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Shaker Village

A couple of weeks ago, Cami and I had a chance to stay at Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, near Harrodsburg KY. This was actually my second visit; Cami had seen my photos from the first trip and really wanted to visit -- she was particularly enthusiastic about the opportunity to visit with the farm animals. Since we needed to be in the Lexington / Springfield area to ferry Cass back and forth between State FFA Convention and Academic Team camp, I made reservations for the two of us.

This first batch of photos shows Cami enjoying our tour of the buildings and the farm. It was a weekday, so the place wasn't busy at all, and the weather was nice enough that we weren't too hot either. We got to spend as much time in the buildings as we wanted, moving from room to room, exploring all the little details -- and believe me, Cami did not want to bypass anything. She looked in every little nook and cranny. She was really attentive during the conversations with the actors, even if she was a bit shy with some of them. She tried to talk me into buying a broom, and if we'd had more room, I might have done so -- they were like everything else the Shakers made: simple, functional, and beautiful.

Cami couldn't wait to get to the barn, and we spent quite a while with the goats, the sheep (many of whom had just delivered lambs over the past couple of weeks), and a friendly barn cat. Her favorite, though, was Blue, one of four large Percherons that an extremely nice farmhand brought up to the fence for Cami to pet. I think she could've spent the entire day perched on that fence, scratching Blue between the ears and just talking to her about whatever popped into her head.

We couldn't spend all day doing that, though, because we had a boat to catch. I bought tickets for a paddleboat ride down the Kentucky River on the Dixie Bell, which left from Shaker Landing -- which was located at the bottom of an extremely narrow, winding road along the edge of a cliff. Really nerve-wracking, especially since I was in Chris's big Dodge Durango. But we made it to the bottom and enjoyed a really nice ride down the river. We spotted turtles, great blue herons, woodducks, and garr floating in the shady upper layers of the river. 

Since Shaker Village is located near Lexington, the University of Kentucky has done a lot of restoration work to the habitat surrounding the village. There are miles of trails to hike, and most of it is through grassy hills that are filled with native plants. Above is just a sampling of the various flowers that we found growing just along one trail. My favorite is that huge dandelion-type thing in the top corner. I dont know what it is, but it is the size of an adult's closed fist. I just think it is beautiful.

After our visit to Shaker Village, we stopped in Harrodsburg at Fort Harrod, which was the first permanent settlement in what would become the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The fort contained a number of buildings, with actors inside, all of whom were willing to talk to us as long as we wanted -- it was great to just have these long rambling conversations with them about all kinds of details in the settlement and surrounding area. Since Cami just finished fourth grade, which is Kentucky history in social studies, she knew a lot about the settlement so she really enjoyed it. Of course, she could have spent all day just climbing the huge Osage Orange tree located just outside the settlement. It's the largest in the United States, but can't claim the title because it has a split trunk -- so it's considered the "unofficial champion" according to the sign.

June: what's going on

June has found us in the middle of so many different things. My June Take Twelve layout captures just how busy we've been at times. Cami and I traveled to Lexington to transport Cass back and forth between two summer activities -- the State FFA Convention and a Governor's Cup academic team camp. Here's a look at my  layout. Have you been participating in Take Twelve? You can share your layouts and photos in the Flickr pool, and this article by Jennifer Wilson of Simple Scrapper is definitely a must-read.

layout credits: 2012 Photo Templates Vol. 1, 2012 Digital Kit

I'm working on a few layouts of our Lexington trip -- Cami and I LOVED Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill. We spent time with all the farm animals and toured the Kentucky River on the Dixie Bell paddleboat before exploring the 1800's settlement at Fort Harrod. 

Cass had a really successful week, too. At the Governor's Cup camp -- also referred to as "nerd camp" around here -- she was recognized as the FPS Quick Recall champion, the FPS Team competition runner-up, and the Best Overall FPS Student runner-up. (Here's a link to info about FPS if you are curious.)

She also placed 3rd in the state in the FFA Sheep Impromptu speaking contest, which is a great accomplishment for such a young student (she's just finished her freshman year) and particularly one with no real-life sheep experience. For those of you not familiar with the FFA (Future Farmers of America) and the speaking contests, the Impromptu contests work like this: You have up to twelve topics in your subject area to study and gather resources on. The subject areas cover all the livestock classes, plus small animal, nursery, floriculture, turf & lawn, and others. The topics are things like preventing diseases, managing your flock, controlling internal and external parasites -- things that someone raising sheep would need to know about in order to have a successful herd. So once you have your resources gathered, which is done in the weeks leading up to the contest, you head into the competition room and draw two topics. You choose one of the two topics and then are given twenty minutes in which to prepare a 4-6 minute speech. At the end of that twenty minutes, you present your speech in front of a panel of three judges.

