Summer Vacation - Day 4

We spent most of day four of our vacation at Thomas Jefferson's home - Monticello in Charleston, VA.  Its set back down a two lane road on top of a large hill.  We learned that he spent years leveling the top of the hill for his home and spent decades building the house, revising plans three times until he got it just right. 

We arrived around lunch time, so we stopped just before Monticello on that same two lane road at Miche's Tavern.




It was a country style buffet.  You went through the buffet line to get whatever you wanted, then grabbed a seat.  Then you had a waitress to get seconds, refills, dessert, etc.  The inside of the restaurant was nearly all original and had a really neat atmosphere.

 After lunch we continued on another 5 minutes to Monticello.  When you pull in, you're greeted by a large building that consists of a theater, museum, gift shop and cafe.  We made our way to the ticket counter and got our tickets for the house tour.  We had about an hour and a half to kill prior to our tour, so we watched the 'Jefferson's Monticello' movie, perused the gift shop and museum.  We hopped on the shuttle that took us down a winding road to the house.

But, we still had time to kill, so we looked around the grounds first.  There were outbuildings, a gift shop, Jefferson's grave, gardens, etc.  We started at the gardens.




You can tell why Jefferson picked this spot - it's absolutely gorgeous!  And since he excavated and flattened the top of the hill, it has views like this all the way around the house.  Originally, there were small sleeping quarters and shops along the garden, but they were built out of wood and have completely deteriorated.  Only plaques remain to tell us what was there.

 I love this picture of Samuel.  I have no idea what he was doing or thinking, but he wasn't nearly as bored as he looks in this picture.  He had a good time the whole day.  It was really hot this day, about 95, so we all took a break at the gift shop to get a drink.

 Time for the house tour!  Unfortunately, they don't allow pictures inside the house, so you'll have to venture there one day to see it.  Jefferson definitely had a creative mind.  He had unique features and ideas throughout the whole house - some were very grand and others were very modest.  He was very conscious of space and made sure the house was as efficient as it could be.

 It might be hard to see, but see the white railing and small brick buildings on either side of the lawn?  They attach to the house.  Above ground, it's a large deck that leads to those buildings.  But what's unique is under.  It's a basement area with many small rooms all the way around the house - much bigger than the footprint of the house itself.  Jefferson put anything that generated heat (kitchen and smoke house) in the basement to keep the heat out of the house, anything that needed to stay cool (wine) or just otherwise wasn't fitting to have in the main house (privy's for slaves and staff).  He also had a dumbwaiter that went from the basement to the dining room to get food, wine, etc to the house.



 Monticello was unique because it had 6 privy's - 3 of which were indoors.  One in the house and two in the basement area.  This was unheard of in Jefferson's time because indoor facilities were not considered a necessity.  If you look at the bottom left of the sign above, you can see the house in the middle and the basement 'tunnels' that extend out from the house.

This concluded our tour of Monticello.  Our hotel was about an hour away, so we headed back and found a local restaurant for dinner.  We had to get a good night sleep for our long day at the farm that followed!

Swimming Pool - Final step

 The firetruck is here, the firetruck is here!




We already had about 800 gallons in the pool to test it for leaks, make sure it was level, smooth the lining, etc.  This is a 2000 gallon tanker truck.  We'll need 3 tanker loads to fill the pool!

They hooked up the fire hose and blasted it into the pool.  It took less than 10 minutes to empty the truck.




 As you can see in the background, we didn't even have the equipment boxes out of the way before Dan and Brian were in the pool.  It was pretty darn chilly, but they did have a purpose for getting in. 



We opted for a salt water filtration system.  Using this method makes pool maintenance much easier because there are no chemicals to mess with.  The salt naturally keeps the water clean and clear - just like the ocean and our tears.  It's at a super low level, so unless you take a big gulp, you'll never know it's there.  They dumped 150 pounds of salt into the pool and got in to mix the salt into the water.  Now we just need to tidy up around the pool area and we'll call this project finished!

Summer Vacation - Day 3

We all got a great night sleep and woke up ready to move on.  This day was another driving day.  Our destination was Virginia.  But first we had to finish driving through Kentucky and made our way to...



 West Virginia is a memorable state.  Unfortunately, just not in a good way.  The drive through the state is, well, just not pleasant for travelers - horrible roads, miles of construction that appears to be permanent, etc.  There was one notable thing I liked - the Travel Plaza (aka: a huge glorified rest area). 




It had 3 restaurants, 3 places for dessert, a gift shop and a convenient store.  (Quizno's and Cinnabon not shown on the sign.)



Except the Cinnabon rolls we got were horrible.  I thought about calling the company and asking for a refund, but I let it go.  And the garlic butter we got for our pizza was kind of scary.  Maybe I didn't like this stop so much after all.

