Summer Adventures: The Rest of the Trip and More Partying

 After Indiana, we headed up to Michigan to be with Matt's family as we celebrated our oldest niece graduating high school. We had a grand old time and it was SO NICE to be able to play outside during the day time in the month of June!

 Char and the cousin closest to her age, J, adored each other and played the whole time together. This is the first time she and he have had a great time together, but we hope for lots more fun!

 We had lots of grandkids, lots of craziness and lots of love.

 We found a park on our way up which was amazing. It really helped give the kids a break from the car.

 Lydia and I cuddling.

 I got my hair cut super short. It was great until I got home and then I found that in the humidity, this hair cut doesn't work! I look like the lady with triangle hair from the Dilbert comics. Oh well, it was a good experiment I guess.

 The view in Michigan. Oh, how beautiful it is. We love it there.

 The drive home. Our favorite part of the journey is driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains. They are so, so beautiful.

 We left Emily in OH for an extra week to go to the "Cousin's Camp" my mother-in-law does. She had a good time. And a big thanks to my sisters-in-law who took care of and sent me pictures too!

 We played at a fun creek in Indiana.

We had a grand time on our Midwest trip this summer. We love, love, love these places. We long for them. We are homesick for them. Maybe someday...

Summer Adventures: Indiana and the 60th Wedding Anniversary

 This summer the girls and I headed back for our annual Midwest trip. Specifically, we first headed to Indiana for my grandparent's 60th Wedding Anniversary!!! That is something to celebrate, that's for sure! 60 years! For the first time in over a decade, all of the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren were there. (Well, almost all. There were a two that couldn't come for unavoidable reasons).

 We took really nice family photos. Not that you can tell from my grandpa's face.

 Older cousins taught younger cousins about the guitar. Actually, both are proficient on the guitar but the older one is teaching more complicated techniques to the younger one.

 My grandma, looking radiant.

 My bro and my daughter. We had about 1 1/2 hours to kill after family pictures before the party began and we passed it by eating Goldfish.

 My dad and my cousin. My dad is 6'4". How tall do you think my cousin is? He's slouching in this picture, but he is 6'8". Seriously.

 Some cousins were playing cards while we were waiting.

 We took Lydia outside to do bubbles since thats what was keeping her happy.

 Tall cousin and Emily practicing their dancing.

 My dad and his older brother.

  More goldfish and some twitter checking.

 Other than the party, we just spent time together as a family. It was awesome! This is the childhood I remember-- so many cousins, so much playing outside and experiencing things.

 I love this picture because it shows Nan's inquisitive personality.

 My bro had little girls all over him the whole time. Even Lydia who normally takes a long time to warm up to people, took to him right away and wanted to be with him.

 My grandparents have a great big front lawn so we spent most evenings playing Frisbee or soccer.

 My dad playing "walking up the mountain" with my girls.

 Nathalie adored one of my cousins. He was so good with her!

 Emily basically followed this cousin around. She was so patient and included Emily in everything.

 Aunties.

 We just have a lot of tall people-- here is a cousin who is my height and her husband is 6'4" at least as well.

 And the cousin who was AWESOME with Lydia.

 Dad and my bro-in-law.

 Like Father, like son.

These silly girlies. I love them.

I hope Matt and I are both still alive when we make it to our 60th!!! The chances of my grandparents being alive for their 70th are pretty slim and they've had some health problems lately. I will be making more frequent trips to see them. It was wonderful for me to be back with all the cousins, aunts and uncles I grew up with. We are all adults now and don't see each other anymore. It was an absolute blast!

new house pictures-- before

So we bought a house this summer. The process of buying this house was a nightmare, honestly. It took nearly 3 months and the bank was the culprit-- no communication, losing documents, etc. But finally, FINALLY we closed at the very end of July. That put us in a time crunch because this house needs a fair amount of work and we had to get most of it cleaned and painted before Aug 15, which was when we needed to move in so Matt could start school, etc. It was a crazy few weeks. But we got it done (hint: BUY A PAINT SPRAYER) and got moved in on Aug 15. Here are the before pictures.

The first three pictures are of the living room and dining room area as you walk in the front door. The dark spots you see on the wall are cigarette smoke residue. The whole entire house smelled like smoke and pot. Matt had to clean the walls twice with a vinegar/water/bleach solution to get the residue off enough that he could paint. Note: the fireplace and framing is black.

