Spring Break Fun, Close to Home

 

So sadly, Collin does not get the Boston holiday of Patriot's Day as a day off work.  That's the day when Boston is all united and especially awesome and I don't feel we've ever really experienced that day.  One future day we will.  I've done parts by myself, and some with the kids.  This year I knew that I would not be up for braving the double-full marathon crowds or the early morning of the Revolutionary War reenactments on my own with three little kids.  So we just stayed home and did laundry to get ready for the rest of the week's fun.  We did venture into Boston the Saturday before the marathon and it was a great day!  There was still excitement in the air, crowds (but not too crazy), lots of marathon jackets to be seen touring the city, the children's races to watch, a blocked off Boylston Street to run in. 

On Tuesday morning we met up with friends at the awesome park (that's it's official name.  Not really, but it should be!) on the Esplanade along the banks of the Charles River, right by the Boston Pops Shell.  We'd never been brave enough to figure out how to get there, but now we know and can easily get there again when the opportunity presents itself!

Guess who kicked off their shoes first thing?  Not Davy.  Not Eliza.  Yup, that one, the Edward-bear with soles like a hobbit's.  Or in this case, already dirty socks . . . keeping it real, here.

Then Wednesday we drove a long way out to central MA to check out the dinosaur tracks.  I'd heard about them and it was on the bucket list.  Luckily some friends wanted to come along, or I'm afraid we would never have committed to actually go.  The tracks were discovered when the highway was being built and today it is seriously just off the road, accessed by a teensy little turnout.  The walk down to see them is about a city block long and you can walk (carefully!) all over the sandstone where the fossilized footprints are.  There are three different types of dinosaurs represented, though they all looked the same to me.  They are thought to be the ancestors of the T-Rex, so that was impressive to the band of boys we had with us.

The trip to the dinosaur tracks was long enough that we wanted to find another thing in the area to make it totally worth it.  The Eric Carle Museum in Amherst is a nice stop for families with little kids, so we spent some good time in the art making room, a little walk around the gallery, read some picture books in the library and played outside in the beautiful day.  All of it better with friends.  And it would have been even better had I not gotten lost on the way home and added a half hour to our already long drive.  Grr.

I'm afraid I completely museumed-out my kids last week.  Thankfully the friends who came with us to the MFA on Friday were so fun I think I can convince my boys to go again soon.

We'd tried to get pictures with my favorite ducklings (dressed up in marathon bibs and Easter hats!!) earlier in the week but because it was school vacation and the marathon and nice weather it was madness.  So when Saturday morning rolled around and appeared drizzly and wet I was super excited.  I said to Collin, "Hurry, let's go see the ducks today!  Then we can get pictures with not a gazillion other kids in the background!"  My loving and patient husband agreed (??? okaaay . . .) but my children were not super thrilled.  They were kind enough to come out of the car for a few minutes to get a couple pictures.  These may be our last pictures with the ducks!  For a long time, at least, and my boys will probably have outgrown them by the time we return.  :(

Goodbye, Beautiful Belmont Home

Yes, it's finally time to announce that we are London-bound!  Collin received an offer to work for two years in London and we will be wrapping up our life here and ready to move across the pond by the end of June.  I'm eager to start organizing all the details now to make the transition easier in the next couple weeks.  But before I begin taking stuff down and packing it or giving it away I wanted to take a bunch of pictures to remind us of our home here.

I have loved--loved!--creating our home in this apartment.  After that fire a few years ago I learned to treasure even more the comfort that is a home.  I love the process of making something function, especially when it involves some creative and tricky re-purposing and organizing.  I love making things reflect me and my family.  I love making things beautiful to my eyes, colorful, cheerful, unique.  I love my job as home-maker.

So, I'll be going room by room (don't be alarmed, there are really only five rooms and a couple ugly closets that I'll be showing.  So it'll be a long house tour, but not as extensive as some.) and reminiscing here and there about our lovely life in this place.

Disclaimer:  I truly took twenty minutes snapping these this afternoon.  I was going to clean up more and stage more and tidy more but ha! that just wasn't going to happen.  So what you see is how it really is.  Oh, except I did move a pile of random magazines that was just too ugly and maybe shoved some stacks of laundry aside here and there.  And insisted the kids clean up some of the Legos off the floor, but that is per the usual.  All other piles and projects visible are a true reflection of our every-day.

