...domesticity...

It's been a while. This blog thing is starting to turn into a weekly wrap up. I can't imagine what it'll be like when I start school.

Not too much has happened in the last week..I've been working on my project for school a lot(more on this later) and cooking. I'm feeling pretty domestic lately. This week's great make was fresh salsa. Seriously, could it be any easier and amazingly good?


I diced tomatoes, green pepper, onion, and corn. Then threw in some garlic, lime juice, dill weed(of course...it's my favorite spice), and salt. So easy! It did however make a lot of salsa, but because of the lime juice it's lasted for quite some time.

...a mother's intuition...

Okay, so you always hear about mother's having great intuition on things with their children..you know about their safety, health, this, that, and the other thing. Well, my Mom has it down to a science. I think she got a lot of practice, having three kids. Today, she went grocery shopping and much later after she had been back for hours, of course I was annoying and said that I wanted stuffed french toast for my birthday breakfast. She(being the horrible liar that she is) asked why I wouldn't have told her earlier when she was shopping, but I could tell she was scheming. She bought all of the stuff for it! How is this woman that awesome?! I mean, I had not even mentioned having that for breakfast AND i didn't even know I wanted that until today. She also bought the stuff for my cake and picked up my favorite frosting..cream cheese of course. Again, never mentioned anything about that. I don't think I would have known what to pick if I went to the store. She just knows, I guess.

Dad, I know you're reading this. YOU too are amazing...but you don't have a mother's intuition. I'm glad you don't because it wouldn't be a good mix if both of you had it :)

Love you both!!

...dirty...

Mom and I went to the library today to research my building for the senior project. We had to go here and then there and then back here...it's such a mess! It's been hard to find anything on this place, but I think I'm finally getting somewhere! The librarians at the Kzoo Public Library weren't so helpful. The first guy could barely tell me anything and then finally he told me to go to the Local History room. The librarian there printed something off quickly, but then just pointed in the direction we needed to go. Not so helpful when there are tons of bookshelves and 8,000 books on each shelf with similar titles!! Finally, after Mom and I must have looked like lost puppies, she came over and found the book. Of course, it was right in front of our face and she found it in .3 seconds. Whoops. Anyways, I found a tiny little blurb about the building and wanted to make copies...found printer..added my 10 cents..hit start..nothing. I definitely broke the copier. I don't think I actually broke it, because it was a paper jam, buuuut it happened while I was using it. I called the librarian over to fix it, which annoyed her even more. She worked on it for a few minutes and then she had to call someone else over to figure it out. After 10 minutes of her trying to be a handyman she told me to just go over to the other room. Thanks, I could have been doing this 15 minutes ago and I just lost my 10 cents. So, I trot over to the other room, find a printer that works and make copies. I went back and forth several times after finding some articles and whatnot, and started to notice a strange man. The copier was in the "tech room" with all of the computers that anyone can have access too...remember, it's a public library and for researching purposes they don't have filters on the internet? They may want to think that one over again. Dirty twenty-something strange man was looking at pictures of girls in underwear. I saw him saving the pictures to another file, too. Really? In a public library? Right in front of the copiers and main path between about three different rooms? At least go to a computer with some privacy...maybe one at your house? He didn't find it odd that people were walking by, making copies 2 feet behind him, or sitting RIGHT next to him at the other computers. People are strange...

...country bumpkin...

You would think a girl that is not working or going to school could keep up with her blog, right? Well, sometimes I forget or just get lazy.

I guess I should fill you in. Brother came for the weekend...brother #2..the middle child. Anyways, he got into town friday. It's always a blast when either brother is home. We hang out, eat, drink, etc. Saturday he had a wedding, but Sunday we spent all day together. Highlight of the day was the trip over to a family friend's house. She has new guinea hens and pygmy goats. The hens were interesting...she got them to eat bugs out of her garden. These things are little scavengers! They can find ticks, crickets, beetles...you name it, they're eating it! They aren't the cutest things though..small heads, little bodies..but they are still growing, so we'll see if they get any cuter. I think we have to go over and help heard them into their new cage tomorrow. THAT will be an adventure for us. You know you live in the country when....

The pygmy goats were a.d.o.r.a.b.l.e. We used to have goats at my house(I know, country bumpkins for sure), so they were bringing back memories for all of us. They're tiny little things. I mean, they could sit in your lap...if you wanted them to AND if they wanted to. I think I could have taken one home but parents wouldn't be too happy, since they would get to take care of it in a year when I move! Oh well..

