Books

Sam is finally really starting to like her books. We've been reading to her since she was teeny tiny but she never showed much interest (other than wanting to eat them) until recently. She's really into the touch and feel books and the books that have flaps she has to lift to see the pictures. Here she's playing her with alphabet book.

I love the look she's giving me in this one.

Crazy Hair

Sam's hair is getting long enough to have a lot of fun with. Here's a few pics of what she generally looks like after getting out of the bath.

Lynchburg, Tennessee and the Jack Daniels Distillery

Now that we've sold our house, we are playing tourist for the remainder of our time in Tennessee. One thing that I wanted to do before we leave was to visit the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. It's about an hour and half drive from our house (up towards Nashville) but it's a really nice drive up and over the Cumberland Plataeu. When we got to Lynchburg, we realized that they were having Frontier Days - a cute little festival in the town square. We walked around the town square and bought some BBQ sandwiches to support the local AAU basketball team (man did that bring back memories) before we headed over to the distillery. They give free tours of the distillery all day and we all decided to go around.

Here's a picture of Sam paying reverence to Jack in the visitor's center before our tour.

Here's Sam walking around the visitor's center before the tour:

The tour was actually pretty cool. We've been on brewery tours before where they set up fake assembly lines or won't show you where the beer is actually brewed. Not this tour, you saw the actual mash boiling, the liquid being pulled from the mash, and the finished product aging in its barrels. Every drop of Jack Daniels is produced at this one location in Tennessee and it ages in storehouses on the premises (highly guarded storehouses might I say). Sam was wonderful during the whole tour (though she did try to add her own commentary from time to time.) As long as she's being carried around in the backpack, she's a happy girl.

Although normally when you tour a brewery, distillery or like facility, they'll offer samples at the end of the tour in an attempt to get you to buy some of the product. The irony of the Jack Daniels Distillery, however, is that Lynchburg (and therefore the distillery) are located in a dry county. No liquor can be served in the entire county. A few years ago, the citizens did concede a bit and passed a referendum allowing the gift shop at the distillery to sell special commemorative bottles of Jack Daniels. So, we bought one. Neither one of us likes Jack Daniels - but you're only in Lynchburg once.

In the gift shop, they had a bunch of Jack Daniels marketing material - including their Nascar car. This is the first (and hopefully the last) picture of Sam on the hood of a car :)

On the way home, we decided to stop at a Native American site. Luckily, we decided to head into the museum before touring around the site. As soon as we stepped in the door, it started pouring. We figured it was just a quick summer pop-up thunder storm so we walked through the exhibits and let Sam crawl around some (we were the only ones in there). But about 40 minutes later, we were still waiting on the rain to let up and the sky was not getting any lighter. So we decided to make a run for it. Here's Sam and Kirk all soaking after we made it back to the car.

Hike in the Laurel-Snow Wilderness on Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all you daddies out there! To celebrate Kirk's first Father's Day, we went for a wonderful hike in the Laurel-Snow Pocket Wilderness Area in Dayton, Tennessee (where the Scopes Trial was held). The hike followed a river most of the way and ended up at a waterfall. It was supposed to be about 5 miles long (more on that later).

Along the way, there were a few old mining caves. Here's the family in front of one of the caves:

Although it was over 95 degrees here today, we stayed relatively cool under the cover of the forest. Rosco was able to stay cool also by swimming in the river every hour or so. He loves to swim but hadn't really spent much time in moving water before. He was really hesitant at first but once he realized that he wouldn't get swept away (it was a super slow moving river), he loved swimming around and playing in the rocks.

There were a couple of tight spots on the way up. Kirk has mastered getting around with Sam in the Backpack.

We took a break up at the top of the trail and had a snack. The top of the trail was amazing because it ended at what was basically a 60 foot high granite wall. We're short on rain down here so the waterfall wasn't that impressive but the setting overall was very beautiful. Here's the waterfall:

On the way down, Rosco stopped to swim in this cool waterhole. The problem was, the trail split right at the waterhole (which we didn't realize because we had stopped). When Rosco finished swimming, he headed down the trail and we followed. About 30 minutes later, when we got to a bridge that we knew we hadn't crossed on our way up, we knew we were headed the wrong way. We followed the trail a little further thinking that it might loop around but I started getting really nervous about the trail never ending so we turned around. We only had to backtrack about a mile before we realized where we went wrong and I felt much better once we were back on track. Our "detour" turned a 5 mile hike into about a 7 mile one but we had a great day.

