Other Stuff We Do

We've kept pretty busy since Calvin was born, even if we never leave the house. But we did manage to get some extra fun things in lately. Aunt Rachelle came for a visit from Montana, and we went to the trampoline bouncing place with her, Aunt Jessica, Paisley, and Cruz. The pictures are terrible quality, but I forgot to bring a camera and had to use my phone.

 

Millie is pretty much in love with Aunt Rachelle. They speak the same language, which pretty much means anything goes. Face painting? Slumber party? Shopping trips? You betcha. :)

 

We also bought some kites from the dollar store and flew kites for the first time with the kids. While they loved it, we need some stronger wind to really keep them up in the air.

Grandma gave the kids bird house kits from the Home Depot. After we built them, they insisted on painting them. I was actually quite impressed with both of their careful painting skills. When she was all done, Millie declared, "Now that's what I call a work of art." 

Projects

I don't know if I've mentioned this recently or not, but I'm really into Craigslist. Just get me talking about what amazing deals I've found and you'll either be converted or really annoyed. Camilla has been a Craigslist Baby from long before she was born. I don't believe I've purchased a piece of furniture for her retail, and what I didn't buy secondhand I was given by somebody else. That's where this story starts.

A few months ago, Mark and I were driving to or from the mall or the church or some other location up towards North Triphammer Rd. in Ithaca in the evening. It was just beginning to snow. I had started to think about a dresser for our baby girl, as it was one of the few things left on my list. When all of a sudden, I saw a dresser on the side of the road with a sign that said FREE on it. (Seriously, I should have been wishing for a big screen TV or something. . .) I made Mark turn around and go back for a closer look. It was old. It had some weird rubber thing adhered to the top. But it was sturdy, and if we didn't take it home the snow was going to ruin it.

The dresser sat in a room in the sorority house for months, and almost didn't come with us. I mean, was it just gross to give your child something you found on the side of the road? We had a backup plan, and decided not to bring it with us when we moved out. The backup plan failed. I thought I would enjoy stripping the thing down and refinishing it, so we went back for it. Then I read about how much work it takes to refinish a piece of furniture. No thank you! So I settled for sanding it down a bit, painting it, and replacing the old knobs. I'm a little attached to it now. So thank you to the person who put this baby out by the side of the road just for me. I bet you regret it just a little bit now.

While I'm at it, this was another project I was excited to work on. Amazingly, it actually was completed, unlike most of the things I've started recently. Though now I wish I'd waited a bit so I could use the same orange paint to match the dresser. Oh well. I really like the expression on Camilla's face in this one. She seems just thrilled. And please don't tell me I'm a bad mother--Camilla was NOT sleeping in her (free) crib with 3 stuffed animals, 3 small pillows, and 1 large body pillow at the time this photo was taken. She was sleeping in her OTHER (free) mini-crib until recently (thanks, Mel--if you're reading this, we've LOVED the cradle and plan to keep it around for the next one).

Picnik

I came across this great photo-editing website called Picnik the other day. It has some great features that make it easy to edit photos for free, plus upgrades if you want to buy a membership. I'm all about the free stuff, and managed to really improve some of Camilla's photos. Here are a couple of before and after shots showcasing what you can do. (If you're really interested, send me a message and I'll give you a link that has some demos.)

Craftiness

There's something about the holidays that makes me want to make crafts. I think it's encoded into women's genes or something, because I'm not the only one. Mark dreads my visits to the craft store this time of year, because I don't often have a project in mind till I get there. Then I just start picking up stuff I think is cute, and though I may never figure out what to do with it, I have to have it. So here are a couple of things I've worked on this season. I really enjoyed glitter painting these classy purple ornaments (they go so well with the red ones I bought--not so much with the rest of my ornaments, but oh well). Unfortunately, I've managed to scratch them up pretty badly, so I might have to make more next year. :)

Another thing I got excited about were these little clippies that all of the cool little girls are wearing these days. Some of the women in my branch were learning to make them recently, and I had to get in on the fun. Unfortunately, I have no little girls to decorate on my own. Fortunately, I have two little nieces in Wyoming who might benefit from this recent hobby. We'll see how long it takes before I get tired of this and move on to the next idea.

Catching Up

So it's been awhile since I last posted, and part of the reason for that is that Mark updated our website recently. We have a bit of a power struggle when it comes to who gets to post the pictures: me on the blog or him on the website. Now that he's done his updating, I'll just use some of the pictures that he didn't choose.

