Flashback Friday

Remembering snowy weather and our house in St. Louis. This was 10 years ago, in January of 2014. We later painted the house dark blue with a red door.

Flashback Friday

We've had so many front doors over the years. This was our new front door 10 years ago, in St. Louis. Our current one still has the lone lion guarding it. And amazingly, in the 10 years since this picture was taken we've only had a total of 3 front doors - St. Louis, Long Beach, and Tucson. Our average is improving!

File This Under: Be Careful What You Wish For

Selling our house was undoubtedly the highlight of our week and a huge relief. But it also made me feel wistful, as I'll hate to leave it. We only have a month until it's time to go, and since this week brought me my favorite week of the year in our front yard—when our flowering trees are in bloom—I got a bit carried away and took a whole lot of pictures. Here they are, in no particular order:

Looking Backward, Forward, and Inward

Looking backward: We're in a mad rush to get the house ready for a bunch of realtors who are having a meeting here on Wednesday (and seeing our house before it goes on the market). More on that in a minute. In getting ready, I came upon a bunch of old photos and decided to let myself go down a rabbit hole of old passport photos. The other day I found these, which you may or may not have seen in an Instagram post. I thought that was the entire group. Boy I was wrong.

Then today I found another jackpot. Passport and ID photos, and old IDs too.

Considering we lived overseas for less than five years, our kids sure had a lot of ID photos!

Probably my favorite ID photo of all time is Mary's very first passport photo (above, in the striped shirt). That's because it was taken the morning after her "I don't want to go to Paris" nervous breakdown at Champ's restaurant in Milwaukee. (If you don't know the story, she was in kindergarten, we bought tickets to go to Paris for spring break—our first overseas trip ever—and excitedly announced it to the kids at dinner, at which point Mary had a full-on breakdown where she kept screaming over and over and OVER "But I don't want to go to Paris!") She apparently got her anxiety out of her system. The next morning she happily went with the rest of us to AAA to get her passport photo taken, and for the rest of the planning for that trip to Paris, for the entirety of the trip in Paris, and for the rest of her life, she's been a fearless and avid traveler. Life lesson: a little nervous breakdown goes a long way!

Looking inward (inward into our house, that is): I mentioned we're in a mad rush to get ready for realtors. (And then the house goes on the market on February 18.)  It's a long story, but I'll let these photos tell our story of a plumbing stack that had to be replaced.  (This is our dining room ceiling, encased in a plastic bubble to cut down on the dust that's about to come from the drywall.)

This is what happened to the ceiling. Sad, I know. But even sadder was that once inside the ceiling, the plumber thought he'd have to make a soffit on the ceiling to accommodate the pipes. Needless to say, THAT would have been a disaster. To his credit, he worked really hard to avoid that awful outcome.

We also have a bite taken out of our family room wall, from floor to ceiling.

And the laundry room wall too. Two weeks ago it started with an innocent (but big) plumbing job that was supposed to take a day and a half. Two weeks (and one basement sewage backup) later, there's nothing innocent about it, but the job is finished, the plumbing inspector just signed off on it, and now we'll see if our drywaller can get it done and painted by Wednesday morning. He's a go-getter, so I'm taking him at his word that he can do it.

Looking forward: I've never (that I can recall) tried to renovate furniture. But the finish on the tops of our bedroom pieces had worn off over time and looked terrible. So I sanded the tops down and stained them and I feel like going forward we have new furniture.

The tops used to be cherry, but I switched them to black to match the knobs.

I'm not saying they're going to win any awards, but I for one am really pleased with how these turned out.

Our Patriotic House

The outside house painting is done and we really like it! I won't label each and every picture because it's pretty much self-explanatory. Above is the "before" picture. Everything below is "after."

Sneak Peek

The house painters have been here for almost exactly two full weeks. The house is midway done, but the garage is complete. This gives you an idea of how it's all going to look. Needless to say, we're thrilled with it.

Long Overdue: Keeping Track

Long overdue: getting Troy's name on the trophy plaque for her win last year. Still to be done: repairing the broken trophy. (New wizard on the left.)


