on the Mississippi

Rory and I took the kid's to Marlene and Madison's early Friday morning so we could have a little get away. We went to Lake City on the Mississipi where we ate ice cream cones out on the pier. We were blissfully happy to discover this cute little water town just one hour from our house. The day was warm and windy and the sailboats clanked loudly, sort of like wind chimes. I love Lake City.

Then we drove to Wabasha and read our books under the bridge. I spent some time in a bookstore, at the eagle museum, and walking around the town while Rory happily kept reading. We had only been gone a few hours from our home, and we were so fully on vacation it amazed me. The whole day and a half we kept saying, "this is perfect. this is such a great trip."

Rory and I made a list of the things that have to be present for me to feel like I'm "on vacation." There must be a large body of water nearby. Lakes are great, but this trip the mighty Mississippi was perfect. We must get ice cream cones and eat them while walking near the water. And we must take a drive that is pretty enough that I roll down the window several times, with my camera flapping wildly in the wind, as I attempt to take pictures in front of the windshield. If those three things happen: water, ice cream and passenger pictures, I'm having a very good time.

We crossed the river and saw signs for Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthplace! The house is a replica, but this was the place where she was born. These were the Big Woods she wrote about. We were so excited!

Then we drove through Stockholm, the cutest little town of adorable shops. I cannot wait to get back there when the stores are open...

We had our anniversary dinner in Pepin at the Harbor View Cafe. It was awesome. I remember going there when I was little girl and being blown away by the lasagna. Two decades later, and the lasagna did not disappoint. It was amazing.

We stayed in Wabasha at the AmericInn and I got my fill of HGTV. It was glorious. We woke up and read some more, then reheated our leftovers for lunch. The day was rainy and slow and we drove back to pick up our teething daughter and active son.

Thank you so much Mimi and Papa for taking the kids! The 30 hours we were away were magical.

Elsie walking

Elsie walking from Becca Groves on Vimeo.

Well, sort of walking. She's really close as you'll see. And really proud and impressed that she can push this little cart on her own. (She's pointing at the chickens when she yells and gets so excited...)

the sunny room: part two

Monday we painted. Tuesday they prepped for tile. Wednesday they laid the tile and we painted the first coat on the base board and casing (starting at 9:45 pm...). Thursday they grouted the tile and installed the trim, base board and casing. And today Elsie put the base boards to good use as she rammed her little blue cart into every wall. 

We wanted something nice and light for the walls. I told Rory I wanted a blank canvas when we were done, ready for colorful quilts, bright book shelves, fun throw pillows... The color I first found and liked was called File Cabinet. Seriously?

This color is called Antique White, but if I were naming tape I'd call it Masking Tape. Because if File Cabinet can be a name, so could Masking Tape. And it's that exact color (we know that, unfortunately, because I was too hasty and didn't want to go back to Menards to buy blue paint tape. Big mistake. Lesson learned. Don't do this. Your husband will have to go inch by inch with a razor blade to get the tape off the wall.

Our contractors were awesome. I wish there was a National Contractor Day because I'd send them flowers. They were great with our kids, and would not cut corners. Even when I didn't really care one way or the other they'd say, "we're doing it this way, or it will just look shoddy. And we don't do shoddy." They left today and I'm going to miss them!

Next week we'll paint the door, the insides of the windows, grout the nail holes in the trim and give it another coat. We'll put the ceiling fan up and hook up the outdoor light. We'll change the socket covers and plug them up for safety.

And then we'll wait six months until our funds replenish and we can buy furniture for this lovely, sunny room. :)

lately we've been...

I've always loved Elise Blaha Cripe's posts called Currently. They're a quick and easy way to get a little glimpse into life at that very moment. Here's my version.

