Stone Mountain Field Trip

Ari's taking a Georgia history class this year at our local homeschool center, and the class includes lots and lots of field trips (to which parents and siblings are invited). He's actually off on one right now, but the rest of us are having to miss that one owing to some snotty miserableness in certain small members of our family. (I feel like I am doing some very strange and unnecessarily complicated things with prepositions in this post thus far. I will try to stop that).

But last week, we went to Stone Mountain, and no one was sick, so we all got to go. You can do lots of things at Stone Mountain like hike up the mountain or ride a terrifying tram up, or ride bikes around the bottom, or take a train ride, or watch a laser show....but we didn't do any of those things. We need to go back and do them soon, though. We're only 45 minutes away from Stone Mountain, and I remember going there fairly regularly as a kid, but my kids had never been before. For shame.

Anyway, this was the first field trip for the Georgia history class, so it focused on really old history....like the part with all the rocks. We visited the new Discovering Stone Mountain Museum and the quarry exhibit.

We met up outside, where kids climbed on rocks for awhile (I am, incidentally, keeping my pictures to my kids and the kids of people I know are okay with me posting them. If you were on the Stone Mountain field trip and you're reading this, that's why I didn't put in any pictures of your kid. Not because your kid isn't adorable. Exception being that one up at the top. All the kids are in that (or at least most), but they're so far away you can't make anyone out. I hope this is all appropriate blogging etiquette. I try.):

Then we went inside and learned about Stone Mountain's history:

The exhibit is, I understand, pretty new, and it's really nicely done. I learned a lot about rocks. I think maybe the kids did, too.

Stone Mountain when it was just a baby!!! Squee!

Also there was a tunnel to run through. I don't think that's what it was FOR, really, but that's what the kids did with it.

We learned that Stone Mountain is a monadnock. Which is fun to say and means "a hill or mountain of erosion-resisting rock rising above the surrounding countryside."

Since we didn't go up the mountain, this picture of a picture is the best thing I have for you to show you what Stone Mountain actually looks like. Rocky.

Abe was there, too.

Well, here: this is what the bottom of the mountain looks like. If you're going to walk up it, you start here.

On to the quarry exhibit! I was surprised to learn that they kept taking granite from the mountain right up until the 70's. I'm surprised they haven't started up again with all the money to be made these days selling counter tops.

I was also surprised to learn that granite is really heavy:

Also we learned that working in a quarry sucked. But I think we already knew that.

Looking forward to more field trips to force us to get off our butts and out of the house! Also for the education and stuff.

Abe at Seven Months (plus Gus' August pics)

Seven months! I think I've officially abandoned his white t-shirt AND using his nursery as the default photo shoot location. It was cloudy again, and it's much easier to get decent light in the sunroom.

His six month check-up happened after I did his six month post, so his stats from that, for posterity (because this is the closet thing the poor kid has to a baby book) are that he weighed 17 pounds, 14 ounces and was 26 inches long. This puts him in the 25th percentile for height and around 50th for weight, and makes him my only baby who's been under 20 pounds at 6 months (Milo hit 20 pounds before 4 months). My fat little peanut. He can still squeeze into 3-6 month clothes, but the next size up fits him better now.

Apparently they changed all the rules since last time I had a baby, and now 6 month old babies can already eat practically everything! So he's already tried stuff like yogurt and eggs. He won't eat much of anything if I try to feed him, but does pretty well for Dave.

Trying to crawl is definitely the biggest thing in Abe's life right now. He'll flip over onto his hands and knees any time he's sitting down, try to move forward, get frustrated when he can't (or can't very far or without enormous effort anyway), and then collapses onto his stomach in angry tears. Repeat endlessly. He's getting good at pulling up on things, too. Our days of peace and immobility are very limited.

We've got separation anxiety and fear of strangers setting in now, too. He wants me or some other
immediate family member all the time.

But he's also mostly a very happy baby, babbles adorably, and has a deep baby belly laugh that's utterly charming. He's starting Music Together classes next week, which should go well with his lifelong love of music.

Apparently I'm pretty into black and white lately. Which is sort of a return to my roots.

I finally got nice, toothy grins this month!

So good at standing on his big chunky legs!

