July 31 Update

I'm always thinking about going somewhere so I decided to post the place I will be staying at in a couple months. Ahhhh, cannot wait.  The very top deck area is right outside the door from the bedroom I get to use while I'm there.

Anyway the update here at this old house is that the bathroom is about half way complete meaning everything has been removed and Bob is working on the plumbing issues.  Once that's done we can start installing the new shower, sink, vanity, light, medicine cabinet, wainscoting, trim, paint, etc.  Bob chose a paint color so now I'm going to have to repaint our bedroom.  And get a new area rug, lampshades, curtains and duvet cover.  Oh well.  I didn't really like that blue color we painted anyway.  Lol!!  We're going to start replacing all the doors in the hallway with white ones too, starting with our bedroom.  The doors, baseboard and trim in the hallway will all be replaced and painted white before the holidays.  After that we'll stop until after Christmas and then replace the trim and baseboards in the living room and kitchen. 

My mind has always been thinking about how we need to upgrade our home so it can be ready to sell at some point since we bought it while it was still decorated from 1968.  Sometimes though, I think about how I'd like it to look nice and new-ish while we're still living here so I can enjoy it for myself and not just for new buyers.  That's why there's this push to get 'er done!  If not for the lack of an open floor plan between the kitchen and living room I'd stay here for a long time.  I love our back yard and patio area and I love our neighborhood and the mature trees, etc. I don't even mind living in an old house with creaky floors because it's kind of cozy that way.   While we do not have plans to move in the next 3 years there's always the possibility of having to with Bob's job.  I would just hate to be stuck here selling this house while Bob moves away to start working somewhere else. 

So that's that for now.  I should have a pretty good update early next week because we're gonna knock out a lot this weekend.

Upcoming Stuff to Blog About

I look at my blog and wonder why I don't update more often.  I guess because I keep some photos on Facebook.  I don't like to share a lot of detailed information on there but by the time I wind down to sit here and blog I cannot put thoughts together.  Hopefully I'll do a more regular weekly thing soon. That's my goal!

Robbie leaves for school soon and I've been nesting, ie. cleaning and reorganizing things so I can enjoy life at home after he's gone.  When I go to the store I've been picking up stuff for him to take to his dorm.  So far I've bought him new sheets, bath soap, toothpaste and other toiletries and a cookie jar I can fill with snacks when we visit.  He will be rooming with a friend he's known since 1st grade so hope all works out for them.  He hasn't found a job down there yet so I've been reminding him....it's probably gonna take him being very poor to realize he needs to find a job on campus.

Bob and I have decided to dive into renovating his bathroom, aka. the master bath here at this old house.  We recently spent a few hours at all the home improvement stores in the 'boro looking at everything we'll need.  We'll pretty much be gutting his bathroom all except the toilet. There's nothing wrong with it, it's the color we want (white) and it's not that old.  We're going to wait until after Robbie leaves to begin this project because we'll only have the hall bath to share until the project is completed. Ugh.  We'll be ripping up the floor, beadboard from the walls, trim, baseboard, light fixture, sink and cabinet, shower stall, etc.  You get the idea.

Seems like we tend to do projects in the month of August...guess because it's so darn hot outside that we might as well keep busy inside.  This will be the third year in a row that we do this sort of thing. We're going to try to do this project mostly on our own and will call for reinforcements when we get to installing things and use a plumber to relocate some of the sink pipes and maybe the shower.

I'm headed to Seaside again this fall so looking forward to that. I feel bad about Bob not getting to go due to his mandatory work schedule during that time of year but he actually wants me to go so he can have the house to himself for a week.  ha ha!!!  So, I'M GOING!!!

I think that may be all for now.  It's Always Something.

Yellowstone: The Scenery

I don't think our scenery photos turned out as good this year as in the past.  I really need to take some photography lessons before next year!  Anyway, we did have a handful of ones that kind of show the true beauty of the park.  We went out on two nights to take sunset photos but one night ended up being overcast.  It was fun being out after dark though. We saw some wildlife and it was just kinda neat.  Below is a photo of the sunset over a thermal area on Firehole Lake Drive.

Below:  Grand Prismatic Spring from the mountain I basically crawled up because it was so steep.

Above: Fairy Falls. This is the one we hiked 5 miles round trip to see after crawling up the mountainside.  ha ha!

Above:  Firehole River right behind Old Faithful.  This was taken from a little bridge right before the coyotes howled in the woods and one ran down right behind me. 