A good portion of the state is a toll highway - the West Virginia Turnpike.  It seemed kind of pricey at $2 per car.  We thought "Well, at least we'll have nice roads to drive on."  Wrong!  It seems as though they consolidated the worst roads in the country's interstate highway system into this stretch of road.  Just when we thought we were through it, we came to another $2 toll booth.  Wait... didn't we just do this?  Deja vu!

Fortunately, we blew straight through the state and made it to...




 Virginia is nothing like West Virginia.  It has very nice roads, little road construction and is beautiful everywhere you look.  The tall hills turned into mountains and we saw one idyllic setting after another.  We finished our drive on day 3 with a preview of the whole reason we vacationed to Virginia...




 Yup.  A farm.  We drove two days to go to a farm.  Not just any farm though.  Polyface set the standard for beyond-organic, pasture-raised, sustainable, eco-friendly farming.  The owner, Joel Salatin, has written many books on the subject and hosts events to teach others how to do the same.  Day 5 of our trip we spent a whole day at a Farm Field Day event, which they hold every 3 years, to see first hand how they do what they do.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I still have all of day 4 to tell you about, so hang tight!  I know you're itching to learn more about this "farm of many faces".

Swimming Pool - Part 2

After several weeks, we're back to the swimming pool project. The next step was to level the ground and make sure it was free of rocks.

After checking for level, raking, checking for level, raking, throwing out rocks, checking for level (you get the idea) the ground was as level as it was going to be.  Next we watered the area down to help speed along the settling process.

Now the fun part!  Setting up the pool.  First we laid down two tarps to keep grass and weeds from growing up through the liner.  Then we positioned the pool on the tarps.

 Then you just insert the cross bars, legs, support strapping, etc.  Dan did this part by himself in about an hour.  Then he put about 2 inches of water in the pool to...

1) Make sure it didn't leak.
2) Smooth out the lining.
3) Play in the water.




Now all we need is some water!  Our well is only about 30 feet from the pool, but we chose not to fill it from there.  Since it hasn't rained in weeks, there's no way to tell how much water is in the well and Dan was afraid the well pump might burn up filling a 7000 gallon pool.  So, we called the Fire Department and they're going to deliver the water in a day or two.  It's not necessarily cheap to have them do this, but less expensive than a new well pump.  Pretty soon I'll have pics of us swimming!

Summer Vacation - Day 2

Parents = 0 hours sleep
Baby = 5 hours sleep

Despite this, we all got up in a really good mood.  I think Dan and I were beyond the point of tired, so our bodies just moved on.  We booked our hotel at the Shaker Village for two nights, but we decided it would be best to just spend the day there and then drive a couple of hours closer to our next destination.  We packed up, loaded the car and headed to checkout explaining why we were leaving early.  They admitted they probably weren't the best accommodation for babies and graciously let us off the hook.

We bought tickets for a self-guided tour and donned with a map, started exploring.  One thing that caught our eye as soon as we arrived were these beautiful stone walls all over the village.  Miles of them.  I've always thought dry-stacked stone wall were pretty, but these had a particularly interesting top.




Here Dan and Samuel are standing in front of a cute little gift shop.

I explored the Meeting House - where they gathered every Sunday to worship.  The purpose for the two doors is 'balance'.  The Shaker lifestyle, we learned, is all about balance.  Men and women are equal, so all their buildings have a door for each gender and are very symmetrical.




It's a very non-descriptive, open space were they could dance, sing, worship, etc.  The Shakers also believed everything had to have a purpose, thus very little adornment.  If it didn't do something functional, it didn't need to be in the design.




The whole upstairs of the Meeting House was where the community leaders lived - 2 males and 2 females.  Again, we see the balance.  They lived their lives very separate from the rest of the community.  Not because they believed they were better than the rest, simply to remain objective - to determine if what they were doing and how they were doing it was working.   Here is one of the 'apartments'.

After this tour, we decided to break for lunch.  There is a restaurant in the village that serves great Shaker style food.  Other than a small snack shop with sandwiches and soda, this is the only place to eat in the village, or anywhere nearby for that matter.  The Shakers even put all of their food to use - nothing was wasted.  For example: they had pickled watermelon rinds and lemon pie that included the whole lemon - rind and all.  We were a little hesitant, but had to try it.  It turned out to be really good!

Dan explored another house - this one was a bit prestigious.  Only families/community members that were highly regarded and looked up to were allowed to live here.  Although men and women are equal, the Shakers did have a sort of hierarchy to their lifestyle.