Just a couple of shop reminders too: my CT CALL is still going on, so go ahead and get an application sent in by the 24th. My Whiteout paper pack is still FREE in the shop until midnight tonight, and there's still a coupon code availabe on the Scrapbooks Etc. blog that can be used in my shop until the end of the month.

 

Maggie Stiefvater: Forever, the book tour

When it comes to social media, I've found that I personally get more out of Twitter than I ever have out of Facebook. While Facebook has given me a way to reconnect with family and friends from years ago, I'm not so much a fan of the information that gets (over)shared there. With Twitter, the sharing is more focused (and even the random comments are short and less likely to be TMI) and I feel much more connected to information that I'm interested in and that leads me to some great articles/sites. It's a fantastic way to keep up with what my favorite authors are doing as well, which is how I learned that Maggie Stiefvater would be coming to Nashville in July as part of a 3,700 mile road trip book tour for Forever, book 3 of The Wolves of Mercy Falls series.

Maggie was funny and engaging and smart and sarcastic and silly -- all those things that you would expect her to be after reading her novels. Cassidy and I made a day of it in Nashville and really enjoyed ourselves. Here's a peek at our day:

All trips to Nashville involve a drive across the two large bridges spanning the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers and the Land Between the Lakes

I made Cass pose at the wave wall in Nashville 

Cass with a fantastic art exhibit in the Nashville public library

another look at the Nashville library -- it's an absolutely stunning building

waiting for Maggie

Maggie, onstage

Maggie, signing books

downtown Nashville (that's the AT&T building in the background, which is more commonly referred to as the Batman Building by the girls)

Five Guys

Cassidy's opinion of the day's events

more pages for the Going West photobook

The credits are the same as the ones posted here. Thanks for all the nice comments about the first four pages. I'm loving how quickly this is coming together, and how it's really fitting with the image in my mind. I've been trying to record some information about each place on the pages too -- mostly just some summary info. Luckily, David brought back all the maps and guide papers for me to use. :)

 

10 on Tuesday: the Gulf Shores vacation edition

I meant to get this posted last week, but time just slipped away from me. We had a great time on vacation, though it's been harder than normal to transition back to the real world, I think. Here's a recap of our time in Gulf Shores:

1. Just about every single thing we encountered on this trip was reason for a photo op, mostly because this was the first time the girls had ever visited the beach. Case in point: the first palm tree the girls had ever seen ("in real life, Mama!" added Cami) -- taken at a random gas station in some south Alabama town. It was mid-afternoon and the gas station was closed, though luckily you could still pay at the pumps. Not good when a bathroom break is part of the reason why you're stopping, though.

2. This sight brought back such incredible memories for me. When I was younger, my Papaw owned a seafood restaurant and my parents both worked there. It was open three nights a week (Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday), and Daddy traveled to the Gulf Coast -- to Mobile, specifically -- every couple of weeks to pick up fresh seafood, from a man named Ralph who owned a company down on the docks. He took a blue and gray Silverado with a camper top on back; the bed had been fitted with a large wooden box that would be loaded down with white buckets of seafood and pounds of ice on each trip. I got to tag along more times than I can count, and I consider those trips to be one of the very best parts of my childhood.

3. This is about the time when all the "Oh cool!"s and the "Oh my goodness!"es and the squealing and clapping started. It made me choke up a time or two, to see just how excited they were about this whole trip. And this was just Mobile Bay -- we hadn't even made it to the actual beach yet!

4. That's not to say it wasn't a long trip, because it was. 9 hours. The girls traded off napping in the backseat and watching movies for the first half of the trip. There were some great radio sing-alongs, but the thing that got us all through was keeping our eyes peeled for that next yellow vehicle: "BINGO!!!"

5. So typical of their personalities: Cass jumps right in, while Cami hangs back and watches for a bit.

6. We stayed in a nice 3br 2ba condo just a block from the beach. It was a little swampy outside our back door, which meant the frogs were crazy loud, but it was so nice to have all that room to spread out in. Definitely beats hotel life!

 

7. We ate in most of the time (saves on cash!) but we ventured into Gulf Shores proper (since we were actually staying out in the Ft. Morgan area, which is farther west by about 15 miles or so) on Monday night and checked out this really cool place called The Hangout. GREAT family atmosphere, so laidback with a great beachy vibe. Definitely a place I'd recommend.