Probably the best part of the day was getting Sam in the river at the end of the hike. She was LOVING IT!

She even got dunked for the first time in the river. Some people have their babies dunked in holy water - the river is our version :) She was a little shocked and didn't quite know what was going on but she didn't cry and smiled pretty quick thereafter.

New Bath Pics

Just a couple of funny pictures from the bath. See how long her mohawk is getting?

Living Room

Here's the next installment in our renovation review - the living room. These are the before pictures (the previous owner had this room staged 2 different ways when we were looking at the house - hence the different furniture in the different pictures):









We made major changes in this room:

1. We had a contractor put in a pass-through to the Kitchen. We hired a contractor to do that because the wall between the kitchen and living room is load-bearing and we don't do structural stuff. Well, we might do that now - but we wouldn't have done it when we started. Once the contractor built the pass-through, we tiled the top to make a little bar/high countertop area.

2. We closed in a "hallway" that went between the living room and the old family room. Because we made the old family room into our master bedroom, we had to close off the open hallway for privacy sake. We made the hallway into a closet to add storage space (since old homes like ours never have enough storage). The closet opens into the living room and serves as our "catch-all" area.

3. We scraped the popcorn ceilings and removed the picture molding. This was a tough project since the ceilings in this room are 10+ feet high. Luckily, our contractor let us borrow his scaffolding. I couldn't have imagined doing this without that.


4. We repainted - twice actually. I really wanted a red accent wall and we originally had the other 3 walls painted a taupe color. We decided that it was too light with the red so we got a great orange color. It was definitely a risk but we think it turned out really great. We were afraid that buyers might be scared off by our color choices but apparently not!


5. Kirk built a gorgeous mantel for the fireplace. This was one of our last projects and it turned out so wonderful. You can really tell how much Kirk has learned working on this house by this project. No way could he have built this 2 years ago.


6. We tiled the fireplace surround. This was our last major project which was somewhat fitting because tiling the kitchen counters was one of our first projects together.



Here I am scraping the ceiling - what a mess!

Here's the "hallway" that we closed in to make a closet. You can see the first framing that we put up.

All framed and drywalled - just need to add the shelves and door:





With the door (and the orange paint color - which is still wet in this picture):




This was the taupe color that we originally had on the other 3 walls. We ended up using the taupe color in the family room instead. Notice the nice, smooth ceilings.

The old fireplace - with no mantel and a terrible green linoleum tile surround.

The pass-through all framed out but no counter-top yet:

With countertop and molding.

The "custom" tile job. Kirk and I had a system that was working really well for us. I measured and marked the tile, he cut the tile, and I laid it. I let him help me lay a few and I could show you exactly where he messed it up. Which is why doing-it-yourself is not always best - you know exactly where all the flaws are!

The pendant lights we had put up over the bar area. We picked the orange color that we ended up using on the walls out of the glass on these lights. These lights are one of my favorite parts of the whole house!

Here are the after pics:

The closet - Kirk did a great job combining 3 different shades of stain to get this aged look on our brand new closet door. You can also see part of Kirk's mantel and the tile surround.

Kirk's masterpiece - the mantel. Best part of the mantel - the fact that he only had to buy $20 worth of supplies. Most of the mantel was built using old scrap wood that he had torn out of other parts of the house or had laying around from other projects. We had a couple of people come out to give us quotes on building a mantel and the cheapest quote we got was $250. I'm willing to bet that the pros couldn't have done any better job than Kirk did.

The mantel and closet

Dining area:

The bar area.

Rest of Riverbend

Riverbend finally ended tonight. Every year we get our pins and say we're going to go a lot and, in the past, we haven't. But this year, we made up for it and went every night (except Faith and Family night featuring Stephen Curtis Chapman - that wasn't tough to pass up). It was amazing and we had a great time but we are glad to have our evenings back. Heading out every night is exhausting!