Above:  Lamar Valley area

Above is Bob with his 6" knife, bear pepper spray and walking stick ready to fend off any attacking wildlife as I was taking pictures by the river one evening.  Lol! 

This of course is our home away from home, The Old Faithful Inn.  Ahhhhhhh, I just love it there!

Yellowstone Trip: Other Wildlife

I could do an entire post on the bison calves of Yellowstone. But I won't.  They are the cutest little guys though and I love watching them play and run alongside their mamas. It's amazing how they change after their first few months.  I definitely like them when they're really little. 

Below is a wolf walking away from a carcass.  We saw several wolves on this trip. They were reintroduced into the park several years ago and have flourished in that time, but there is some weird mange-like disease going around so I'm not sure how this will affect their population in the next few years. 

Above, this little guy was found by Oxbow Bend near the lake. He was munching on leaves or something.  Didn't seem to care that I was near him but took off into his hole in the ground when I got closer.  Below is a Yellow Bellied Marmot.  I like these critters too. They like to live under and around rocky areas. They look like they're wearing black leather gloves on their hands.

Above is a female elk we watched cross the Madison river one day.  The water wasn't very deep and she managed to get out to the strip island to graze for a while.  Below is a raven.  You can find them all over the park and one tip is to look to the skies for a circling raven as that could be a sign that there is an animal carcass somewhere near and that means the possibility of seeing a bear or wolf. 

Yellowstone Trip: Bears

I don't know how many parts I'll divide up our vacation into but I have tons of photos to post.  I'm still not done editing yet as I'm having some difficulty with one of my cameras but I do have the majority of them done and un-professionally edited by me. 

Briefly, we started out our vacation very early on May 22 and drove straight through to Golden, CO.  It was a 16 hour drive.  We did it but the last few hours I was antsy and couldn't wait to get out of the car.  We drove through rain on and off as we headed through the last half of Kansas and eastern Colorado.  I was ever so happy to see the mountains in the distant.  We spent time in downtown Golden. It's just a cute little western town and I loved being there!  We had lunch at Woody's and did some shopping. We wanted to do the Coor's tour but decided we'd wait until the next time. We were exhausted and getting acclimated to the altitude and just couldn't keep going that day.

We headed to Casper for one night  and arrived in Yellowstone National Park on May 25. Memorial Day Weekend. Note to self: Don't ever go to the park during a major holiday.  Just lots more tourists than when we've been not-during-a-holiday is all I'm saying. 

We saw more bears this year than we could have dreamed of.  Bob saw 17 bears and I saw 16. I'm not counting one because he showed me where it was but I didn't actually witness it so can't count it.  It looked like a rock to me.

Above and below:  We encountered this black bear near a place called the Tower Falls area.  He was just strolling down the road minding his own business then he decided to cross the road in front of our vehicle and walked around on the hillside right next to us.  Bob and some other men got out of their vehicles and got too close and along came a park worker and they all got yelled at pretty good.  It was stupid and dangerous for them to be that close.  Enough said.

Above and below: This male grizzly was seen near the Lake and Fishing Bridge area.  We knew something was up as we drove into the area and there were cars pulled off the road and several park employees; so he must've been out there for a while.  We got out and took video and photos of him digging for critters, etc.  We were able to watch him for a good 20 minutes before he started for the trees. We sat in our car and watched him some more as the park rangers use their intercom system to warn everyone to remain in their vehicles.  Bob took lots of  great photos of this bear.

Above and below:  This is a grizzly sow and her yearling cubs. We saw them as we first entered the Tetons on May 25.  We watched for a while then went up the road to grab lunch at Signal Mountain and on our way back (below) the bears were still out and heading across the road into the woods.  In the photo below we were parked about 3 car lengths away and the first cub had already entered the woods. 

Above and below:  This mama black bear is foraging for food while her triplet cubs are napping up in a tree.  This family was also in the Tower area very early the morning of May 26, our second day in the park.  We pulled over and watched the mama for about 20 minutes.  We never did see the babies get out of the tree but could just see dark fur. We were told by some photographers there 3 young cubs.  This bear family was a popular attraction during the week we were there but after the rangers find out where the bears are they don't allow parking on the roadside so there is limited space to be able to watch them.