The Shakers lived a celibate life, so to thrive they had to recruit new members.  For about a 100 years this worked well because everyone in the community shared the labor, but they also all reaped the benefits.  However, due to industrialization and food that could be bought, the Shaker lifestyle became less enticing to people and their numbers started to dwindle.  In 1910, the last Shaker member in this community died and the village and it's 5000 acres were auctioned off.

We explored more shops and by late afternoon storm clouds started moving in, so we decided it would be a good time to move on.  About two hours later, we pulled into a Hampton Inn - which was a site for weary eyes.  Here we had no squeaky floor boards, nice firm pillows and sound proof walls. Ahhhh........




But it was only about 5pm, so we found a local restaurant and had a leisurely dinner.  Then, since Samuel had never been swimming, we thought it would be fun to check out the hotel pool.  After Dan got acclimated to the cool water, Samuel got in with him.  At first, Samuel was very confused and didn't like the chilly water.  But after a while I think he realized it was just a really big bath tub and he started splashing around and having fun.




Needless to say, all three of us slept like rocks that night! 

Baby on the way

It just occurred to me that I failed to mention that we're expecting baby # 2 (for me, #4 for Dan).  He or she will arrive around the middle of December - so that makes me 4 1/2 months along.

Here's the baby at about 7 weeks.  Just a little bean...

                         

And here's the baby and me at 16 weeks...

Summer Vacation - Day 1

We planned this trip about 5 months ago knowing good and well having a 10-month old in tow would be a challenge.  Our total drive time, one-way, was 14 hours.  We broke the drive down into two days.  Samuel did fantastic the entire week.  I'd like to think better than most babies his age.  Heck, probably better than most adults. 

Day 1 took us to Harrodsburg, KY.  We left MO heading up to St. Louis to cross over into southern IL.

There's not much in southern Illinois, so we drove straight through the state until we got to Indiana.

But there's not much in southern Indiana either.  So we blew right through this state too.  That puts us in Kentucky.




Kentucky, on the other hand, is gorgeous!  We headed off the highway about 40 minutes south to a little town called Harrodsburg. 

We stayed at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill - an 1800's Shaker community. 




All of the buildings have been restored and many turned into small sleeping quarters.  The rooms are very simple. 



And very noisy.  Someone was in the room above us and 200 year old floor boards creak.  A lot.  Samuel got about 4-5 hours of sleep after Dan put him in our bed.  Dan got about an hours sleep/rest.  I got not a single minute.  The mustiness of the old building kicked my allergies into overdrive.  I camped out on the bathroom floor on towels with my pillow.  It wasn't a pleasant night.  But surprisingly, all three of us were in a great mood the next day and spent most of the day touring the village.  I'll share our exploration Day 2's post.

Technical difficulties

After getting home from vacation I discovered the last 3 posts I had set to update while we were gone didn't post the pictures.  I've fixed this, so if you go back a few days, you'll see the pictures that go with them.

Thanks!

Non-baby pics coming soon...

I thought you'd be happy to know that I've been taking pictures all week of things other than Samuel.  I need to get them downloaded, edited and organized, but should have some posts from our vacation up very soon!

Stay tuned...

OUCH!

Samuel can pinch fingers, scrap and scratch himself, scoot around on hardwood floors and none of it phases him.  There does seem to be one thing that doesn't feel good though.  It involves getting stuck and eventually cracking his head.

Here are the new types of places he likes to go.  In this scenario, he's okay. 

He's semi-stuck, but keeps his cool.  If he keeps his cool, he doesn't start flailing his head around and start cracking it on things.


Here however, he didn't keep his cool.  He realized he was stuck and panicked, which caused him to bump his head on the bar of the chair.  It really wasn't hard...

But hard enough to make himself upset...

He's overacting a tad.  But Mama to the rescue........ right after I get one last shot..........

 You'll be happy to know that after I scooped him up and gave him a big kiss, he settled right down and was ready to go back to playing.... just not under chairs.

Boo-boo

Samuel has some crazy crawling skills.  We call it commando crawling.  He keeps his belly on the ground, pulls himself with his arms and pushes with just his left foot.  This has unfortunately caused him to wear blisters on his left foot where he pushes from. 

Even though his poor little foot is raw, it doesn't seem to bother him.  He just keeps chuggin' along.  To make me feel better though, I put a Band-aid on it.  It stayed on his foot for approximately 2 minutes before he was off crawling again and peeling it off in the process.   We wonder sometimes if he has any nerve endings at all.... nothing seems to phase this kid.

Well, except........................      =)

Carbonated water

I'll apologize in advance for the bombardment of Samuel pics, but it I just dumped the pics on my camera to my computer and it seems that's all I have pictures of.  Dan discovered that if you put my camera on 'sports' mode you can hold the shutter down and it will take continuous pics.  So I have about 200 pics of Samuel drinking some water.... I'll spare you about 199 of those.