Lately we've been...

walking outside again to get from our kitchen to our bedrooms as we wait for the tile to set.

crawling into bed by 9 pm. It's my new self-imposed bedtime and I must be in bed. I can read as late as I want, but I must be in bed.

cheering for Elsie as she walks across the room pushing her grocery cart. She's so, so proud. And we are too!

loving a sweet little 2nd grader as she spends a few nights with us.

finishing Rory's office in the woods: installing a little wood burning stove, finishing the siding.

drinking a morning cup of coffee. This is still pretty new for me. And one of the new joys of my life.

swatting lots of flies when Ivar is out of the room. "No, don't hit him! He is nice! He is a nice fly!"

watching the workers. Ivar is in love with our contractors, Mike and Tom. The rest of us are too. Their work is quality, they are hard workers and easy company to have in our home. I am so grateful for them.

marveling at how our kids sleep through the nail guns, circular saws and hammering.

picking up Beth Moore's Jesus the One and Only for the umpteenth time. If you're looking for a personal devotional workbook, I recommend this one with my whole heart. It takes about fifteen minutes and day and always leaves me feeling filled up and grateful I took the time.

comforting Ivar in the night after bad dreams.

planning our trips through Menards so as to avoid the Halloween displays. They are terrifying. When did Halloween become so terrifying? I miss the animated ghosts and happy pumpkins and this new level of scary is really awful.

laughing through season one of Arrested Development. Thank you library for having this dvd set in the mix.

reading How to Cook without a Book. Wish this book had been our home economics text book.

eating fanny farmer chocolate bars I purchased from Mara and Sonna. What a delicious way to support my nieces and their school.

listening to Rory comfort Ivar, "oh Ivar, that is such a scary feeling. you hit your solar plexus. that means you got the wind knocked out of you, and you couldn't breathe. your solar plexus is right here, see?"

eight years

Rory and I are celebrating eight years of happily ever after today. To honor the day, Rory is working in the house and helping with the kids, so that I can paint the sunny room. I think you'd agree it's hard to get more romantic than that. (Unless you wrote a love note to your man with a ceramic kleenex box cover from the hotel before the sun came up while on your honeymoon on Waikiki. That would be pretty romantic too...)

We stayed up late last night talking in bed, walking through the last eight years, talking about the years to come. We had the curtain open and the room was filled with moonlight. Those moments in marriage are so precious. To feel fully heard, fully understood, fully one. To not want to go to sleep, to keep that sweet connection.

It felt like seconds after we fell asleep the roosters started up and Ivar fell out of his bed and just like that it was morning. Time to start a pot of coffee, time to function as if we're fully rested.

But I wouldn't trade the late night and long conversation for anything.

Happy 8th Anniversary, Rory.

I'm glad I picked you. I'm glad you picked me.

Happy 3rd Birthday Svea!

Annika and her family came last night to celebrate Svea's birthday and to drop their girls off for the weekend! Clearly the whole family was so excited to be here that no one had time to close the doors on the van after they got out. We had chili on a borderline chilly night. And chocolate cupcakes with purple frosting that Svea had made with her mama.

Svea got a sleeping bag to match her sisters' and a baby doll. She was super excited about both.

We've been very busy already today: went for a walk with three strollers, built a fort, played with play dough, colored, made pancakes and sausage with helpers, watched Clifford and played in the rock box. And now it's quiet time. Which isn't actually that quiet and seems to involve a lot of tape, string, muffin liners and crayons.

home renovation: a sunny room

Well, it has been a very exciting two weeks here at the grovestead. We are basically living in an HGTV episode, though the only cameras are my own. We are putting in a front door on our house, and a big window to overlook our yard. If this were an actual HG episode it would be called: Let there be Light.

And oh, it is so good.

Our front room at one time was the kitchen in this 1890's farm house. It also used to be in the back of the house. It's a bit confusing, and I've mentioned it before, but the front door to our farm house is on the back side of our house. What was once the front yard is now the back yard after the land around us was developed and two new lots popped up on the land that used to have the lane that drove to our front door. (This was years ago...either the 70's or the 90's...can't remember at the moment).

Anyway, we needed a front door that didn't lead guests through our garage and we needed more natural light in this house. We toyed with adding a sun room onto our house, and then decided this room that we didn't know what to do with could become the sun room if given a big enough window. 

So here are a whole lot of pictures of the progress for anyone who cares. I LOVE a good home renovation (and have spent much of my life watching Sarah Richardson, Candice Olson and that Scott guy on Property Ladder) so to be living out a home renovation is really exciting to me. Which is good, because we have spent much of the last two weeks (and will this next week too) walking outside and around our house anytime we want to get from the kitchen to the bedrooms. So far it feels like an adventure, although today is the first day we've had rain...which tends to make the run with children around the house a bit more adventurous. 