Monday rolled around and we stopped at the coffee shop in scraft. We all got blended lattes...amazing!! But, we were sure we were taking in about 400 calories with one of those things. Guess we don't want to get into that habit!

Aunt and Uncle had everyone over for dinner Monday night, because Uncle from Chicago was in town for business. The field directly behind their house has potatoes this year and the owners said they could pick as many as they want. Brother and I definitely took them up on it. It was a lot of work...for brother. I stood there with a bag while he dug. No digging for this girl!! We could not believe how many huge potatoes we walked away with in that short amount of time...yes, it is a field..but we thought for sure it would take a long time to get that many. Anyways, we'll be eating potatoes for the next year...

After farm picking, we of course rode the golf cart. It's always fun going over there because I drag everyone on that thing. The field behind the house has a service road/trail following it's perimeter. We see 346 deer every time we're out there! Brother has gotten some amazing pictures from past trips. This time, the girl's went out. I was driving(of course) and following the usual trail. Halfway around the field, said trail vanished and we were stuck going through weeds. The cart is pretty low to the ground and the weeds were probably knee height...they were definitely getting stuck to the bottom. The ground was really soft from the irrigation, so at one point, we almost tipped. I think I scared everyone a little. Weeds went on for quite some time and I was desperately hoping to get out alive..of course, nobody had a cell phone. We finally found the old trail, looked back, only to see a new trail that we could have been following the entire time. Whoops! Oh well, it was an adventure!

...adventures with that crazy mom of mine...

The Mom and I had a GREAT week touring around the east coast.

Remember all of the stuff we did? I have pictures!!!



This is the first house we toured. The Hampton house...the original owner was a big influence on the Baltimore area(don't really remember what he did...there were so many family stories we heard that they all mix together). I do remember that the guy owned about 350 slaves at one point. It was also the biggest house in the U.S. when it was built in the 1700's. Crazy. It was one of our favorites from the week!!




I don't want to bore you with all of the houses..so I'm putting up our favorites. This is the last house in Baltimore we toured...the Evergreen House. This house is a little newer(meaning it was built in the 1800's). These people were filthy rich. The house was complete with an art gallery, about 3 libraries(one of which had a glass floor), a theater(not for movies, but for plays), and a bowling alley. Oh and don't forget all of the art they had from Picasso, Degas, and Tiffany(as in Louis Comfort Tiffany, the glass artist). I absolutely loved that place!

On our way back to MI we stopped in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. It's a little war town that sits on the Potomac River...it reminded me of Mackinac Island with the little shops and people dressed in costume. Mom suggested we head on up to the next town by following a small road that runs parallel to the river. Well, we thought we had found the road, but it turned into a gravel mess, so we went back to a shop and asked if it would take us there. The man said it would, but that it was horribly bumpy. Mom said that we should take it anyways, as she was sure it was the same one her and Dad had taken a few years back, in their little convertible. I knew if Dad had taken his pride and joy down that little road, we could do it in my car. I drive a little four door miniature car as well...off roading is not on it's list of things it likes to do. So did it get better? NOPE! The road was made up of the big stones that line the railroad beds. There were potholes about every foot. I mean we're talking BIG holes in the road...some the size of the road. It was rainy that day too, so they were all filled with about 2 inches of water. At one point, there was a small drainage pipe draining onto the road. We had to drive over part of the pipe that was helping the water over..of course, with running water moving through it. So, it couldn't get any worse right?! Wrong! The potholes kept getting bigger. The water in them was reflecting everything so you couldn't even really see how deep they were, which is really amazing when you have to drive over that. There was one point when we had to drive over a "pothole," which should officially be put on the map as a crater, Mom said "don't get too close to the edge or you'll scrape the car with that huge boulder over there." My choices were: drive through crater and fall into the center of the earth, drive to the left and hit boulder, or drive to the right..fall into river..start white water rafting/automobiling. I chose the boulder. We thought we were just about through the jungle o' potholes, craters, and boulders when we came to yet again another drainage outlet. This time it was about 30 times the size of the first one...so big that the water coming out of it was creating a very large stream. Literally, we could have opened our doors and waded in the water...maybe even fished. It did make for some amazing pictures though....



Here's the very beginning of the road. Pretty, right?




