Laowai

Naturally we will probably be out of town when the rest decide to ripen.

It’s August – I can see the end of summer coming. I feel like this has been an up and down Summer. We’ve had lots of difficult moments with Bea. At the end of the day I sometimes feel overwhelmed with worry for her. And then on the flip side – we’ve also had some really fun moments doing super fun summer stuff. 

On this day it was just like the rest of the summer. Bea and I butted heads all morning and then we had a fantastic afternoon playing in the woods.

It makes me mad that it is so hard to find simply a bit of forest to play in. Something that was outside my door as a kid, we have to drive 15 minutes to find. But still – it’s there and I am so thankful that my kids know how to play in the woods. They’re not afraid to sit on the forest floor and climb on logs and pick up bits of nature and run through the tall grass. It’s good for all of us.

We made what I like to call a nature design. Just sticks and seeds and acorns arranged for someone to find along the path.

A few weeks ago somebody (Brian) left the leaky shower hose out of the tub in Claire and Bea’s bathroom. We didn’t discover the dripping problem until probably a whole day later and by then the whole bathroom carpet was a squishy puddle. So we tried to dry the carpet by pulling it up a little and running fans for a long time. That didn’t work – and worse it spread a mildewy smell all over the house. Yuck. Brian decided, rather quickly, that the carpet was never going to dry and even if it did we were sick of that disgusting bathroom carpet. So he took it out in one fell swoop and put it at the side of the road for the trash man. Then we were left with the old, old black linoleum tile floor. It seems like it might be origional to the house. The tiles are popping up all over and there are splotches of paint here and there. I tried to scrub it down so we could live with it a bit, but it just turned my rag black.

So now we find ourselves in the middle of another renovation project. Really I’m not sad at all – I couldn’t wait to get rid of that gross carpet. And since we moved in I have been dying to know if we could use the painted over tile in the bathrooms. The tile has all been painted in a creamy white and it doesn’t look good. I’ve been crossing my fingers that we would discover the tile underneath is fine – it goes part way up the walls and it’s nice thick old tile. As long as it is in pretty good shape I am willing to work with most any color. So far the tile seems to be in good shape. I’ve been working away at removing the paint so we can decide on a floor color and get moving with this project. The best way I found to remove the paint is by steaming it with the same machine that I used to remove the TV room wallpaper. I figure it will be easiest to get both upstairs bathrooms done at once.

In the girls’ bathroom I revealed yellow tile – I’m fine with that. I’ll use mostly white everywhere else in the room. We don’t want it to end up looking like Ronald McDonald’s bathroom so we’ll replace the red sinks with white ones.

In my (and Brian’s) bathroom I found turquois blue tile with black along the top and bottom. I’ll never understand why the former owners painted the white tub a turquois color and changed the turquois walls to white – the color scheme is not that different from the original. It just looks like bad thick paint instead of shiney clear tiles. Again I think I’d like to make the walls and everything else white. As much as I like green, I don’t want to keep the green toilet and the green sink. Nope.

So I origionally thought I wanted a gray tile for the new floors but after looking at a few and being swayed by low prices I think we’ll go with basic small white mosaic tiles. 

This type is the winner right now:

or this:

In the meantime our stairs are half sanded waiting to be painted and there are light fixtures sitting in the hall waiting to go up. Pretty much everything from the stairs up in our home looks bad right now. I hope to finish a project soon. And so it goes…

Happy Birthday honey – we love you. It’s nice to be the same age as you for a few months so you can’t tease me about my old age. Now let’s talk about the cake (ha ha).

I tried a new recipe. Maybe you’ve heard of it, a chocolate icebox cake. It was the easiest cake ever. You have to get two boxes of Nabisco Chocolate Wafers (I found them at my grocery store) and you need some whip cream and that’s it. After you layer the cookies and cream you put it in the fridge overnight so the cookies get soft and cake like. Bea said it was the best cake ever. We all loved it and it’s the perfect cake for summer since you don’t have to turn on the oven. Here’s the recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

We were so lucky to escape to the mountains for the second time this summer. This time we were in Colorado and we were surrounded by family too. 

We started out by spending a few days at Dave and Kim’s house. We loved their firepit for roasting marshmallows and they have the most beautiful big green prairie area near their house. Claire would not be separated from sweet Maddie for the whole trip. 

 

Then we drove to the mountains. We stayed in a house along Grand Lake on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. I got to spend lots of time reading on the house’s peaceful deck while hummingbirds visited a feeder next to me. It was heaven. Grand Lake is the largest natural lake in Colorado which is surprising because it’s little. The town of Grand Lake was sweet and had a kitchy western historical feel. The main street was lined with deck style wood sidewalks – it was fun to stroll along looking at touristy moose t-shirts in shop windows and stopping to buy ice cream.

Then we hit the trails – my favorite part. 

Phillip and Bea hit it off and scurried down the hiking trail like little mountain goats.

It would not have been my first choice, but the older Chapman cousins convinced us all to ride go carts. The kids loved it. I just laughed and Claire kept reminding me that I was in last place. 

The kids went swimming in Grand Lake – brrrrrrr.

The second hike was a long sunny trip to a waterfall. Grandma and I bailed out part way through, but I was really proud that all the kids did it because it was around seven miles. Claire had lots of help from Brian and Dave’s shoulders.

On the last day of our trip Brian and Dave did the Triple Bypass. The Triple Bypass is a very difficult bike ride that goes over 3 mountain passes. Dave did the ride last year also. Here’s the info from the website: The ride is 120 miles from Evergreen over Juniper Pass (11,140 ft.), Loveland Pass (11,990 ft.), Swan Mountain and Vail Pass (10,560 ft.), concluding in Avon. The ride has over 10,000 ft. of challenging elevation gain!

The rest of us played team car and met Brian and Dave a couple times along the route and then at the finish line. The mountains were so beautiful and we were all so proud to be cheering the dads on. I could tell Brian was really happy (and tired) when he finished – he just feels good when he’s climbing mountains.

Wow – that was a lot of photos! We always have a great time with Dave and Kim and Sophie and Maddie and Ryan and Phillip – they are a big fun family (and Grandma too). Thanks guys!

Every time I go to the vegetable gardens at the Chicago Botanic Garden I can’t help but snap a hundred pictures. I just can’t get enough of those beautiful vegetables and herbs!

I love this herb garden – it’s the size of my whole vegetable garden.

Tomatoes for miles!

I want to try potatoes next year.

 

Gigantic cabbage!

More of those big cabbages. The light was so pretty on them!

And here’s some of my lettuce harvest.