Above the two below:  This is Bob and another hiker (who we met with his wife and their dogs) walking on the trail to Daisy Geyser.  There had been rumors of a grizzly sow and bear cub in the area so we decided to hike this easy, flat trail on morning hoping to see something.  We took our walking sticks and bear pepper spray (which, from now on, we will both carry our own canister of spray).  I was hoping to see the bears but thought they would be across the river on the hillside or something.  We walked along clapping our hands, talking loudly, smacking our walking sticks on trees and being aware of our environment.  I kept turning around to see the couple and their dogs behind us as it made me feel safer to have other humans nearby.  They were probably 50 yards in back of us.  Bob and I would stop ever so often to listen for sounds of...nature, etc.  Lol!

We kept walking along the trail and we came up and over this little hill and this is what we saw!  It didn't take me long to  realize we needed to NOT be there.  I turned around and started to run and took 3 quick steps before I remembered that was the WRONG thing to do.  I quickly turned around and we both backed away and signaled to the other hikers to stop.  We made it back to them and told them what we saw.  I kept expecting to see the mama bear some barreling towards us down the trail but she stayed with her cub and continued to forage for food. 

I didn't go back up the trail to get a second glance.  We had been close enough!  But Bob walked back up the trail with the male hiker and then again with his wife so they could get a closer look.  When one of their 4 little dogs started to bark we all decided we needed to get back to our vehicles.  The little cub was newly born this spring.  It was so cute and little!  Bob said the mama bear did see them but didn't appear to feel threatened as long as they did not get any closer to the cub.  You could see other hikers way off in the distance (coming from the opposite side of the trail) but we were much closer.

It was such an exciting week getting to see all these bears.  I never imagined we'd be so close to that many of them. Many of the others we saw were pretty far away and some we could only see when offered a view from another person's spotting scope. 

I'll Be Back

           Grizzly sow we saw within our first 5 minutes in the Tetons. Her twin cubs were nearby.

I'll say again, as I have in the past. I've not given up blogging but with preparations for our recent 12 day trip, going on our trip, and returning from our trip....well, I've been trying to catch up on weeding my garden, getting back into cooking and trying to get the right paperwork completed for Robbie to go away to college.

I've been editing our pictures a little every night and will post the best of them on here.  I put some unedited ones on FB late last week. Looking forward to another return trip to Yellowstone next year!

Laundry Room Project

Wonder how many of my blog posts have the word PROJECT in them?  Ha Ha!  Well, after conferring with a couple friends who said they know a little bit about home construction, I was able to talk Bob into tearing down the wall in the laundry room about a month ago. 

The wall served no purpose at all and I'm not sure why the previous owners had it there in the first place. 

So in all his grumpiness about home projects, as usual, Bob began ripping the wall down.

Right after the above picture he ended up with a nail impaled under his chin due to his short temper (and the fact that he didn't want to be doing this project in the first place).  He ended up having to get a tetanus shot the following Monday and an antibiotic.

The laundry room is now a work in progress but much more spacious.  Eventually I'd like to get a set of cabinets the size of the table I placed in the middle of the room.  Or have Bob build me one??

For now the table is nice to use to fold clothes on, etc.  And you can see Robbie's study area where the orange table is.

We still have a lot to do to organize the area but Bob has laid new tile recently and I'll post those photos soon.  We're also going to put up new wall material and I think I'll paint the room a pale yellow, perhaps. 

Below, is an area I have organized my present wrapping and craft-type stuff. 

You can NEVER, EVER be too organized :)

In the Trenches

I have an older friend who has raised 3 teenagers into adults and now parents, tell me that the teenage-raising years are like being in the trenches.  That's the way Bob and I feel right now. Happenings here at this old house recently have aged me about 15 years.  Yep. I'm feelin' it.  I guess our situation is nothing new but for it to happen to our family has really thrown us for a loop.  We go from feeling mad, to sad, to I-don't-know-what.  We'll get through it just fine as much worse things could happen but it's been less than a week so we're still in shock. 

My greatest escape has been yard work during daylight and "House Hunters" on HGTV by night.  Where do these people work?!  How many 25 year old couples can afford $500,000 homes on an island? Apparently several.  I'm jealous but I love travel and seeing other places so I enjoy watching this program. Gives me decorating ideas too, not that I'll ever change my style which I describe as Pottery Barn meets Old Jewish Grandmother.  ha  ha!!! 

So I'm just checking in so I can look back and recall this time in my life someday.  We haven't really decided what to do with our vacation although we know we cannot be gone from home for 10 days  but we are trying to salvage some of it since 3 nights of our hotel stay in Colorado are prepaid and non-refundable.  We might try to make it out there for a few nights just to have a break from reality. 

Keep you posted...

Relaxation Day Results

I had my relaxation day earlier this week.  So what  does that have to do with Germany?

