop. 

Art

Just the word makes me cringe. It's not that I don't appreciate beautiful artwork. I do. I just don't have much God-given talent for creating it. That's ok with me. But I have two children who really seem to enjoy creating things. And they're really good at making messes while creating. That's where the cringing comes in because this Momma does not like messy projects.

However, I was inspired to help Elsa make a bean-mosaic the other day, and she LOVED it. She loves anything that involves glue, actually. And then Cade saw what was going on, and he wanted in on the action too. (Luke wanted nothing to do with it, surprise-surprise, and Caroline would just try to eat the beans.)

Someone suggested that the dinosaur was about to eat the little girl...it
must have been a boy.

And the mess was not so bad, all in all. I guess I just need to shelf the idea of a clean house for a few years. 

Summer in Pennsylvania

Last week the kids and I took a trip to Pennsylvania to visit family and get out of the city (yes, I consider the suburbs to be the city). We had fun seeing cousins and old friends and basically just hanging out in the country. We even blasted Kenny Chesney's "Back Where I Come From" with the windows rolled down. Yeah, love being in the country...mostly love being in MY country (translate: Perry County). 

Caroline loved Grammie's touch-lamp.

Elsa enjoyed some paper dolls.

We had a birthday picnic with cousins at a nearby park, so the kids enjoyed the playground while we were there.

All of the Smith cousins, together at last!

Birthday girl!

Sweet baby girl!

 I can't believe I captured this moment with the camera. J had just asked Aunt K if Baby E was born with 4 fingers or 5 because she thought that babies were born with 4 and grew their thumb later. You can see the surprise on Aunt K's face!

Aunt K brought Luke's deer skull
that Uncle Dan had mounted for him.
It's hanging on the wall in his room now.

Grammie with the littlest Smith girl

Just love her!

Baby girl cousins 

 We also went swimming at an old friend's pool, and the kids enjoyed hanging out with her kids. Fun to see our kids becoming friends...

Something's just not right here...

This one kept me very busy!

My non-swimmers braved the deep end in their inner-tubes.

He's a little heavier than the others; maybe that's
why he needed two tubes?

Caroline liked the bead necklaces that Grammie keeps for dress-up play and wore them around a lot. She also carried a spoon everywhere she went. 

The big kids enjoyed (mostly) a game of Uncle Wiggily that we used to play when I was young. 

Later that afternoon we made a trip to the barber. On the way home, we stopped at the bank where Grammie works to deposit some of Luke's hard-earned cash (from lawn-mowing). As soon as we walked in, Grammie informed us that there was a tornado warning and one had been spotted a few miles away. AAAHHHHHH!

We beat it to the car and sped home (just a short drive) to hang out in the basement while the storm passed. For the record, I have never seen a storm like that. We never saw a twister, but as I watched the clouds (yes, I snuck upstairs to peek), I saw definite rotation with winds moving one way on the north side and another way on the south side over the ridge just behind the house. It was later confirmed that there had been an EF-1 tornado a few miles away.

The rain came hard and heavy with some areas getting nearly 6" in a short time. We had a little less than 3". And here is the result in the fields in front of my parents' house. We watched the water come up and go down again in the space of an hour or two.

The neighbors' farm which used to be my grandparents' farm

And the water went down again...

I wasn't sure how long we'd stay when we left on our trip; it rather depended on how well Miss Caroline slept. But she did quite well, and we ended up spending most of the week there. But then home beckoned, and we drove south again. 

Bath-time for Caroline using Elsa's new
Turbie from Grammie

Elsa loves her Turbie; she got some
spa treatment from Grammie while
visiting. Hope she doesn't expect
that at home now!!

We had a fun trip, though Caroline would hardly leave my side. Maybe by next time, she'll be a bit more friendly with the locals! She better get used to it, because Perry County is one of my most favorite places to be!!