ENTRY WAY

This space is quite large for an entry way in general, but particularly for New England apartments.  We lucked out with this extra little half-room.  As I'm constantly moving stuff around and making things work for different phases of our family's needs it's been used as a library with book shelves lining the wall and a reading nook, an office with computer and desk, and for the past year or so as our toy storage (after we realized that it was extremely counterproductive to keep a toy cupboard in the boys' sleeping quarters) and music room.  It also serves as the center of our "kid jobs" including piano practicing and reward central (buttons and small change as tokens of earning/consequences).  It also houses our beach sand collection, which is comprised of one small handful of sand from each of the beaches we have visited as a family, stored in recycled old jam jars.

LIVING ROOM

This room may have had the most moving around of any of our living spaces.  The most recent update was to accommodate Eliza becoming the bum-scooting demon she is.  Some quick baby-proofing was in order, so over moved my favorite funky bench in front of the fireplace (which is actually where we hide our TV) so the machine and cords are inaccessible.  I love that crate of comfy blankets and basket of library books ready for cuddling up and enjoying time together.

Also as part of making the living room more baby friendly, I made a soft and spacious corner for her to pull out her favorites--books, Duplos, and trains.  I had had our big black table in the middle of the room as the boys use it for coloring and drawing and school work, but the space was too tight and there were too many corners exposed.  So I pushed it up against the wall under the window so it feels safer for Eliza to roam.  The boys love the extra carpet area for wrestling, too.

I love how our house feels like a fun mix of kids taking over the world and grown-up (sort of) space.  Nothing is too precious that if it gets got into or breaks that it's reason for tears.  (Though I have been known to cry over a silly broken Make Way for Ducklings Christmas ornament . . .)  I want to teach our children to respect and care for things, of course.  But mostly I want them to love living here.  And I want to love living here with them during the day and after they are gone to bed and toys are hiding away in clever spots.  Because you better believe there are toys being stored in many of those drawers and baskets.  Too many toys!

DINING ROOM

I'm just realizing that I didn't get a picture of our dining room table and chairs/bench.  Probably because it was messy all day with a couple of projects-in-the-works.  That's totally normal in my house, but I wish I'd gotten one little shot of the table, even if I'd had to swipe all the stuff to the side of the room for a minute.  It's just an IKEA table, but the chairs were trash day finds (a matching set!) and the bench a yard sale score.  We do a lot of fun things at that table--from preschool group activities, to special Sunday dinners with friends, to sewing super hero capes and a baby girl dress, to blog post drafting.

Our dining room also fulfills its main duty as Lego central.  I've been saving up a bunch of pictures form the past several months about Legos intending to do a special post about it, since it is a seriously major part of our life right now.  Don't know if that will ever happen.  But suffice it to say, a whole lot of time is spent at one of two (two!  Mom is so generous) Lego locations.  The hutch is one (with both top drawers full of pieces) and a kid-size table in the corner is the other (there are two boxes full of pieces under the table.  We have plenty of Legos, grandmas and aunts!  Thank you for providing so well for them!).  And yet, I find Legos spread out across the bench, "my" project table, the floor.  My love/hate relationship with this toy is intense, I tell you.

KITCHEN/PANTRY (and some of the ugly spaces too)

We lucked out with our pantry in this apartment.  It could look absolutely Pinterest worthy in the right hands.  In my hands, though, it at least was great easy food storage and moonlights as my sewing stash area and computer docking/recharging station.  Also, see our time out "quiet corner" for those moments of necessary separation from an upsetting situation for the little children.  In addition to the pantry, we also have ample counter and cupboard space in this kitchen (a rarity among New England apartments, I think you'd find). 

I also have really appreciated our small "mud room" that serves as a barrier between outside and the kitchen.  We have had a medium warm place to put on boots and coats before braving the winter world outside, and coming back into our house a place to stash those dirty and wet clothes before bringing them downstairs to wash.  That mud room has been much messier and much cleaner, both.  Right now it's in a strange transition called Spring, which means we have to have some winter gear still accessible as well as raincoats and sunscreen.  Then our three-season porch out back is a great place to keep all the outside toys, even more outside stuff, a pile of stuff to go to the thrift store (more overflowing now than usual as we're clearing out).

