Big (blue) Table

What do you do for a dining room table in a 20+ foot long dining room? You build one yourself, that's what you do!
By my very own little self, I designed, planned, and built a custom dining table to accommodate my extra-long dining room and extra-large family. We'd spent the last year debating our options for or newly-enlarged space; now that the floor was finally finished, the time had come to take action.
It was impossible to find an existing table that would have been long enough without having it custom-built. For the time, trouble, and expense of dealing with that, I figured I could make something myself for a whole lot less money. I based my design on this table from Pottery Barn that I liked. I would have had to buy two of the Pottery Barn tables ($$$$$) and pushed them up together to be long enough.
Not the best pics, but this table is just under 14 feet long, and can seat 18 people comfortably. I was going to leave the whole table in the same stained finish as the top, but as I got close to being finished with it, it just looked sooooo big and brown, so I did a distressed paint finish on the bottom. My house is finally starting to look like a real house again!

Squirrellicious

Since he was about five years old, Paul has wanted to go hunting. He made me promise him a long time ago that when he bagged his first animal, I would cook it for him. Well, my friends, that day has arrived. The hunter was victorious!
There was a good deal of deliberation, prior to the hunting trip, as to how the squirrel should be cooked if Paul was so lucky to actually bag one. Ideas such as Buffalo Squirrel Dip and Squirrel Smoothies were tossed around. Paul finally decided on Squirrel Marsala for his feast of triumph ( we are, after all, a higher class of redneck), which you see him preparing to dig into here. Five out of six kids declared it delicious; David and I abstained.

Ta-daaaaa

Remember these old floorboards? We salvaged them from the house of some guy who was remodeling last winter, and stuck them in the garage until spring. The kids sorted them and pulled out all the old nails, and back into the garage they all went until just last week, when I finally got good and ready to put them in.
I didn't get a "before" shot, but we'd been living with a piece of cheap carpet over the sub-floor in the addition since it was built last fall. It was a huge blessing to stumble on to someone (via a craigslist wanted ad) who was tearing out some of the exact mid-century era strip oak flooring that runs throughout the rest of the house, which we were happy to take off his hands. Above you see Paul helping me with the cleaning up of sanding dust, after we had gotten all the boards installed. FYI, it took almost exactly 2,000 nails, top-nailed, to hold this down. And all those nail holes had to be spackled over.
I'm very proud to say I did the whole job almost entirely by myself, which is not too surprising if you know me, but really threw the sander-rental guys for a loop. They looked up and down all five feet and 115 pounds of me, baby on my hip and a car full of kids, and talked me out of getting the heavier-duty drum sander (which I really needed) and into a pad sander (which didn't do what I needed.) At the end of the day, i only had to get the new floor to look as bad as the job we did on the old floor a few years ago, so it wasn't worth going back to the store to switch out for the sander I should have gotten in the first place.
I'm taking lots of pictures no, because as soon as I let the kids and dog back onto the floor today, it will never again look so clean and shiny. You can see the transition between the old and new- it really blends remarkably well!

Eeeeek!

*cue reel of a lady standing on a chair holding up her skirts*

We have mice in our pantry. Elena brought up a bag of frosted flakes this morning with a corner chewed open. This prompted the rest of the kids to rush down to the pantry to investigate, where they found a few more chewed up packages and some tell-tale "chocolate sprinkles". They seem to be coming in from our, ahem, "plumbing access panel" in the ceiling; how they got into the ceiling is anybody's guess.
I guess it was a good a time as any to clean and re-organize our pantry stocks. This is what our family room looks like (again), full of pantry items. The kids sorted through and pulled out anything that was nibbled, chewed, scratched, or sprinkled to toss out, while I got a broom and a bucket full of bleach water to scrub down floors and shelves. Then it was off to the farm store for mouse traps and poison, and some mouse-proof dry goods containers.
For your edification, those cheap little cartoonish mouse traps hurt a LOT when they snap on your finger. I managed to set two of them before remembering I'd need my fingers to play my guitar later this evening. The kids have checked the traps approximately every two minutes since we set them; we'll see how many volunteers step up when it comes time to empty the traps.

Cold water, good times!

We went with some friends to Stony Brook Park yesterday. As has been the case with most of our adventures this summer, this was David's first time there.
We try to come down here at least once every summer (see this from a few years back; we didn't get to go last year on account of David being so little.)
It was a rather cool day, and the water is always freezing cold, but that didn't stop any of the kids from diving in. When you have a group of kids playing around a particularly fascinating water feature, it's little more than a waste of breath to try to tell them not to get wet. Add into that the extra excitement of being with a bunch of friends, and, well--- they can't say I didn't warn them that they'd all be very, very cold before too long.
David, who dislikes most things, liked it here a lot.
I hadn't considered how much he likes playing with running water- he loves the spray fountain at the pool and the running water when the bathtub is filling. His only complaint was that I would not let him go entirely, as he would be swept downstream. At 15 months old, he still has little understanding of such concepts.
Did I mention it was cold? Freezing. My kids would break through ice to go swimming if I let them.
By the time we reached the end of the trail, they were all ready for dry clothes and hot chocolate, both of which I had the foresight to pack.
David, who objects strongly to all forms of restraint or containment, did very well in the backpack. I was prepared for a few hours of being kicked in the kidneys and having my hair pulled (as per usual), but he was so fascinated by all the waterfalls he hardly had time to complain.
This is a great place to take pictures; in fact, we came one fall with the camera tripod and did our Christmas card photo shoot here. The only problem is most of the pictures I tend to get are of the kids running away from me, so I get a lot of shots of people's backs.
We had a great day!

Creatures of the Night

Some of you may remember our Chipmunk Relocation Program. Our neighborhood has an abundance of the rodents, some prime rodent habitats, and no real predators, thus the little chippers have had ample opportunity to procreate freely and wreak havoc on our yard, not to mention causing great aggravation to our dog. Matt was of a mind to trap and remove each and every one, wiping them out and solving our problems. I was of the mind that we were only going to be able to trap the dumb chipmunks, leaving the smart chipmunks free to reproduce themselves and ultimately form some kind of superior race of genius chipmunks who would eventually overthrow us. The other thought I had on the situation was the eventuality that we would catch something in the trap that was NOT a chipmunk, which is what you see here.
This is a possum. He's pretty small, but he has a big mouth with a lot of very sharp looking teeth that he was quite happy to flash for us. To our knowledge Mr. Possum has done us no harm, and while we harbor no ill will towards him, it does not seem he feel the same way towards us. I sent my oldest son to open the trap doors so our little guest would be free to vacate at his earliest convenience. Hopefully possums don't hold grudges for very long.

He walks the line

Baby D has been toddling for a little while now. One hesitant step at a time, growing (gradually) more brave every day. None of my children were very motivated when it came to walking; they all much preferred to sit back and cautiously observe for a good amount of time before testing the waters themselves. We can now officially classify David as a fully upright hominid. Now that he's sure that this whole walking upright thing isn't just some fad, he's going at it full tilt, even going so far as to run away from his own dear mama!