Here is another picture of the fireplace. What you can't see in this picture is that the baseboard trim on the lower right hand side of the fireplace was absolutely soaked in dog urine. We ripped out all the trim in the whole house and this trim was disgusting. The previous owner had a girlfriend with two little nasty dogs who peed inside the house. Also not shown is that the dogs chewed up the window sill of the main living room window (I didn't take a picture with the windows in it; I'm usually standing in front of the windows). We haven't replaced the sill yet, but we will. Also, see the dark stains on the wall above the fireplace? Yep, that is cigarette smoke stain that probably framed a TV.

The house currently has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. One bed and one bath are downstairs. The other two bedrooms and bathroom are upstairs. This is one of the upstairs bedrooms. Yes, the walls are black and pink. And that monstrous fan was also black. All of the trim in this room was scuffed and dinged. The door frame was also cracked, probably because someone kicked in a door or something. We replaced the door frame as well. And repainted the room, of course! All of the outlets were black as well, so we have been replacing those with clean new ones.

Another picture of the pink and black upstairs bedroom. It's really.....special.

Here is the kitchen, which is off the living room/dining room. The kitchen is long and narrow with a really weird breakfast nook area (see picture below). It was also very dark as the walls were painted black, the countertops are black and the cabinets are dark. The lineoleum is so, so dingy. We haven't done anything to the kitchen yet except paint it and clean it, but it's amazing what a difference white walls make. We have replaced the strange light fixtures too.

 Here is a picture of the strange breakfast nook in the kitchen. It's really too small for a table of any size but too big to be useful. We have big plans for the kitchen to make it more functional.

 Here is the downstairs bathroom. Because the house was a foreclosure, everything has been winterized, hence the orange stickers and saran wrap over the toilet. This bathroom is probably the room in the best condition in the whole house. One of the walls was black, but the other was a gray color. The bathtub has paint in it, however. We haven't tackled that yet. The bathroom is about half-painted now, and clean. I like it except it has the same linoleum as the kitchen which is gross and old and dingy yellow. No matter how much I scrub it, it stays that dingy yellow, so we just have to make do until we replace it.

Here was the downstairs bedroom. The downstairs forms a big circle-- you walk into the house and the stairs are straight ahead, the living room/dining room opens up to the right. The kitchen is along the back of the house, and you get to it through the living room/dining room. To the left of the stairs when you come into the house is a door which leads into this bedroom. (We have made it our study instead of a bedroom). The door in the above picture leads into a short hallway which ends in the kitchen. Off the hallway is the downstairs bath.

This room had baseboards and trim only on half the room. And half the room was black. What is with all the black?! For real.

This is the other upstairs bedroom. Straight at the top of the stairs is the other bathroom which is teeny, tiny. (I'll have to take a picture of it.) On either side of the landing are doorways into the two bedrooms-- the pink and black bedroom on the right and the gray and black bedroom on the left. This bedroom was okay as well, besides the trim being black of course. The outlet covers in this room had been covered with leopard print duct tape. So I changed all the outlet receptacles and covers and light switches and covers. Nice and white now.

This is probably the most exciting room in the house. If you go through the gray and black bedroom upstairs, through the door on the opposite side of the room, you enter into the space above the garage which is HUGE. Seriously, 20 feet long and I don't know how wide. You can see in the above picture that I'm standing in the doorway and Matt has stepped down into this area and he is standing at the other end of it. Vaulted ceilings, etc. It's a big space. We are currently finishing off this space to become Charlotte and Lydia's bedroom and the room with all the toys because it is SO BIG. We even added a closet to this room and it is still SO BIG. It will be nice to have this space.

Anyway, the house was a foreclosure in our neighborhood that we had been watching. We got a really good deal on it, after all was said and done. We have done a ton of work, and have a ton of work to go. The front garden bed is a jungle-- I will tackle that in November when things start going dormant. The grass had grown over the sidewalk 6-8 inches and over the driveway about 4 inches on each side. While the kids play in the evening, I dig out the sidewalks and driveway (with a shovel, since a weed whacker or edger simply won't cut it). We haven't even touched the upstairs bathroom, kitchen or backyard. Most of the house just needs maintenance, but it sat empty for 8 months and before that, was owned by a very irresponsible person.

Our goal is to fix up this house and enjoy living in it while we're in Georgia. Then we hope to sell it and use the profit to pay off a little of Matt's school debt.