We are heading to Six Flags for one final time this season. Will is bringing his friend, Tyler. All the boys are excited this morning.
Category: Family
The end of the summer
Today is the last day of summer break from school. At least for me. Susanna has school today, so yesterday was her last day of summer. The boys start on Wednesday, so they get one more day. But they go to their mother’s house tomorrow – so for me the school year routine starts tomorrow.
Summer break is fun. No school. The beach. Long family vacations. Yet, This summer was a little too crazy, and I’m ready for fall. I think the boys are as well. I’m guessing Susanna would be happy for a couple more weeks of summer; I don’t think she is looking forward to the cool weather (I know, crazy – a Swede that can’t stand the cold).
I took today off of work to watch the boys. We worked on scraping and painting the bottom part of the front porch. I’m very pleased at how the house colors are turning out. It is a little depressing to think that we won’t be able to finish the painting until next summer.
The trailer parts I ordered two weeks ago arrived today. I need two u-bolts to complete the structural work. They sent the wrong size. The invoice had the correct size, but the box had the wrong parts. A little frustrating, but after a quick phone call, the company is sending the right parts. Hopefully they will arrive before next weekend, but I’m not expecting it.
Will has his friend Tyler over today, so the boys are pretty occupied. The weather threatens rain, so no more painting. I took the opportunity to organize the workshop a bit.
The front porch in progress:
The Next Big Journey
The past couple of years with Susanna has been a wonderful adventure. We have traveled to Australia, England, Sweden, Denmark and up and down the east coast of the US. We have built a life here in Preston – we have learned how to make our blended family work with Will and Ben. We have made a home together; we tore down a shed and built a patio; we repainted several rooms, and are working on painting the outside of the house. We have done many trips to New York City. Susanna finished her studies in Sweden and started working on her degree here. She has helped me focus on my work in the workshop, and I have a workshop that is cleaner and more organized than I ever have (okay, maybe not right now if you walk in there – but it is still cleaner than it has been years ago).
Yesterday we decided that we wanted to take the next step in our adventure together. We are planning a wedding for next summer. I love looking back at how far our journey together has taken us, and look forward to being able to reflect on where our lives take us from here. Rarely anything worth anything in life comes easy, and we have had to work hard to get to where we are. But I am thankful to have had her help through the difficult times as well as shared in the many joys of life. It seemed that three years ago, there was an ocean between the lives we wanted together and the lives we were living; but now it seems that we are both on the same shore, and can look back together at the long journey to this point.
Porch Update
It has been a crazy busy summer. One of the big family projects this summer has been to paint the front porch. Susanna has been doing most of the work on the painting. Her sisters (Sofia and Rebecka) and friend (Linda) helped kick off the project, but I think it turned out to be more work than any of them expected.
The porch trim had been painted white, with the floor and ceiling (and base of the house) painted green. We decided to paint the trim to highlight the Victorian details in the house trim. I picked colors from the Sherwin-Williams historic color collection. The trim color is Rookwood Dark Green, with the accent color being Rookwood Dark Brown. Our plans are to paint the exterior of the house Concord Buff next summer, so the parts of the porch that are going to match the house color are being painted as well. So, for a couple of months the porch will standout from the rest of the house.
We have been getting comments about how nice the new paint job is turning out. Several people have stopped while driving or walking by to tell us how much better the house is looking. I can’t wait to see how the house looks when we are finished with all the painting.
We still have some work to do on the porch. It has only been painted down to the railings. I had talked to Will and Ben, and offered them each money to paint the bottom of the porch. Ben readily agreed. Will didn’t really want to paint, but then he decided he didn’t want Ben to get all the money, and agreed to paint.
With all the detail work on the porch, I suspect that painting the porch itself is about 1/2 of the entire house painting effort. We will attempt to finish painting as much of the trim as possible this year, and start with the walls early next year.
We have a couple house renovation projects in the wings to be started this winter – with the biggest being renovating the mud room and laundry room (which requires removing a chimney). I have also been making (slow) progress on the sailboat and in the workshop – I’ll write about that later. We also have some big events (personal) planned for next summer, but more on that later as well.
Confluence and Ohiopyle Pennsylvania (Vacation Part 2)
We had a wonderful week in western PA. I’m writing this from home – I forgot my adapter to download pictures from the camera – as well as a poor (sporadic) Internet connection prevented more posts from the trip.
The last two evenings after dark we played many rounds of “flashlight tag” with all the kids (both the young ones and the “grown up” ones).
The second day was just spent hanging around the house, playing in the water. I took the boys and we put life-jackets on and floated down the river from the back of our house to the takeout above Ramcat Rapids. It would have been fun to run the rapids, I’m just not sure we could have made it home from below the rapids easily. We even saw two Northern Water Snakes while we were wading in the river.
I also headed into town to find some beer. That was a challenge, the only package store in Confluence was several miles out of town, down a side road, attached to someone’s house.
The third day was our big outing day. We headed to Ohiopyle before lunch. We spent an hour playing in the rapids above the falls.
Even Felix (the Rwandan graduate student that my dad and Barbara are sponsoring) swam the rapids. He can’t swim, so he stayed in the shallows (there aren’t any lakes or big rivers near where he grew up in Rwanda).