Blah, blah, blah, my day off doing nothing was just okay.  I went to Hobby Lobby and Tuesday Morning to browse around, painted my fingernails, met with the financial aid lady for Robbie's college,  then I watched a movie called "Extraordinary Measures" about Pompe's Disease.  I know someone who has something similar and they asked me to watch the movie starring Harrison Ford and Brendan Frasier. It was very good! 

I kept thinking about cleaning or organizing something all day long.  I went to bed that night feeling like I wasted the day and did not actually feel rested.  In the end, I decided that it is really worth it to be doing something.  Productivity is good when I want to be productive and when I don't then that's okay too. 

The financial aid meeting was fine.  My thoughts about the student loan process were verified in that it's pretty much like FAFSA on steroids with all the stuff we have to do now then wait until this semester is over with before we can actually complete anything.  And I hate loose ends. 

So why the map?  Well if you look at the southwest corner there is a placed called the Moselle Valley and a city called Saarbrucken.  Somewhere in between those places is a village called Elschbach.........and........I'm going there next summer (2015).  The motherland.  I've always thought that eventually I'd get to travel to somewhere in Europe but really thought more about going to England or Italy but my good friend from work asked me to go with her next year.  Her son lives there with his wife and their 3 youngsters as they work for the Dept. of Defense as teachers on the military base in that area.  They have been living overseas for probably 7 years with the first few years in Japan at a base there and put in to transfer to Germany about 4 years ago so now live there.  They own a very nice home in Elschbach and my friend goes over to spend time with them every other summer.

I've known Cecilia and her family for many years and her mom was also one of our co-workers before she moved to the Cincinnati area. She's about 14 years older than me but we get along great as she has the same political views, etc. that I do.  We always room together when we have to go out of town to conferences and we email and talk on the phone often and have lunch whenever I have to go in to the office.  I'm so very excited that she asked me to go along with her as I've seen photos she's taken from her visits and the area where her family lives is just beautiful.  There are vineyards there, castles, river cruises, etc.  I'll pay my plane fare, food, activities, etc. but our stay is obviously free. 

I have a whole year of other exciting things to do but you know how I LOVE to travel so it's really going to be a treat to take this trip with my friend.  Amy's going international!!

Closet Project

The people who built and lived in this old house before us apparently did not have a lot of clothes.  There are 3 bedrooms in this house.  The master bedroom closet isn't even the largest one and Robbie's closet is like a small coat closet.  Several years ago Bob made and installed new shelves in my closet and the one in Robbie's room for better storage and organization.  The closet he uses in the guest room is the largest but the space has never been utilized in a good way. 

Above and below, the guest room closet (which is the biggest in the house).  We had already taken down the one shelf and the bar and I painted it all white. 

Bob spent several hours one weekend afternoon recently designing then cutting wood to make custom shelves. 

These shelves are for shoes, sweaters and jeans.  He fit 2-3 pairs of shoes per shelf and several sweaters and jeans. He has a lot of clothes because I like to shop for him.  My favorite brand to buy him is Chaps from Kohl's. 

Over to the right side of the closet is a little nook where he installed shelves to hang pants and dress shirts. He can also fit his laundry basket in there because I hate to see a basket of dirty laundry sitting out in a room.  Yuck!

Above, looking over into the right side of the closet in the little nook.

The finished product!  Now it's completely full of clothes covering every inch of the hanging areas and shelves but it looks so much better than it used to.

Shrimp

I've tried a couple new recipes recently and used shrimp in place of chicken.  I found the recipes on Pinterest, my new go-to place for dinner ideas. 

The first recipe was a chicken teriyaki stir fry and since I didn't have a wok I bought one on sale at Kroger.

It was a little spicy but very good!  I added asparagus but the next time I would add pea pods and carrots as well. 

I served the shrimp teriyaki over sweet brown rice that I bought in bulk at a Whole Foods store when we were out of town.  If you ever get the chance to try sweet brown rice you should.  It's a sticky, short grain rice and is a little chewy. We loved the texture so plan to pick up more of it when we are near a Whole Foods on vacation.

The picture above is of honey lime tequila shrimp that I served in white corn tortillas with onion, avocado and salsa.  Bob and I had lime margaritas with ours :)  We all really loved this one!  The sauce could be used over chicken or any fish.  Will definitely try this one again.

I'm 1 1/2 days away from my Relaxation Day. Our house is clean from getting ready for guests last night, laundry is caught up and the yard is too wet to do any work outside.   I think Monday will be a success for me to do whatever I want that does not involve anything domestic.