Our Visit to Pine Crest

A few weeks ago we had the wonderful opportunity to take a mini vacation up to Door County. Dad's secretary's brother owns a beautiful house up there that he let us use!

The house was all of stone and looked like something out of a BBC movie. :-)

The terrace in back

The back view... pretty big, eh? :-)

This is a historic restaurant in the area and is apparently THE place to go for ice cream or lunch. It was packed!

They had a really neat old phone in the kitchen! The whole house had a lot of antiques.

Dad in the "study." See, even the inside looks like a movie! Dad's just missing a top hat and a cravat.

Tara took some pictures of me with my harp

(here's a slideshow of more pictures if you're interested)

And I took some of her in various outfits.

You can see more of this on my photography blog.

(I only have photos from the bridesmaid dress shoot so far, but I've got more coming :-)

We had breakfast at the Old Post Office restaurant, which sounds a lot cuter than it was, but it was pretty good food. :-)

The lovely two-room kitchen (no coveting going on here at all... nope)

Adorable dining room (it had two tables)

Blurry picture of the study leading into the living room

The upstairs extra room which housed the TV, and some couches which were certainly not my style. :-)

One of the pretty beds.

We had a nice time relaxing, shopping, eating and enjoying the house. If you'd like to see more pictures of the knick-knacks in the house, I'll be putting up some of those more "artsy" pictures on my blog tomorrow!

(and we finally got a family picture without us dressed up in our Reformation Day outfits!!! :-)

Summer Wildlife

Although raccoons are incredible pests, you have to admit, the babies are pretty adorable! The mama has been bringing her 4 new charges onto the deck late every afternoon to scrounge for birdseed or whatever else we happen to have out there.

This little guy has been scampering through the yard this spring/summer but found our front door mat tasty for some reason so Tara was able to get some fun shots up close.

Hello there!

Time to move on!

Wait. 

What are these creatures? 

Could it be the rarely seen "Lasagnanoodleeatinggirls" we've heard about? 

How did they get into my kitchen anyway?

And then...

While the girls were out (unfortunately) one afternoon last week, I (Mom) was able to watch as four baby warblers ventured out of the birdhouse to try flying for the first time. It was so cute to watch!

The last one was just a little too comfortable to come out.  He waited a good hour or so after the other 3 were practicing their new flying skill in the pine tree behind him before finally venturing out.

And there you have our summer wildlife summary so far...

And then it was summer...

Where has the time gone? I suppose it's about time to put an update on this blog... if there is still anyone out there reading it. :-)

Let's see... way back in April we visited our aunt and uncle and cousins in Indiana for a weekend, and while we were "in the area" we took a jaunt over to the Creation Museum. It was very well done; I don't know that I would necessarily go back. I'm not really a museum person - I didn't want to stop and read everything and there was a LOT to read. I think it would be more interesting to someone who didn't already know the information. :-)

They have a beautiful garden area with lots of bridges and paths. That was actually my favorite part!

The first display once you're inside the museum.

Tara walking through the "cave"!

It is very distressing that in a cave, using flash is a must. *sigh*

After the Ark room they had a neat miniature model of the ark cut in half so you could see the structure of it.

An uncle and three cousins goofing off at Gander Mountain.

Next would the the formal dance we attended, graciously hosted by Mrs. Linhart. The long story is that Tara made a dress for a contest, and part of the rules were that you had to attend a formal dance wearing the dress. So our friend Mrs. Linhart, who had been wanting to have a dance at her house, hosted it in honor of the dress. :-) We roped some of our friends into coming (thanks Laura, Joanna & Joseph!) and danced away! Laura came over early to get ready with us and spend the night.

Tara was our hair dresser as usual... she's so obliging! I took this picture on Laura's camera... which is AMAZING, even if it is a Nikon. ;-)

Edited by Laura

Curls! Maybe I should have worn it just like that - what do you think? :-)

Photo by Laura

Mirror shot!

Photo by Laura (if you didn't catch that already)

Sokea, Emily and I enjoying Mrs. L's lovely screen porch before the dance.

Photo by Laura

Mrs. L's house was perfect for the setting (it was sort of a Regency themed dance, though I was the only one dressed authentically :-). The gentleman in the middle of the photo was the dance caller and he did a great job keeping us all in line.

Photo by Laura

Friends making breakfast (or rather, pausing in the making of breakfast to take a picture).

Let's see... what else happened? Oh, we met the Hills at the soccer field to watch one of Justin's games. I am hopeless at sports so when the game was over I had to ask who won... but I had fun taking pictures and the lighting was great! :-)

Go #52!

It was a tie. I think.

The Erbers had a 50's party at their house... talk about fun! Nearly everyone dressed up in some way. Beth took a picture of Tara and I in our dresses, but I'll have to see if she'll let me have it. :-)

The bubblegum blowing contest... makes for very flattering facial expressions, eh?

Beth gets the biggest bubble! Though I think after the contest was officially over, Mrs. Beatty got one just as big.

Joanna armed with her whipped cream

Jessica at her glamorous best. ;-)

I think the most recent "event" was our weekend trip to our friends' lake house in Indiana. We went with extended family and had a relaxing few days on the lake. We used to go there a lot when Tara and I were little so it was fun to go back after so many years. We call this "The Smits' Cottage" and a very large cottage it is (though the scary thing is that the neighboring "cottages" look huge in comparison).

The front view

The back view

Restful...

The view out the back door

Ya think we brought enough food?

Tara resting on the rocks.

Ok, that was for effect... she was posing for me. :-)

I got to go tubing for the first time... that was interesting. :-) It was fun but wild! Notice in the picture Kerry and Michelle are waving and I'm clinging to the tube for dear life!

So there you are... you're all caught up on our spring. Now it's summer... let's see if I can manage to update a bit more often. :-)