We ate lunch at the Ohiopyle Bakery. I would recommend the bakery for lunch to anyone visiting the town. The prices were good, and the food was wonderful. It was a short walk from where we had parked and played in the water.
After lunch most of the group wanted to go for a bike ride (Ben included). Will, Felix and I stayed to play in the water. We visited the natural waterslide (and all went down the slide once – Will went more than once). It was a bit rough, bouncing off the rocks on the way down, but fun. I’m sure it would have been a lot faster if the water weren’t so low. We even saw a huge snapping turtle in one of the natural pools in the stream.
After the slide, we went back to the rapids above the falls and spent the rest of the afternoon playing there until everyone else returned from the bike ride (Ben rode 6 miles).
The final night we walked over to the edge of the property to watch the bats fly out of the man-made bat houses on the property. It was amazing to watch – I have never seen so many bats at once. We stood about 20 feet from the bat house and watched them fly into the evening over our heads.
Yesterday we headed into Ohiopyle for breakfast and then drove home.
Trains, Trains, Trains (and a vacation from the busy summer)
Sunday the boys and I drove to western Pennsylvania to meet my my dad and my brother and his boys. We are staying at Paddler’s Lane Retreat near Confluence, PA.
The drive was as uneventful as can be hoped with a 7 and 9 year old in the car. We hit no real traffic (okay, a little on the way through NYC, but that is expected). We arrived late in the afternoon, beating everyone else here by several hours (it is a little longer drive from St. Louis than from Connecticut).
Yesterday was left unstructured so the cousins could all just unwind from the drive an play together. In the afternoon we walked down to the river and spent a couple of hours playing in the river.
There are train tracks right across the driveway from the house (maybe 70m from the house) – and it is a busy track with lots of coal trains (and a periodic Amtrak passenger train). The trains have been a huge hit with the boys. Every 30 minutes to 60 minutes a train runs by, and the boys all run outside to watch it. At least they did yesterday, Will is getting a little bored with it today. Yesterday morning on of the trains stopped alongside the property. The boys walked over to look at the train, and the engineer came out of the train and talked to them (and gave them each a bottle of water). The engineer said that he was stopped while they did track work, but couldn’t take the boys up in the engine to look around.
The river was fun in the afternoon. A group of kids learning to kayak came downstream while we were playing in the water. One of the kids flipped his/her boat on the single hole they were playing around in on the rapids near where we were playing. This would be a great place to bring life jackets for the adults and some rafts to float the rapids.
Internet has been sporadic here. And there is no cell coverage at all (unless I walk 10 minutes to the end of the driveway and down the road a bit). But it nice to take a break from always checking email and the phone. I’ve been leaving the phone inside all day.
Of course we had to find some internet… so here I am writing on the blog. Pictures will have to follow later, I didn’t bring the cable to download pictures from my camera.
No real plans today – just hang out for a bit and let the boys play. Maybe head down to the river if the weather warms up.
Family visit and a visit to the park
My mom visited for the weekend. She arrived in the middle of our crazy summer (Sorry, mom!). On Saturday we had the Bross family (my Uncle Jim, Rhonda and Mary Ann) over for dinner (we went fancy, with hamburgers, corn on the cob and salad).
So in addition to getting to show off all the changes to the house that we made over the past year and a half, we got a little assistance in the garden. Much appreciated help weeding the garden from my mom, Rhonda and Mary Ann. Thanks for all the help.
By Monday, the house was empty of guests. Susanna didn’t have to work. The sun came out (for the first time in a week). We headed to Devil’s Hopyard State Park. The boys enjoyed swimming in the river (a nice change from the beach). After a bit at the park, we headed home, stopping to get ice-cream on the way.
The summer has been a bit crazy. I’m hoping next year I can plan the summer to be a little more relaxing.
Taking a break (and playing in the rain)
We took my mom to the airport this morning after a nice (but short) visit with her. For the next couple of days we have an empty house. Rebecka flew back to Sweden on Friday; Linda and Sofia are visiting Niagara falls until Tuesday morning.
The summer doesn’t really slow down until after my trip with the boys next week, but a short break in the rush is welcome.
ABBA, William style
Will added entertainment on the drive home from Hartford. He decided to sing (yes, crazy to hear Will sing) along with the song Chiquitita:
Take your teeth out, tell me what’s wrong…..
Thanks to Sofia for the alternate lyrics for will to sing.
Random Posting… (a bunch of unconnected thoughts and teaching the dog Swedish)
It is sometimes nice to just let the ADHD take over…. so here is a bunch of random thoughts/updates. So, if either of the two readers of this don’t want random, I suggest you skip this post (Susanna excepted – she gets to read all my posts, good or bad).
In addition to enjoying NYC, the girls have been helping out around the house. This week they scrapped the trim on the front porch – the most complicated of section of exterior trim.
So… Project updates:
-Sailboat: The trailer is making progress – I need two more pieces of steel to finish repairs. Still working on the topside repairs and making trim for the interior.
– Kitchen Island: On hold until after the summer projects. The lumber is milled, hopefully it won’t get too warped before I get back to it.
– House Trim: Only progress on the porch mentioned above.
In addition, we are teaching Targa how to “shake” in Swedish. The command is “Vacker Tass.” He is doing pretty well. We decided that Tucker is a little too slow to learn Swedish this week.
Now off to the casino to walk around a bit…
Random enough?