Cairo Court House

 I always love looking back on the houses we have lived in and seeing how they were decorated and remembering all the memories that I have with each house. Normally, I create a post with each house shortly after we have moved into it, but I realized that after a year of living in this house, I have not made the "house post" that I have for each of the previous homes we have lived in. 

I did not include the kids' rooms in this post. I am waiting for them to ask them if they mind me including their personal spaces online. If they are cool with it, I will edit this post at a future date to include their rooms.

Here is a look at our current home. It has 5 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, a formal dining room, an office, an eat-in kitchen, a reading room, and a living room. It is approximately 3000 square feet of living space.  

The eat-in kitchen area that we don't use because it would be too hard for Sarah to navigate around the table all of the time. (Which we don't mind at all. We have enough spaces to eat/chill at.)

Obviously, the kitchen. 

The kitchen again, with a view of the walk-in pantry. 

The living room

The living room with the doorway to the office in the background. 

What we call the reading room (or the front room). Plus, an adorable rascally puppy named Miles. 

The reading room again.

The dining room

Half-bath downstairs

Entryway
(These canvases show all of the states we have lived in in the last 9.5 years.)

Coat closet.
 (Although the blue is not my first go-to for storage, I try to recycle what we have in the house rather than just go and buy something new. The boys have had these bins since we lived on Jennings. They don't use them anymore, but I've used them for different spaces in our different journeys.) 

I threw this pic in here because I thought Elixabeth did an awesome job on it. This was an art assignment of her in which she had to cut out strips of an existing phone and draw in what she cut out to make a continuous photo again. You can see the parts she cut out pasted above and what she drew in below. I love the job that she did. 

We decided not to use the front room of the house as a school room and instead are using this closet space as my school storage room. Elizabeth and I just do her schooling on the dining room table or the kitchen counter or the living room. 

A closer look at some of our school supplies

The stair landing.
(I know some of these pics are crooked. It would be futile at this point to fix them because our development is under construction and has huge equipment coming through multiple times a week that shakes the house (and moves the picture frames). Once construction is completed, THEN we will straighten out the photos. 

The stairs are to the right, the righthand doorway is the master bedroom, lefthand doorway is the kids' bathroom, Sarah's room is on the front left of the kids' bath, and the final doorway is a linen closet. 

Andy's doorway

Josh's doorway is straight ahead. To the left is the laundry room, and to the right is Elizabeth's doorway.

Different view of the hallway taken from the master bedroom doorway. That is the linen closet doorway again. 

The kids's bathroom

The kids' bathroom

The master bathroom. 
(The closed door on the left is a linen closet. The door on the right is the water closet - aka the toilet). 

The open doorway is one of two master closets. We use it for storage. 

Master bathroom

View of the master bedroom from near the second master closet. 

Our sitting area

Master bedroom

View from the doorway

View from the bathroom doorway

Master bedroom

More of my books and the closet that we use for our clothes. 

My little inspirational nook.

I realized that I did not get a pic of Bobby's office, nor the front or back of the house. I'll grab those soon and update this post with those pics. 

Mint Art Museum

 In an effort to utilize our downtown options, Bob, Elizabeth, and I went to the Mint Museum of Art for an afternoon of exploration. It always takes such a great deal of consciousness on my part to plan activities like this. When the kids were little, it was much easier to remember to go explore new places, but as they have all gotten older and gone their separate ways, I find myself exploring new hiking trails rather than excursions to the zoo or museums. 

I am in no way an art connoisseur. I do not really understand a lot of art (especially modern and abstract), but I do try and appreciate it the best I can. I also wanted to expose Elizabeth to different pieces of art since she is such a talented artist.  

This piece was my favorite. This image is made from various pieces of melted plastic. 

This piece of artwork was done by an elementary student at a local school here in Charlotte. The museum had a display of various pieces of children's artwork. 

A Woman of Leisure

 The house is spic and span. All of the laundry is washed and put away. The dogs have been walked, and all of the other tasks I had hoped to get through today have been completed. 

And I am all alone. 

Usually when I am alone, I have a large 'to do' list. It is so very rare for me to be alone and have nothing to do but enjoy myself. 

Where is everyone? Good question. Andy is working in Ohio, Joshua is at Belmont College, Sarah is at UNCG, and Bobby & Elizabeth on are their way to a Hozier concert. 

As I write this, I am sitting on the back patio. The sun is shining, and the weather is about 72 degrees. It is perfect out. I have my dinner on a plate beside me, a book in front of me, and an ice cold glass of water too. With the exception of watching Jeopardy from 7 - 7:30 pm, I plan on having an electronic free night doing anything I damn well please. 

What a gift this evening is. What a beautiful way to finish a day. 

When The Show Comes To Town

 I like to plan things out. I find that I am most productive when I have a ‘to do’ list, and generally live my best life when all goes according to plan. 

But…sometimes that doesn’t quite happen. Sometimes everything that can go wrong in a day does. Sometimes that ‘to do’ list doesn’t see the light of day because from the moment I wake up the shit show begins. 

Today was one of those days. I finally realized late this afternoon that I just needed to surrender to the day, cut my losses, and begin again tomorrow. 

Easter 2024

We seem to have started a couple of traditions in our extended family, one of which is celebrating Easter (well, the pagan celebration because no one out of our whole crew, except for my mom and maybe my dad,  is remotely religious) at my brother and sister-in-law’s house every year. 

The get together includes my parents, sister (and her family), me (and my family), and my brother (and his family). Because my sister and I chose to procreate a little bit more than the average American family, we have a minimum of 18 people at these yearly get-togethers. 

My siblings and I have children that range in age from 5 - 23, which makes for a combination of chaos and fun. 

Every year since my kiddos were little my mom has put on an Easter Egg hunt for all of her grandchildren. They each wear their bunny ears and look for eggs around the yard of wherever we are celebrating Easter at. (In years past, when we lived in Ohio, we would have our Easter get-together at my parent’s house. We switched it to my brother’s house once we moved to Indiana since his place was about half-way between all of the families.)

My mom puts a tremendous amount of work into this hunt making sure everyone has the same amount of eggs to look for filled with treats or small gifts that that particular grandchild will love. 

After the egg hunt we will have a nice meal and then we all head back home to our respective homes. (We arrive at my brother’s house on Friday night and/or Saturday morning.) 

After a weekend of fun, we are all ready to be in our own spaces, and my brother (and family) are ready to have their house to themselves again.