Alright! Here are the pics! This will be overkill if you don't care. Just fair warning...

petting zoo

We went to visit our neighbor's goats again today and I was thinking about how I will sometimes lament how far we live from the zoo.  But then we have experiences like this and I realize the trade off is quite fair. 

I actually just jumped on here to record two quick Ivar quotes from the day.

Today during nap I was singing The B, I, B, L, E to Ivar. I sang, "I stand alone on the word of God..." And he interrupted, "That will be so owie to stand on Jesus."

And then later this afternoon I walked past his door where he was playing alone and heard him say, "Okay. I'll tell you a little choice. You can sit there or there." And then his voice raised and he said, "No, I said there or there!"

The boy has picked up on my choice centered parenting. And my raised voice when he doesn't pick one of my choices!

all together: Sara Groves, Andrew Peterson and Bebo Norman

Listen up. If you live  in Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virgnia, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Virginia, Michigan, South Carolina, North Carolina or Kentucky then you're going to want to get this one on your calendar.

Sara is going on tour this fall with Andrew Peterson and Bebo Norman. Bebo basically sang me through my four years of college, my constant soundtrack for that season of life. And ever since Sara when out with Andrew on his Christmas tour I have been a huge fan. Huuugge. A funny thing happens when I listen to Andrew's music: I see little homemade music videos with each song. He paints pictures with his lyrics and it's awesome. These three are the real deal. And they're going to be on stage all together. Which will most certainly to lead to one thoughtful, inspired, amazing concert.

Click here to see the exact location for each concert  (and to see one of the goofiest concert posters ever...)

And then mark your calendars! Rory and I will be at the Excelsior show in Minnesota. Nebraska friends, try to get to Lincoln the night they are there.

Here's one of my favorite Andrew Peterson songs to convince you to come:
And here's one of my very favorites of Sara singing a hymn I have always loved:
Hope you can get to a show! Get a sitter! Grab a friend! Make plans for dinner and a concert! And then enjoy a night of awesome, thoughtful music.

rainbow tomatoes

Did you know tomatoes ripen in rainbow order? Rory brought in this bunch of baby tomatoes to show me and I was so amazed. Sort of a different kind of color spectrum...

And then, later I walked out the garden to get a tomato for BLT's and found this one that was bigger than the bread. How awesome is that?!!

honeycomb

towanda.

I dropped my kids off at my folks today. I came home and pretended I was a house cleaner and hit my house like it was my job. Because it is. 

And then I went out to the garden, picked some green tomatoes and knocked something off my bucket list:        I ate Fried Green Tomatoes while watching Fried Green Tomatoes.

It was everything I had hoped and more. If there are any other fans of Idgie Threadgoode out there let me know and I'll invite you over next time. 

summer reflection: two favorite moments

At some point this week I decided not to jump on the "holy smokes it's already September" bandwagon. So I'm not going to say that.

What I am going to say is that my one little word for the year is Reflect, but I haven't reflected in a long, long time. So I thought I'd take a moment to look back at the three months that just flew by...

I have a favorite moment of the summer. Which is fun because I have trouble picking a favorite color. But I can pick a moment. It was at our favorite place to eat here in our new town: the golf club. Few seem to know about this gem of a eatery, but we adore it. The food is exceptional and the price is right. We went many times this summer, eating on the patio, watching the golfers tee off on hole one. (Entertainment for the kids! It's perfect.)

On this particular favorite night of them all, we ate (maybe I had the perfect cobb salad with homemade blue cheese dressing. Maybe I had their buffalo wings that could win a competition. I can't remember...but the meal was awesome as always) and then we went to the club house and asked if we could take a golf cart to check out the course. The guy was fine with it, didn't even make us pay. The sun was setting, it was Friday night and there was no one golfing. Rory drove, I held Elsie in my lap and Ivar either stood or sat between us. The night was perfect in temperature, the course was stunning, the homes surrounding the course were fun to look at and the kids were thrilled. I remember Ivar blissfully laughing and asking if this was Disneyland. (We had just flown back from California the day before). I knew in the moment that this was a favorite memory in the making.

I have a close second favorite memory: eating an orange scone in disneyland as soon as we arrived. We hadn't been on a ride, but we stopped at the building that plays Mary Poppins music and had our coffee at an outdoor table while people watching. And I remember feeling magically happy.