Not so pretty when the potholes became more frequent and much larger...remember..some of them were the size of the road.




The drainage outlet and the stream.




Makes for a cool pic though, right? And remember, I didn't even have to get out of my car for this pic!!




Same, just trying it in sepia! ...After crossing the river and hopping a few more craters, we finally came to the end. Although, the spot looked very familiar. Mom pointed out a nasty camping trailer and then soon enough there was another one! There were a few people standing around and a bunch of junk piled up. L, can you guess the spot? Yep, it was definitely the inlet to our tubing extravaganza!! Funny that I had come full circle in about 10 days! I showed Mom the dam we had to cross, so at least one person didn't think I was crazy. I wanted to get pics but the hippies didn't look like they would be too happy if I stopped..looked like they were waiting for a bus to come around the corner!


After Harper's Ferry we drove on to Kentuck Knob...the Frank Lloyd Wright house close to Fallingwater(the cuz and I did that one last summer). The house was amazing!! I actually liked it more than Fallingwater. Don't get me wrong, the site for Fallingwater is amazing and I would take that house in a heartbeat...but this house was pretty damn amazing itself. It wasn't overly done or huge by any means...just a reasonably sized house, sitting on a mountain, in the woods. Frank is all about fitting the house to the site..so the details are what won me over. The picture windows, sky lights in the kitchen, field stone floors, etc. I won't bore you with more, but if you're ever out that way..you've got to see it. It's completely worth every second! Here are some pics...



Frank started adding this signed tile to all of his buildings...didn't come until later in his life, which is why we didn't see it at Fallingwater, L.




The house and waterfall.




The terrace.




The view. The current owners live in that huge farm house in the valley. They still entertain at The Knob on weekends..sucks to be their friends, huh?




Thought I'd add this one in...we had lots of fun being silly! It was rainy, hence the hood...


So, that was my big adventure with the Mom. We saw a ton and had lots of Maryland crab cakes(which we thoroughly miss)!

...goodbye...

The internship came to an end last week. They had 2 going away lunches for me. On Friday, I was introduced to my new favorite food...crab cakes!!! They are pretty amazing! Anyways, I had to say goodbye to everyone..which was sad, but I'm ready to get back home and finish my last year. I walked away with a better knowledge of things(of course), but most importantly, a mentor for my senior project!! We have to have several, and I didn't know if I would be able to rely on anyone there when I first got the job...but, i'll be able to definitely rely on her...she's amazing and I know she'll help a lot! She and I are both very excited! Sooo, my day came to and end, which was sad and exciting at the same time....mostly exciting though because I had to run to the airport to pick up the mom right after! The minutes of the day seemed to go by so slowly, but 5:20 finally rolled around and there she came walking around the corner. I was so happy to see her I bawled...it's very out of the ordinary for me to cry(sometimes I think my tear ducts are dried up)...so there I was in the middle of the airport wailing away! My mom said that I must have been pretty happy to see her....she was right about that one!!

Dad couldn't come due to health reasons(he's fine...just needing to recover)...so Mom and I have been enjoying some girl time. We really like touring old houses...I know, I know..nerds right?! Mom has no excuse except for being a big history buff...But, I'd eventually like to get into historical restoration and preservation....so I love to see projects already done. We've done 7 houses in 4 days...soon to be 8 in 5 days. We're leaving here tomorrow to go see Kentuck Knob, a Frank Lloyd Wright house, and then stay in a Bed & Breakfast near Washington, PA. Thursday, it will be on to Ohio to see one of the bros.

It's time to finish the laundry and packing of the car. Every thing's almost in there! It's packed a little nicer than the first time, as Mom helped this time. I'll actually be able to see out the back window! More to come in a few days when I'm back in MI(sorry Aunt Sue, you'll have to wait a little bit until I get home!).

...time flies when you're having fun...

I can't believe I have two days left! These 9 weeks have flown by! The saying is true..time does fly when you're having fun. I can't really imagine not seeing L everyday, hanging out, making dinner together, playing wii for hours on end... It'll be tough the first couple of weeks...Good news is that we get to see each other two weekends in a row at the end of August!! Then school starts..not looking forward to that..

I am looking forward to Friday though..the Mom is coming to visit for the week and then she's driving back with me. She just called a little bit ago. I think she may be more excited than I am. Sounds like she's packed, ready, and waiting by the door to leave!

Should be a good weekend! I'm sure stories and pictures will soon follow!