Dusty

So, even though we have finished 11 rooms in this house, we still have more to go.

I can't believe it either. This house is the Project That Will Never End.

This is what's in the works right now:

This is on the second floor and will be another bathroom (the room on the right) and a library/office for Curtis (the room through the door to the left - even though it currently has the tub in it, it's not the bathroom).

Anyway, it's dusty here on the second floor and I really dislike the dust. Soon we'll be at the point where we can clean up. Oh wait, shoot. I just forgot Curtis has to refinish the floor in the library, too, so it will be a while. Argh.


I just have to remind myself that once upon a time our third floor bathroom looked as bad, if not worse, and now it looks like this:

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Totally unrelated: Vivian has been doing a thing lately where when she talks about things that happened a long time ago, it's always "in the time of Jesus." It's funny to me.

Oh wait - I just heard her say "in the time before people, when there were only bugs and animals." I guess she's thinking both theology and science. Or something.

Lately

What we've been up to:

Eating bananas.

Laying on a blanket outside, having a baby climb on me

and looking up at the trees.

Swimming at Jamie and Tom's pool.

Making tons of bubbles for kids.

Scrubbing the hand-me-down playset. After Xander and Kaylee and Isaac and Iris, we're the third set of cousins to love this playset.

And that's what's been happening here!

Going Green (and orange and red...)

It's that time of year when friends hang sacks of zucchini and green beans on your doorknob, your dad sends you home from a visit with bunches of basil and bags of onions, carrots and beets and that one family at church opens the gate of their pickup truck so everyone can load themselves down with cucumbers and summer squash.

I love it!

Eating raw beans from Dave and Nghia.


Dave and Nghia's zucchini.

Dad's beets.


Dave and Nghia's beans.

We'll be eating cucumbers from the Beveridge's garden tonight and I'll be bringing our neighbors some fresh pesto made with basil from our garden and Mom and Dad's. Super yuuuum.

Brimfield, baby!

We LOVE Brimfield! It's the biggest outdoor antique market in the country and it's held three times a year in Brimfield, Massachussetts. We haven't been since we started having kids five years ago, so we were so excited to get away for 24 hours (THANK YOU Michael and Lisa for watching the munchkins!!) to take it all in last week.

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(It was rainy and humid so my hair just kept getting

bigger and bigger and frizzier and frizzier.)

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(Fantastic vintage French ribbon.)

Since Brimfield is about a four hour drive away, we left the night before and stayed at a really swanky place (yeah...a Day's Inn...). It was nice to wake up when we felt like it, rather than when a two-year-old felt like attacking us in our bed. We spent a lovely hour or two in the morning watching the news (no Dora! no Wonder Pets!). However, Curtis has an experiment going on right now where Fox News is his only news source for a month to see if a steady diet of it changes his worldview. That means no CNN, no Daily Show, no Colbert Report (sad). I tell you, I am both fascinated and appalled by Fox News. If you are not a regular viewer, give it a look once in a while. It is really something else.

Anyway, we watched a lot of Fox News (which resulted in a lot of "Wow! I can't believe they said that with a straight face!" and "!??!!?!???!!!"), after which we hit the antique fields.

There is SO MUCH to see there, it's all so interesting and it just keeps on going, field after field. You really can't see it all.

We ended up getting three things, two of which I forgot to photograph (and were just little things) so maybe I'll put in a later post. The big purchase, however, was....

(At home)

a TABLE! Yep, we strapped that baby to the roof of the Subaru and cruised all the way back to Maine.

(Curtis inspecting the table before we bought it.)

We like it. It's not perfect, and certainly not an antique (just sort of finished to look olde) but it was sturdy, the right size and the right price, so there we go. We couldn't fit around our little old table anymore. It was time.

We still need to get a bench to go along the wall side and then we'll just have the four chairs around the rest. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it.

(Us, cruising back to Maine.)

(One of the many photos I took of myself on the ride

home because it was a long drive and I was bored.)

Wedding prep

Evan and Jenni's wedding is coming up in three weeks! The time has flown by and I'm glad the pennant banners are finally done and delivered.

I think they came out pretty cool.