We've had a busy couple of weeks, so I'm just going to quickly summarize what we've been up to:

We've continued to work in the garden, and are really enjoying it! Things are popping up all over the place, and we even have a few things starting to flower. That means we'll get to see actual vegetables growing soon! We've also opted to go non-organic, as our plants were being devoured by bugs. They are no longer a problem. :)

Mark really did catch a bass, and it sure was tasty!

And we really did get a new car! We are calling it Gandalf (as in "Gandalf the Gray"). We've even taken it on a few trips and have thoroughly enjoyed the ride.


On Tuesday the 10th, my parents flew into Philadelphia. I went with my sister, Janelle, to pick them up. We got to see downtown Philadelphia, including the Liberty Bell. However, I didn't get a picture because the thing was swarmed with groups of kids. When one finally started to move on, the next group would push their way up to the front so the rest of us could never get close to it. Sometimes I really hate kids. They don't even know what it was they were looking at.

A few days later we all visited the church history sites in New York. We had tours of everything except the Hill Cumorah visitor's center. Everyone enjoyed getting to see those places for the first time (my parents and sister had never been) but we failed to take any pictures. I guess when we have it all so close we don't think about pulling out the camera all the time now. The next week, Mark and I drove down to Gettysburg to spend time with my parents who were having an Army reunion down there. We spent one day touring Gettysburg on our own. . .




. . . and the next day went on a tour bus to Washington D.C. to see all of the monuments. One of the greatest things about it was getting to see my cousin, Jill, who recently moved there. I also completely fell in love with the Lincoln Memorial--I think it's my favorite thing in DC. One of the worst things was getting back on the bus to head back to Gettysburg and realizing that I was horribly sunburned on my neck and arms.

Mark and I headed back to Ithaca the next day, but not without making a quick detour to scout out the Hershey Chocolate Factory in Hershey, PA. We've promised to take Mark's mom there next time she's out to visit, and now we know how to get there and what we want to do when we come back. We really enjoyed the tour of how they make chocolate, complete with singing cows. I can't eat chocolate now without hearing them in my head. ("It's the milk chocolate!!")

. . .& A Fish

Upon arriving home Mark got ready to go fishing again. I expected him to be gone for a couple of hours, so I was surprised when he walked in the door about 40 minutes later and announced he had caught me a nice, delicious bass. I didn't believe him till I saw the 14" fish in the bucket. It really was a bass! We both feel a little bad about killing the thing but are looking forward to conducting a taste test tomorrow to see if we like bass or not. If not, Mark will have an excuse to not kill the next one he catches. Mark will probably post pictures of his fish when he updates our website, so keep an eye on that if you want to see his prize. 

Memorial Day

Spring has been a little sneaky here in Ithaca this year. We started getting really nice, warm weather earlier than expected, and everything started to bloom. We started participating in the great outdoors again with the gardening and fishing and such. Then all of a sudden things turned cold again. For a few weeks it just didn't feel very good to be outside. Even when we went to work hard in the garden there was a biting wind that wouldn't leave us alone. Last weekend the sun came out to play again. (And I really mean it came to play-- it's dropped back down to the low 50's as I write this.) It made for a great Memorial Day weekend that we hadn't really planned to have!

Cornell had graduation on Sunday, and even though we didn't attend, we're glad that the weather was nice for all of the families and graduates. That evening, some of our friends invited us over to play Settlers of Catan, which we haven't played in ages! It was really fun to hang out and to not be playing only against Mark (which always means he wins and I get mad so we don't play again for a long, long time). It was also great to spend time with Ben & Lexi before they move away from Ithaca for good as well as Matt & Caroline before they leave for 3 weeks in Europe.

On Monday, we decided it was finally time to purchase our NY State Parks pass which will allow us to enter all of the parks for the entire year. It will be an integral part of Mark's fishing plans this season. Since we had to go to a park to buy our pass, we decided to pick one where we could go hiking. So Mark wants to hike Fremont Peak, the tallest mountain near Pinedale in the Wind Rivers when we go to Wyoming in July. He and I will both need some conditioning if this is really going to happen, and I have yet to even commit to the plan. When we started up the first hill in Treman State Park and it just kept going up, up, up I wasn't so sure we would even make it to the first waterfall. However, with our new Camel-packs to provide us with liquid refreshment along the way (thanks, Janelle!) we managed to push on until our bodies gave in and started to work with us.


