Dancing with Heart

"Dancing with the feet is one thing, but dancing with the heart is another."

(Author unknown.)

5 Years - The Wood Anniversary

This past Friday, Megan and I celebrated our five-year wedding anniversary. According to Megan (and confirmed by Google), the traditional gift for surviving five years is wood. On a related note, we have two children who thought that our off-white carpet looked better with a rainbow of food and drink stains. With these two factors in hand, Megan and I decided it was time to replace the carpet and install new laminate wood floors.

About a two weeks ago, when the project had been officially sanctioned, we decided to give the hearth room and kitchen a fresh coat of paint.

I removed the baseboards (only broke one out of about 25. Not too shabby)

And Megan and Hazel worked on painting the walls.

We then went to Lowes and picked up a box or 67 of flooring.

The before picture (well, after painting but still with carpet)

No more carpet, and the carpet pad on its way out.

The girls testing out the interim concrete floors.

We had noticed that there was a fair amount of paint on the concrete when we pulled up the carpet. Hazel and Elise decided to add a little bit more.

And Megan thought it looked like too much fun to pass up.

Of course, my painting was with concrete to patch the cracks in the floor.

The hearth room with all of the underlayment down.

And so it begins...

We ran into the hardest part of the job pretty early on when trying to get the floor from either side of the half wall to match up.

The mad cutter at work with one of his many saws (I think I used no fewer than 4 different saws on this project).

Megan finishing up the closet.

Ok, if you have seen one picture of us putting down floors, you've seen them all. So, without further ado, some shots of the final product.

The closet.

The front room.

Part of the kitchen. We even put down new floors under the fridge and oven.

And the hearth room. Quite a change from the "before" picture above!

It was a long, hard weekend, but I can't think of anyone I would have rather spent it with. Happy Anniversary Megan!

A Night at the Lilly House Gardens

Last night, we thought we'd take advantage of the beautiful weather we've had all week and go for a walk in the Lilly House Gardens. The girls wanted to get dressed up in their best, and so we couldn't resist taking the camera along to get a few choice photos.

Hazel gets a kick out of spring!

While Elise finds a bed of Daffodils to play in.

Hazel thinks the daffodils are nothing special. We've got these in our own yard, Mom.

Maybe we can find something more interesting in the formal garden.

Now a fountain with purple flowers, that's something special!

Elise is off to see what else she can find.

We went for a little walk through the woods down by the canal, and Elise was in her element. She's such a little explorer.

During our walk in the woods, we found this awesome little yellow bench.

Elise had a blast climbing all over it!

After our walk, we headed back to the Lilly House and had a little fun dancing on the veranda.

Hazel is a dancing queen!

Our little explorer (and her big sister).

And sometimes her big sister doesn't pay very much attention to where she's going.

Pooh Sticks!

Well, the warmer weather has come and gone. Yesterday looked like a scene from a snow-globe outside. But we know the warm weather will be back, and in the meantime, we will content ourselves with memories of the fun we had during our brief taste of spring, and the promise of more fun to come.

Last Monday, we ate an early dinner together and headed over to the local park to play Pooh Sticks. This is a game that I taught Hazel on the boat dock at the State Park where we had dinner with Grammy a few weeks ago. While waiting for Grammy to pay the bill, the girls and I went outside to look at the lake. From the boat dock, we tossed sticks into the lake on one side and scooted around to see them come out from under the dock on the other side. Hazel and Elise both loved the game, and I promised them that we could play at our local park as soon as the weather permitted.

Elise wasn't very good at waiting until we counted to three. She just tended to drop her sticks in right away. We had to be right on top of things if we wanted to race her.

After the sticks had been dropped, we raced to the other side of the bridge to see whose stick appeared first.

Then it was back to the other side to drop in more sticks.

At one point, while everyone was watching for their sticks on the other side of the bridge, I noticed that Elise had run back to the tossing side and was quietly tossing all the rest of the sticks we had saved for future rounds. She was having the best time all by herself. What a clever little sneak she is!

With all our remaining sticks tossed in, we headed down to the banks of the creek to try throwing some rocks in.

Hazel particularly enjoyed finding rocks to toss.

We had a great day playing outside and are really looking forward to more days like this. I particularly like these photos because of the starkness of the world around us. They really convey the feeling of waking up from our "long winter's nap" and venturing forth slowly, timidly to be a part of the world again.

Spring is Here!

Spring has finally arrived! And we are finally coming out of hibernation. We have big things planned for this spring and summer, and can hardly wait to get it all under way. But first, we'll take a real quick look back at the past few months.

We had a fun Valentine's Day dinner party. The girls helped me decorate the table and we had pizza with a pepperoni heart on it!

Hazel is so excited for the party!

And she is so proud of the table that she helped decorate!

Daddy and Lisey are having fun with the camera.

Finally, some warm weather arrived, and we took advantage of it to get out in the sun and play.

Lisey is constantly on the go. GO! GO! Go!

For those of you who haven't heard, Lisey has some words now. Her favorite word is "cat," but she also says "hat." Usually she says "hat" just before turning her bowl over and putting it on her head. We're trying to teach her to at least wait until the bowl is empty. She's still learning. But she's awfully cute.