I like this one because it shows how he's really playing these days. Putting things into the barn, taking them out. When he's not grumpy, he can play by himself for a decent amount of time.

And it was Gus' month for big kid photos. He got a haircut later that same day :)

Rainy Chattanooga Trip

I know we're probably all pretty nostalgic for my summer Disney series that I finished last week ;), so I thought I'd ease you back into the whole boring fall routine (I know it's still firmly summer for a lot of you, but Dave went back to work last week, so it's fall to us) with one more summer travel post. I'm very considerate that way. Also, I've been meaning to post these ever since we went to Chattanooga, which was over a month ago now.

Dave's mom (henceforth known as Nana) came to visit last month, and we decided to mix things up a little and spend a couple of nights in Chattanooga while she was here. Nana had never been to Chattanooga! (trip courtesy of Nana--thank you, Nana!)

We stayed at the Residence Inn downtown. We'd stayed there a couple of times before, but not for years. The location is amazing: very close to the aquarium, the children's museum, the baseball stadium, the river, tons of restaurants, etc.

We left the morning of July 2 and got to Chattnooga around lunch time (it's a 2 hour drive for us, so perfect for weekend trips). We ate at the Terminal Brewhouse, a relatively new restaurant/brewpub in a cool old building right next door to the Chattanooga Choo Choo:

After lunch, we spent some time walking around the Choo Choo grounds (this is an old train station converted into a hotel. You can stay in actual train cars or....really dated 70's hotel buildings that have been added. We've tried both). Ice cream was involved.

In a room off the lobby, there's some paisley wallpaper. Dave loves paisley, so I took a picture:

I spent much of the trip forcing everyone to pose for pictures. Like in the lobby of the Chattnooga Choo Choo:

These are new! Bike rentals everywhere downtown:

Next stop was Ruby Falls, a few miles away from downtown, on Lookout Mountain. It's really, really scary to go there, because you have to drive part way up a MOUNTAIN. Umm, for me it is really, really scary, at least.

Then you go way down underground in an elevator and walk around in a cave, looking at cave stuff, until you get to "the tallest commercial underground waterfall in the United States." Which does not actually sound that impressive to me, but I guess they're pretty proud of it because they tell you that. Anyway, the first few minutes underground are also really scary because maybe you're afraid the whole mountain is going to collapse on your head. But then you get used to it and stop panicking quite so constantly.

Baby underground:

So you get to the waterfall, and they do a big dramatic thing where the lights are off, and then they turn them on, and it's SO TALL and amazing. Like this. With colored lights:

But if you try to take a picture of your kids in front of the waterfall, this happens:

(I don't think Milo actually was as angry as he looks here)

The part that blew my mind is when our guide told us that they have no idea where the water comes from. They've tried to figure it out by putting dye in the water of various streams above ground and stuff, but, yeah...no luck. This made me start thinking again about how maybe the mountain was going to collapse on our heads, because if they don't even know where that water comes from how do they know it's not slowly destabilizing the whole place?!

But we made it back out right before it collapsed (just kidding. As far as I know that STILL hasn't happened) and survived to check out the TERRIFYING look out tower:

And on the way out, this sign was really crying out for a forced group picture:

The next day we were supposed to go to the aquarium and then go see the fireworks over the river. Only the fireworks were rained out, so we only did the first thing.

I already talked a lot about the Tennessee Aquarium here, so I won't rehash the whole thing. We had fun. We posed for group pictures (well, I didn't. I took them instead):

And we watched a diver get eaten by a shark.

I'm just kidding again. She didn't get eaten. They have another diver stand next to her with this stick to make the sharks go around her instead of eating her:

So there you have it. Our summer travel: completed!

Abe at Five Months

Five months sounds SO big; so much older than four months. Sniff, sniff. And this past month seemed to fly by, probably partly because we were out of town for a week of it. Another rainy 17th to make photography challenging. I took a million or so pictures, but the vast majority were out of focus, owing both to the bad light and the wiggly baby.

Abe had his four month check-up a few weeks ago, and he was in the 70th percentile for weight and......20th for height. Fat little peanut! My other babies have all started out way up in the 90-100th percentile for height and then mostly just stayed there, so it's a new experience having a little guy who still fits in his 3-6 months stuff at 5 months.

