Treasures

As some know, it's always interesting to see what kind of "treasures" one can find while working on an old house.  We found a few things in our Farmersburg house when we added on and gutted the west side.  We have the entire farm house gutted but only found a few things.  Now I wasn't expecting to find hidden money or anything (although it would have been nice) but I did expect to find something.

This is what we did find, and I do think they are pretty cool...

 These are the most interesting.  They are stained glass windows that were up in the corners of the house in the rafters.  We actually have a picture of the house "back in the day" and you can see these.  We were kind of hoping they would still be there.  They need a little work, the one on the right has some rotten wood.  I would love to have these as wall hangings in the house, or I'm open to any ideas....

This was up in the ceiling of the upstairs.  We are pretty sure it's a chamber pot.  And no, there was nothing inside it.  A friend of mine mentioned maybe using it as a planter which I think is an excellent idea.

There were a few other random things that fell down when the upstairs ceiling was torn down.  It was pretty much trash.  We are pretty excited about the "treasures" that we found though!

Gutted!

Wow, after a big weekend of working at the new house, it's completely gutted!!  Our goal was to have this done in July so I'm happy to say we met that goal.  Lots of hard dirty work!  I put some pictures on, but I realize it's hard to determine what exactly they are.

 Looking into (what was) the kitchen and summer kitchen

 (what was) kitchen, the refrigerator used to be in the middle of this wall

 you can just see the stairs on the left, this is looking into (what was) the living room, there used to be a wall between those two doorways

 looking at what used to be bathroom and bedroom

corner of dining room, we are going to try really hard to keep the built-in

 Upstairs!  looking at what was the small bedroom, the walls are all gone but you can see the floor which outlines the room, to the right is the middle bedroom

 one side of the largest bedroom

 the other side of the largest bedroom, that hole was the crawl space above the kitchen

Things are moving along nicely!  Hoping in the next couple weeks the cement guys and Mark show up.  Mark is doing the digging for the garage and also putting in our new septic system.  We will continue to work inside as they are working outside.

Vacation Day 4 - Heading home

We headed home today but we weren't in a big hurry to get out of town.  After spending some time in the game room at the hotel we decided to eat a late breakfast and do some shopping.

 Papa and the grandsons in their Hawaiian shirts.  This is the ice cream place Orange Leaf (we stopped again with everybody else)

On the way home, tired after a successful vacation.

We had a great time in Des Moines, there's so much to do.  I think we should make it an annual trip, it was a great opportunity to spend time with family we don't see very often.

Vacation Day 3

Today is zoo day!  We have never been to Blank Park Zoo and I must say it's a GREAT zoo!  Everybody made it today except Jim, he had to work.

 Tristan checking out the fish

 That's Dad, Mike, Joy & Mom looking at the flamingos

 Jackson feeding the goats

 Tristan feeding the goats

 Which one of these is not like the other....

 Barb & Charlotte feeding fish

 Jer & Jackson getting a camel ride

 Barb & Charlotte on the camel

 Tristan wanted to go too!

 sea lions, Jackson is holding a stick, when he moved it around the sea lion would follow it

Jackson and Jer having a treat

We spent quite a bit of time at the zoo, there's a lot to see!  We got back to the hotel in the middle of the afternoon so the boys could take a nap.  After naps, we grabbed an on the go supper and headed out to meet Mandy for some family pictures.  Mandy is a professional photographer and does a great job.  I thought it would be a perfect opportunity while we were in the area to get some family shots.  The boys cooperated (for the most part) and I think we got some really great pictures.  We celebrated with ice cream at a really neat place called Orange Leaf.  Then of course it was more swimming when we got back to the hotel.

 Tristan FINALLY went down a slide!  He loved it!

The boys having popcorn and watching a movie before bedtime.

Vacation Day 2

Since we didn't have time to play in the water area yesterday, it is the first thing we did today.  Jackson had been bugging us since he saw it.  It was a great water area.  There was a big slide going into a deeper pool, a pirate ship with smaller slides and a very small pool, a hot tub and a "lap pool".  The boys LOVED the water!

 Karsten & Jackson going down the BIG slide!

 He was loving the water

 Tristan & Grandma

Our original plan was to spend the day at Living History Farms but it was SO HOT out we changed it to the Science Center (air conditioning).  It was a good choice.  There was so much to do at the Science Center.  The boys loved it!

 This is Jackson's face pushing thru the "pin" board

 Tristan playing

 BIG bubble wands and a BIG tub of bubbles

 Jackson with his rocket.

 Tristan with his rocket.  After you made your own rocket you could "shoot" it and see how far it went.  The boys "shot" their rockets over and over again.

 Egg drop.  You could wrap up your own "egg" with foam and straps.

Somebody's "egg" going up to get dropped.  The screen told you if the egg survived.

After the Science Center we headed back to the hotel to meet up with everybody (Joy & Barb spent most of the day with Jim & Mandy and family for Oliver's baptism) for more swimming and pizza for supper.  Mark and Sandie were there along with Josh, Keely, Jerrett and Griffin.  Jer is almost 4 and he and Jackson got along GREAT!

This kid was LOVING the water!!

Vacation Day 1

With all the "busyness" we knew was going to start this summer we decided our vacation this year would be a smaller one.  Last Spring we started planning a trip to Des Moines.  We have some family in the area so we thought it would be a good way to spend some time with them.  We had a blast and I think we should do it every year.

We took off this morning planning on meeting Joy and Barb in Boone for lunch and then visit the train place there.  We had a great lunch at a place called the Colorado Grille then headed over to the train place.  We had decided to do a 30 minute trolley ride but were disappointed to find out the trolley wasn't working.  Other than the gift shop there really wasn't much else to do there.  They have trains on the grounds but none of them were open.  We were slightly disappointed in this place.  We made the best of it by snapping a few pictures and then decided to head to Ames to visit Reiman Gardens.

 Barb & Jackson posed for a picture.

 We tried to get a family pic but someone didn't want to cooperate...

 Jackson checking out butterflies at Reiman Gardens

 Tristan looking for butterflies

 They had a really neat butterfly house at Reiman Gardens

 They also had numerous lego sculptures, they were really cool!

lego sculpture in the pond

Reiman Gardens turned out to be a hit!  Lots of stuff to look at and quite a large area to walk around.  After we were done there we headed to Des Moines to check into our hotel.  Barb managed to get us an awesome discount on our rooms thru her work.  It was a very nice hotel, picked mainly because there was an indoor water area.

Supper was a cookout at Barb's house.  Jim & Mandy and family came over too!  It was the first time I'd met Oliver, what a cutie!!  Joy had brought some bubble shooters for the boys, they loved them!

This is how Tristan ate his corn.  I'm not sure if it was too hot to hold onto or slippery.  He still got the job done.

By the time we were done at Barb's house it was pretty late.  We headed back to the hotel and pretty much went right to bed.