8. The girls did get a little bit tired of the surf and sand, so they opted for some fun in the pool too. There was lots of jumping from the sides with twists and spins in mid-air, plus races to see who could run backwards the fastest, which made for some amusing pictures (at least, *I* think so! Cass...maybe not so much.)

9. Of course, no trip to the beach would be complete without an hour or more spent wandering through every souvenir shop on the block, right? After all, who doesn't want a tacky seashell chandelier or a pirate snowglobe or sanddollar shotglasses... The girls each bought a couple of bracelets and necklaces, plus a toe ring, and an airbrushed t-shirt, which is pretty much a mandatory purchase.

10. All too soon it was time to begin the 9 hour trip back home. I think the girls had a wonderful time, and I'm so happy to have been able to share a place that played such a big part of my own childhood with them. Cami was ready to head home; "I miss my daddy and my doggie," she said. And while Cass would've been content to stay for a good bit longer, I think she too was glad to be home.

photos: Muir Woods and Stinson Beach

Things are super-busy right now; it's been one of those weeks where all of my carefully scheduled plans have been turned topsy-turvy -- all of Cassidy's school events have been rescheduled, which throws the rest of our family schedule into chaos. It's a brilliantly executed dance on most days, with Chris in charge of Cami and me in charge of Cass (or vice versa), and pauses just long enough to touch base, trade information, and steal a kiss or two before twirling off to the next obligation. We're down to one car at the moment too, as the clutch on Chris's car no longer works. Ahhh...what's that about raining and pouring? ;)

So while I frantically work to make sure everyone is where they need to be, let me leave you with some relaxing images from our trip to San Francisco this summer. We took a day to visit Muir Woods and Stinson Beach, and I...well, I fell in love. I could call this place home. Oh yes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

day 5 of my San Francisco trip: Sausalito

I've still got so many pictures from my trip to San Francisco in July that I'd like to share with you. I thought I'd kick the weekend off with images of the beautiful little town of Sausalito. Chris and I rented a car one day during the week and drove across the bridge to Sausalito, before heading up into the mountains to visit Muir Woods and Stinson Beach (those photos will come on a later date).

 

 

 

 

Our first stop was a small cafe for breakfast. You could tell it was a popular place with the locals, as many of them were firmly settled in the corners, taking advantage of the free wifi -- not to mention the fabulous food. I think breakfast became our favorite meal of the day by far while we were in San Francisco. And I'm not talking about anything fancy either. I had breakfast potatoes, a fried egg, and a couple of slices of sourdough toast. But everything tasted SO good.

 

We walked along the waterfront, admiring the view -- there are so many stunning houses in this town. On the way back, I glanced down at the rocks lining the edge of the sidewalk and saw this little guy just hanging out. On closer inspection, the rocks were crawling with these little crabs...they were all over the place.

 

We spent the rest of the day in Muir Woods and Stinson Beach before stopping in Sausalito again -- at the same little cafe -- and enjoying some yummy bruschetta and a wood-fired pizza. The fog had really rolled in as we headed back across the bridge, so the view was quite different than the one we'd been treated to that morning.

 

 

*Note: please scroll down to the post below this one. I'm in need of purse help. :)

"best weekend EVER!"

(and that's a direct quote...)

We've been planning on going camping for a month now, but every time we make plans, the forecast calls for rain. Of course, it never actually ends up raining, so for Memorial Day weekend, we decided we were going camping whether it rained or not. We didn't leave until Sunday morning, as there was too much going on on Saturday. Naturally, it rained all day (off and on) on Sunday; we headed up to LBL to the campground at Energy Lake. We've camped at two of the various campgrounds in LBL now; we usually stay at the primitive sights, though all of these places have spots for RVs and camper trailers. Our goal is to purchase a jeep and a popup camper in the next year or year and a half; this will make it easier for us to go camping regardless of the weather (luckily our tent didn't leak at all, so even in the rain, we were comfortable).

We observed the local wildlife in their natural habitat:

(yes, that's a real owl -- it was really funny to see everyone's reaction as they walked past it because they all assumed it was stuffed)

We fished (Cami caught the biggest fish), we explored, we built fires, we found rocks that looked like brains, we crashed hard when it was time to come home, and we missed some major rainstorms...

The only thing I could've done without was the skunk that wandered through our campsite sometime during the middle of the night and sprayed everything...needless to say, that didn't make for easy sleeping. Still, nothing (aside from the dog) still smells like skunk, so it could've been worse.

Cami summed it up best when she said that this was the best weekend ever. I love it most because it's just the four of us when we're out camping -- there's nothing to distract us, like the TV or the phone or the internet; there's nothing that needs doing; we can just unplug and enjoy.