Jenni did a great job picking the fabrics. She has such a cool wedding theme (summer picnic) that pretty much anything goes, in terms of fabrics and colors. She has also made dozens and dozens of cloth napkins in a huge variety of colors and prints that look so cool all stacked up in baskets.

I didn't have any ribbon long enough to do an entire 30' banner (I made three 30' ones and a 20' one), so I mixed and matched from my ribbon stash.

This is just a sample. I have so much more!!

On Monday Jenni, her friend Kristen and I got together at Mom and Dad's house for a marathon cookie baking session.

Evan and Jenni are giving out cookies as favors. Guests can choose their own (fruit and nut, strawberries and cream, peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip, lemon sugar and chocolate chip) and put them in a cute little bag to take home.

Jenni really is that fast scooping and rolling cookie dough. She (and Kristen) work at Scratch Bakery in Portland and are pros. Literally.

Here's Mess Of The Week: Betty with a blueberry muffin.

Blame it on the weather

This weather is officially getting the best of me. I started writing this post four or five days ago but got distracted or overwhelmed or something and since everything is so HOT and STEAMY here I can't seem to get motivated to finish this post. Every time I get to the computer lately I spend my time poking around the internet on unneccessary stuff, like how much Hello Kitty bento boxes are going for on eBay or other people's blogs (people who are evidently more dedicated their craft than I) or other stupid stuff like THAT THING that many of you know I like but that I will not mention here for fear of the mockery that would ensue. (I SWEAR, there is only one __________ website that I check out and only because it is funny and makes me laugh, which I definitely need as I deal with four little kids in this weather.)

Aaaaanyway, I know some of you (Lorna!) have missed photos and updates for the last two weeks, so I'm cramming it all into one post.

Here's a recap:

Fourth of July. We went to the Thomaston Fourth of July parade on Saturday and then had Kathryn's fifth birthday party in the afternoon (FIVE! can you believe it?).

The kids love any parade, big or small. This one fell in the "big" category and they were thrilled with the bands, floats, revolutionary war re-enactors and especially the CANDY. Candy is never as good as when it is chucked at you by a troop of Boy Scouts or from a fire truck.

Kathryn's birthday was June 27 but we waited to have the party at Nain and Taid's on the 3rd of July. Kathryn had requested a Pink Sparkle Fairy birthday, so I did my best with sparkly pink stuff. For fun the kids all decorated wands with plastic "jewels" - even the boys, though their wands were more manly. Less tulle and ribbons and more dark blue and moons.

My camera was not present for any of the actual Fourth of July festivities (I know, I get a Bad Blogger Card for that), so there are no photos of the second parade we went to or of Curtis's birthday cake (a huge trifle with cake, pudding, whipped cream, cherries and blueberries - I always do some sort of red, white and blue cake for him) that we brought to Tommy and Laurie's annual Independence Day party. I really missed some good shots, like the kids loving the fireworks. At one point Dexter, who had been open-mouth thrilled by the exploding lights in the sky, said to me "I LIKE it, Mommy!

The second parade was a hoot, too. It was, literally, about 25 people who rigged up floats pulled by tractors down a dirt road, with about 20 spectators. Fifteen were from our family. They have been doing this parade for something like 20 years now and it is one of the more awesomely hilariously weird things I have seen. It's so great and they have such a fun time doing it. I promise I'll remember the camera next year.

For me, one of the biggest highlights of this summer so far was spending time with my cousin Ann and her family, who visited Maine for about a week and a half.

I really didn't know Ann (or any of my cousins for that matter) growing up, in part because they lived in Kansas (or Colorado or Texas, for the the other cousins I barely know or don't know at all) and also because my mother was not particularly close with her half-siblings.

I so very much enjoyed getting to know my cousin and her great husband Amba and kids Cole, Hugh and Trevor. It was like opening up this whole branch of the family I knew but...didn't really know. I am just SO HAPPY that their original travel/vacation plans to the Northeast got changed around so they could spend time with all of us here in Maine and Katie in Vermont.

The kids had tons of fun playing with their second cousins once removed (we think that is the right designation for what they are...). When they visited us here in Rumford we went up to Roxbury Pond and had such a great time we didn't leave until nearly 9 p.m.