Here's a list of my favorite bands that we saw over the last week:

1. Cornmeal - ultimate jam band out of Chicago. If they come within 100 miles - make the effort to see them. AMAZING show! http://www.cornmealinthekitchen.com/

2. The Emmitt/Nershi Band

3. The Wailers

Riverbend was going on when we arrived in Chattanooga 2 years ago. It's been a great festival and we're sad that this was our last one. Here's hoping they have good festivals in Portland!

First Weekend at Riverbend

We had a great weekend at Riverbend. On Saturday, we went to see The Emmitt-Nershi Band - which is the lead singer and mandolin player from Leftover Salmon (Drew Emmitt) and Bill Nershi a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and founding member of the String Cheese Incident. They were AMAZING! In this picture, Emmitt is on the left playing the mandolin and Nershi is the old hippie in the middle.

Here's Sam getting ready to head out for the show - warming up her vocal cords to do a little screaming for the band.

It was a beautiful night out, it wasn't that crowded, and the band was rocking. We danced and danced and danced (and were a little sore the next day). Sam danced on dad's shoulders. She was trying to get the rest of the crowd going with her towel too but the crowd was a little lame.

On Sunday night, we went to the see the Wailers - yes, as in Bob Marley and the Wailers. It was a little warmer Sunday night but we still rocked out at the show. Since Bob is (obviously) no longer with us, we weren't sure whether the Wailers would play the old tunes that we all know and love. And Kirk and I were hoping to hear a little Stir it Up since that was the first song we ever danced too.


We got half of what we asked for. They did play a lot of the classics - Get Up Stand Up, Jamming, etc. - but no Stir It Up. Regardless, it was so freakin awesome. We had a great time!


The heat was a little rough on Sam. She was pretty uncomfortable until the sun went down behind the bridge. She was like "seriously mom, you're making me sit out here in the sun for what?"


But she got over it once the music started and dad started dancing. She loves watching him dance:

Once the sun went behind the bridge, Sam relaxed. Maybe a little too much. She straight passed out for about a half hour.

After she woke up in the stroller, we put her in the backpack and she slept off and on for the rest of the show:

Some sights around Chattanooga

Just a few random pictures that I took after Riverbend the other night. This is some sights around Chattanooga. These were all taken just across the river from where we live.

This is the view of the Art Museum from the end of the pedestrian bridge.

Up close of the old mansion converted to an Art Museum (which, of course, we've never been into):




This is the pedestrian bridge - we live about 3 blocks from the other end of this bridge:

"The Coolest Baby Ever."

Tonight we were told, "man, you guys have the coolest baby ever." We were at Riverbend - a local music festival featuring over 100 bands on 4 stages over 9 nights. It takes place just across the river from where we live so we're able to walk over and see a few bands each night. It started tonight and we went over to see this local jam/rock band that we've seen the last few years. We were watching the band and Sam was LOVIN' it. She was dancing, dancing, dancing and smiling, smiling, smiling. Here's a few pictures of the huge grin that she has when she's listening to music:

Here's a video showing the dancing that got her declared "the coolest baby ever."

Here's one more of Sam dancing with mom:

In the High Chair

Now that most of the work on the house is behind us, we're trying to get Sam into a routine of sorts. Part of that is getting her into eating 3 meals in her high chair. Sam has mastered grasping food and putting it into (or at least near) her mouth. She's got 8 teeth so she can bite and pull apart relatively solid food. Rather than truly eat it though, she tends to just gum it for a while and then spit it out. But she's getting used to the different textures and flavors of solid food and is definitely getting better at the whole eating game. We try to give her little pieces of whatever we're having (mainly the bread/carby things we're eating) and Kirk makes her special food each day. She usually gets an egg yolk every morning, some dried fruit, and some crackers. Yogurt is her newest fave food.

Here are a few pictures of Sam "eating" in her high chair.

We've also started trying to get her to use a sippy cup - which she basically just plays with most of the time. But if you hold it up for her, she will drink from it.