BATHROOM AND HALL CLOSET

I show the chaotic closet to highlight Collin's prowess as a handyman.  When we came to the apartment there were couple funny little quarter shelves that were entirely useless.  I think maybe it was supposed to be the vacuum closet?  But there is another cleaning closet in the mudroom that fits our vacuum, so I don't know why this closet was kept unusable.  Anyway, after getting permission from the landlord, Collin installed these wonderful shelves for me.  "Shelves in the closet!  Happy thought indeed."  My one reliable movie quote.  xoxo, love of my life!

The bathroom displays some of our family-made art that was a fun project when we first arrived here.  I've also always loved our shower curtain, though it's just from Target.  Most of our rental deposit/have to pay to fix happened in the bathroom.  Eddy flushed a toy phone down the custom color porcelain toilet and it was stuck in such a way that we had to replace it.  Then I had our toothbrushes stored in a little ceramic holder in the medicine cabinet.  One of the boys accidentally knocked it down one day in an attempt to get to one of Collin's or my toothbrushes and cracked the sink.  Oops.

BEDROOMS

The kids room, like most of the spaces in this apartment, has seen several make-overs and arrangements.  I love the phase it is in now, with three children sleeping peacefully through the night and enjoying the quiet sunlight and stories during the day.  Getting the toys (most of--except a few quiet puzzles, books, and the dolls) out of there as well as the dresser (in favor of clothes boxes under the couch) have been the best ideas to make the room comfy and workable.  When Davy had a serious asthma issue a couple years ago, sparked by his major allergy to dust mites, we took out all the stuffed animals (but the doctor said it was okay for him to have two special nighttime buddies), the carpet, the heavy long drapes, all the extra blankets and pillows.  Overnight his health was better, and the room that much more wonderful.  Strange, because I'd thought without a rug and pillows, etc. the room would seem cold and uninviting. 

Our room is a bit more sparse on the color and wall decorations than the rest of the house because I love my husband.  I wanted to give him at least a few blank white walls and a more muted palette as a gift.  Looking at the pictures I guess it's still pretty busy, but it is as restrained as I know how to be right now.  :)

And so concludes our home tour.  I can't believe how much I love this place--expansively Boston and Belmont, but especially our little Lambourne family space called home.  We'll miss this place and some of the stuff that will not continue with us to the next adventure in our life.  Luckily memories are powerful things and really the most important thing we take with us.

Now time to get packing!

We're in Print!

I got a package a couple months ago that made me very very excited.  I love mail in general.  Boxes in particular.  Amazon Prime is the best invention ever.

This box was specially special.  I'd been working on compiling our family journal (this blog) into year books.  It took forever.  But eventually it was done and Collin let me splurge on printing them all up into gorgeous, glossy books full of us!  I have to say, I was very impressed by the quality of the books.  I am rather a personal book publishing snob (what am I not a snob about?), having worked by bum off at Heritage Makers and loving their products.  Blurb books print the photos much better than other companies I have used, the paper is lovely (even the cheapest and most especially the expensive!), the text completely legible, the editing program to print markers accurate, they offer a PDF option on top of the printed copy for future digital records.  I only wish this were a sponsored post, as it sounds.  ;)

In addition to the family journals I made some grandparent gifts.  I couldn't wait until Mother's Day and birthdays to give them, so they already have the books and I'm going to share how we got through the winter with some semblance of sanity here!

Eliza was given a red hooded jacket as a hand-me-down and that sparked an idea that spiraled and blossomed.  I'm no great photographic artist, I know, but in the mode of practicing my photography and keeping us all entertained inside we created some fun Fairy Tale and Nursery Rhyme books.  Davy did the nursery rhyme titles for letter practice (which he did not love doing).  Davy and Eddy both took turns or collaboratively retold the fairy tales in their own words.  Each Lambourne child made an appearance or several in the illustrations.  Luckily most of the stories we used have girls as the main character, as Eliza was by far the most cooperative!  I'll try to intersperse some rhymes and fairy tales from time to time here, just for fun.

 

Snow White, as retold by Davy

Once upon a time a little girl named Snow White and a mother that was mean.  And the mean mom told the huntsman to kill Snow White.  I want to skip to the poison apple.  The mother made a poison apple and gave it to Snow White.  She took a bite and fell asleep and never woke up.  Then a prince came along and kissed her and she woke up.  The end.  And they lived happily ever after the end.