The trip was about 5 miles round trip, and we had a great time! The hike isn't quite as impressive as the Watkin's Glen gorge, but there were some pretty neat waterfalls along the way. The largest one in this gorge is Lucifer Falls, and you don't see it till you get to the top of the trail. It's a good thing we were rewarded at the top with this view, or all of the hills and stairs might not have felt worth it. :) And every time we saw a pool in the river, Mark asked if I thought it had any fish in it. He thinks I have everyone convinced that he's obsessed with fishing, so I should probably make it clear that he really was only asking me that because he knew it would drive me crazy by the end of the day. And he was right.

Later that day, our friend Tim Tran came over for dinner. He taught us how to make Vietnamese Spring Rolls which are so yummy! They're so easy to make, and one of my new favorite foods. We also grilled hamburgers and Mark made his first potato salad which was a big hit. By the end of the day we were completely exhausted, but it felt too early to go to bed. So I consented to watch The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy with Mark and managed to stay awake through the whole thing. I'm such a good wife. ;)

Farming & Fishing

Last year when we stayed in Ithaca for the summer, we joined a CSA farm. We got to go down to the Farmer's Market every week and pick up our portion of the produce they had harvested that week. While it was a great idea in principle, we found that we quickly tired of eating kale and often were too busy to pick up our stuff on Saturdays. This year we think we have found a better way to get plenty of good, fresh produce in all of the varieties we like best. We decided to rent a garden plot from Cornell. We went in with some friends on it so we could split the cost of fencing our 20'x40' plot and the supplies we will need. We spent one day digging up rocks, putting in posts, digging a trench to bury the 'bunny fence' around the plot, and putting up our fence. It felt so great to get outside and work hard and especially to know that we'll get to reap the benefits of having a garden which we thought we wouldn't be able to have for many years down the road. We've planted a few things so far and are excited to start seeing little plants pop up in the coming weeks. Here are a few pictures from our first day of work.

Jenny picking up rocks

Darrell & Mark digging the trench and installing the 'bunny fence'

Mark finishing up the fence (the dark spots are fertilizer ready to be spread)

Another activity that should keep Mark busy this summer is his fishing hobby (addiction?). He gets up pretty regularly in the early morning hours to try to catch me a nice, delicious bass (or lake trout). There are days when he 'wakes up' earlier than me twice: once to go fishing, then he comes home and sleeps for another hour and gets up again to go to school before I'm ready to roll out of bed. I finally accompanied him on one of his trips (the first time he could get me out of bed by 7:00 am) so I snapped a few shots of the fisherman hard at work.

Spring has come to town!

If you have ever spent a winter in upstate New York, you have a pretty good idea of how wonderful spring truly is. I never realized just how much the seasons can effect me until we moved here. One day of sunshine after weeks of grey, rainy, snowy winter brings me back to life in an amazing way. Mark and I went for a walk today without coats, scarves, gloves, umbrellas, boots, or even jackets! It was absolutely blissful! Just breathing in the warm, fresh air is like tasting sunshine. And the weather is supposed to stay warm for the next week! Last April we were hit with a huge snowstorm unexpectedly, so we're not going to get too excited just yet, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that sunshine is really here to stay. This week we planted tomatoes, basil, chives, thyme, cilantro, and peppers and they have overtaken our house. We have a master plan in mind to keep the pesky deer away from them once they're ready to move outside. We're getting anxious to barbecue, Mark is ready to test out his new fishing pole, and the spiders are coming out of hibernation mode at our house. Spring is here, and summer is just around the corner. Life is good. :)

Stormin' Mormons

As some of you already know, Mark has spent the past couple of months playing on the LDSSA intramural basketball team (aka The Stormin' Mormons). They play once a week, and despite the fact that some of them are up to ten years older than some of their opponents, they've managed to pull off a lot of wins. Enough, in fact, to send them to the intramural finals. They entered the tournament as the 19th seed, and nobody expected them to go all the way to the championship game, knocking out the #2 seed in their semifinal game. Last night they played against the number 1 team, and although they didn't pull off this final victory, I think it's safe to say that they're all pleased with their season. Most importantly, they DID receive t-shirts for coming in 2nd place. I'm sure you're all dying to see some intense game-action photos, but I'm sure Mark will want to write more about the basketball season on our website (it's like our more in-depth, semi-annual blog) and I'd hate to steal all of the pictures from him. But because I haven't posted any pictures in a very long time, here's a shot of the whole team (minus Josh, Chad, and Darrell who couldn't make it that night) with their new t-shirts. As you can see, Mark is by far the tallest on the team and has the record for rebounds.