He's starting to be able to sit up for short periods, particularly if you give him something to hold onto, which makes for a little variety in photography. He's sitting unsupported in that picture up there, with the big seal to hang onto for emotional support. When he's upset, he'll usually calm down immediately when he hears music. Balls are his favorite toys. He spends a lot of time staring intently at his brothers, ready to flash a giant grin at them as soon as they look at him. He still takes a lot of 20-30 minute naps, but sometimes he'll mix it up with a good 2 hour one, so I'm still hopeful he'll start to appreciate long naps more soon. No signs of creeping or crawling yet, which is probably just as well since there are no signs of the kind of babyproofing around here that that will necessitate either. Nothing new to report on the teething front: much drool, no teeth.

I had a grumpy (he's had a bit of a cold) baby to contend with on top of the bad light, so....well, here's what I managed to get:

Obligatory seal picture. Also, the white t-shirt is back! I found it! Still fits pretty well.

The saddest baby in the world.

It was Ari's month for solo pictures, but I wasn't thrilled with any of those, either. But I got some nice ones at Disney, so it all works out.

Ari's Room: All Finished! Rustic-Industrial Tween Room

All done! This one took us a little longer than the nursery, since Ari was already born and there was no built in deadline....but I'm really pleased with how it turned out. And, almost as even more importantly, Ari is, too.  And now for the long post with tour and sources for everything. (I guess it would be more exciting if I did things the opposite way: did a big room reveal first and then went back and did individual posts about all the projects. But I am not nearly patient enough for all that. Plus there'd be like 4 months where I didn't have anything to blog about. I saved a few little things for the big reveal, though).

So here is the room back before we moved in:

And here it is a few months ago, right before we started working on it (we'd painted--Ari picked the color--before moving in). The original plan was much less ambitious and mostly involved painting furniture. But we got a little carried away:

And now:

I'll go wall by wall. On that wall we have the plank headboard that we made and the vintage bedside table we painted.

I was supposed to make a no sew bed skirt for Ari's bed, but....I just couldn't. It made me very tired and sad to think about. It would not have been hard, just tedious, but I'm just burned out on making no sew stuff and I was ready to be finished in here. So I went to Target and bought a fitted sheet to put over the box spring instead. Now I have seven yards of gray fabric to find something to do with.

He's very into Portal 2 these days and found this poster online, of Portal 2 if it were a 70's sci-fi movie. I thought it was pretty cool, too, and we needed something for that wall, so I ordered it.

I talked about this grouping of pictures here.

Sources:
paint: Martha Stewart's Kerry Blue Terrier (Home Depot), trim is MS's Brook Trout
bedding and pillows: Ikea
lamp on wall next to bed: Ikea
Portal 2 poster: valvesoftware.com
poster frame: Hobby Lobby
paint on bedside table (and desk and dresser): Valspar High Speed Steel
knobs on bedside table (and desk): Hobby Lobby

Moving along:

My mom found the vintage fan at a yard sale. We're planning to rewire it so that he can actually use it.

We painted the dresser with a stylized subway map design and made the curtains and curtain rods.

Sources:
Curtain fabric: "gray canvas" from Fabric.com
Union Jack box: TJ Maxx
Bing Bong print: Ikea
silver ribba frames: Ikea
Tabouret chair from Overstock.com with Ikea cushion
Tokyo skyline print from Loose Petals on Etsy

Next wall!

We made the London skyline out of plywood. We redid the desk with paint and stain. No new sources to speak of on this wall, really.

And, finally:

That's not a real dart board; it's Doink It darts. Magnets, not pointy things. We took the bifold closet doors down awhile and put that shower curtain (from Target) up instead. I'm not super crazy about it in here, but Ari wanted it to stay. I think I'd prefer putting the doors back, painted brown like the trim. But, you know, it's not my room. Behind the curtain there's a cabinet from Ikea for storage and.....a lot of stuff. But it's all behind the curtain! yay!

And that completes our tour. Here is how Ari feels about his new room. He says to say it's, "Ari approved."

Linking with:
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Thrifty Decor Chick's August Before and After