Long overdue: getting our front door painted. (But well worth the wait—doesn't it look great?!) Extra credit: painting the mailbox too!

The Fourth of July in St. Louis - Year Two Already!

One of the big benefits of living where we do is that we're a five-minute walk from the Webster Groves Fourth of July Parade, which is one of the biggest draws in the St. Louis area for this holiday. So guess where we were at 10:00 a.m. on Friday? You guessed it - at the parade!

When the Webster Groves Statesmen Marching Band marched by, all that was missing was ….. a Harrison in the band! So we had to think back to some other marching bands (and some other kids)! Peter, John, and Mary are probably not surprised that I got a bit wistful.

I thought an entire float devoted to Battle of the Bulge veterans was a pretty impressive thing, considering it was 70 years ago. All the military floats in the parade got constant clapping. The parade opened with the United States flag, for which everyone stood up. People around here know their manners!

Am I dating myself? We were amazed that kids brought - and this is not an exaggeration - treat bags to the parade. There were SO many freebies, and it wasn't just candy.

After traveling up our main street, the parade turned onto a residential street. Last fall we tried to buy a house on this street. After seeing how festive it is on July 4, we were both a bit wistful that we don't live on here. (But then once we got home we changed our minds!)

And this was about the end of the parade, for us. Because ….. while watching the parade we were out in front of a pretty house, admiring its flowers, when the owner started chatting us up and the next thing we knew we were getting a tour of her house! We had a wonderful visit with her and when we came out of her house - the parade was over - but we made a friend, so it was well worth it!

The weather for Friday and Saturday was unbelievably gorgeous. It was hard to break a sweat with temps in the 80s and low humidity. Christmas in July?!

On the residential street that the parade goes through, there were some pretty awesome neighborhood parties.

After the parade we grilled burgers and had a yummy potato salad, which I tried for the first time. Thank you Ina Garten - you always come through!

That night Allie was a bit concerned about the fireworks. She has one stress bone underneath her chest (it's barely visible), and an identical bone within paw's reach. She is a prepared (and very nervous) pup!

Saturday (and Sunday) morning we went for a walk to breakfast. Allie loves to be out!

On Saturday, Brad tried to outsmart the squirrels by adding an arm to the pole that houses our bird feeders. He hung the feeders far from any pole from which the squirrels can reach.

Meanwhile, I continued to excavate bricks from this patio under our big walnut tree. The patio is overgrown with weeds and once I started taking the bricks off I discovered a cement slab beneath. Brad thinks it might have been the foundation of a one-car garage at one time. (Our house was built in 1900.) I think he might be right.

While I exposed the cement, Allie was happy to lay on it.

The bricks have been there so long that most of them are covered in a pretty thick layer of dirt and moss. When I scrape that off, I end up with a lot of excess dirt.

We interrupt this blog post for a report from the napping dog.

This is how much dirt I get from just a couple of rows of bricks. I'm using the reclaimed dirt to fill some of the many holes and ruts in the backyard, which I'm guessing will save Brad from a future sprained ankle as mowing our pitted yard has been treacherous for him!

Brad's got three bird feeders hanging from his new arm. It took the squirrels a day to figure how to get to the feeder on the far right by shimmying down the fishing line. I think the other two are safe for reasons I won't go into here. Time to put on our thinking caps again for how to further squirrel-proof the one on the right. We're probably going to start by adding a dome on the top of the feeder.

Other weekend events not documented with photos: we spent a lot of the afternoon on Saturday at iTap (the bar where Troy works weekends) watching World Cup with John (while Troy tended bar). Today Brad and I went to a potluck at my yoga studio, where we brought this corn salad. (More thanks to the Barefoot Contessa.) We had a FaceTime call with Mary this morning. (She continues to do great in India.) And we've texted with Peter, who's enjoying his own three-day weekend in DC. (And counting the minutes until his mom's visit starts on Thursday!) Other than that, we've done miscellaneous yard work and a fair amount of doing nothing. A pretty good recipe for a relaxing weekend!