Speaking of drinking water though. In an effort to drink more water myself, I bought some sparkling (carbonated) water with berry juice in it.  I thought this might help me force it down.  I was wrong.  It was the most horrendous thing I've ever drank.  But, I'm also not partial to water.  So what did I do?  I, of course, put some in Samuel's sippy cup to see what he thought of it.  He seems to like everything, so it stood to reason that he'd like this too.  Here was his first response...

I'm pretty sure that's exactly how I looked when I took a drink.  Then Dan took a drink and said something along the lines of "that may be the most disgusting water I've every drank".  So, needless to say, it's not a favorite in the Thayer household.  Interestingly enough, though, Samuel continued to drink it.  I'm not sure if he has really short-term memory, or if he expected it to get better each time?  He'd take a couple drinks with minimal disgust on his face and then he'd repeat the face above.  As entertaining as it was to the adults in the room, we decided he had endured enough.  I think when he looks back at this picture in about 20 years, he'll thank us for exposing him to all kinds of new and exciting flavors.  Maybe.

Quiz: How do you feed a 9 month old?

Answer:  Naked!

Disclaimer: there is a diaper on, you just can't see it.  :)

Who is that froggie in the window?

Found this on our breakfast room window...

To a kitty cat, it's a toy...

Peek-a-boo!

Samuel's learned how to get himself under the bed to play.

Absolutely Perfect Homemade Iced Coffee

Before you get started

•          This recipe makes a huge batch – nearly 2 gallons – of coffee concentrate.  The idea is to make it, keep it in the fridge for super-quick iced coffee.  Simply halve or quarter for smaller batches.
•          To make the amount shown below, you will need two 10-quart containers.  I use food-grade storage containers from a restaurant supply store – square work best so you have a corner for pouring.  You’ll also need a mesh strainer and cheesecloth, muslin or paper towels if that’s all you have.
•          To make small batches, a French press will make the whole process much easier, quicker and you won’t need any of the equipment listed above.  But you’ll have to make it much more often!

Ingredients

•          1 pound Ground Coffee (a good quality, Rich Roast)
•          8 quarts (that’s 2 gallons) Cold Water
•          Any of the following to make your drink:  Skim Milk, 2% Milk, Whole Milk, Half & Half, Sweetened Condensed Milk, Sugar, Artificial Sweeteners, Flavored Syrups, etc... adapt to your liking!

Instructions

1.       In a large container (or French press), dump in ground coffee with add the water. Give a little stir to ensure all the coffee grounds are wet.  Cover and allow to sit at room temperature eight hours or overnight.
2.       Line a fine mesh strainer with cheesecloth and set over your other large container. Pour coffee/water mixture through the strainer, allowing all liquid to run through. Discard grounds. (If using a French press, simply plunge.)
3.       Transfer coffee concentrate to a pourable container (or an iced tea jar w/ spigot), place in the fridge and allow to chill.
4.       To make iced coffee, fill a glass about 1/2 full with coffee concentrate. Add your milk/dairy choice – about a 1/4 of the glass. Add 1-3 teaspoons of your sweetener of choice and stir vigorously to combine. Top off with lots of ice.  Taste and adjust milk and sweetener as needed.

·         Hint: if you drink slowly and don’t like ice cubes melting and watering down your drink… in step 3 above fill ice cube trays with your coffee concentrate and freeze.  Then in step 4, use your coffee cubes to make your drink!

·         Variations:

o   To make even more special, top with whipped cream and drizzle with chocolate syrup or caramel. 

o   To flavor an entire batch, use flavored coffee such as French Vanilla, Cinnamon, etc.

Baby hatched

Since we added roosters to the farm, we recently had our first baby hatch.  One of our hens, Blackie, often goes broody.  So when it started warming up and she went broody again, we decided to leave her alone and see what happened.  After several weeks, Dan heard a faint chirp, checked under her and sure enough, a little baby chick hatched. 

We weren't sure what to do.  Would mama know how to take care of her?  Would the other hens peck at the little chick?  We decided to just wait it out and see what happened.  The little chick followed mama everywhere and seemed to be doing just fine.  I finally got out there when the baby was about a week old. 

Here is a day in the life of a baby chick.

Baby likes to stay under mama for safety...




 When mama jumps off the roost, so does baby...

But they have to pause so Rodan, our rooster, can mount mama to make more babies...

After their minor delay, they proceed outside...

And here they roam around as long as they like...

Snuggle bear

Samuel doesn't seem to understand the concept of snuggling.  But one evening, I was really tired and had a bad headache and he seemed content to just lay with me.  It was a nice to just lay quietly together.