Harrington House

A Day at the Waterpark

While on vacation, we went to one of the local ski resorts...not for some summer skiing, of course...but for the indoor water park!  This is really and truly one of the highlights of all our trips up north...we always make time for this water park, Avalanche Bay!

It's designed like a little Swiss village with faux snow everywhere and, of course, the Matterhorn...excuse me, the Splasherhorn.  The Splasherhorn is a mountain of slides, bridges, water sprayers and shooters, and buckets to fill with water to dump on the unsuspecting passerby on their way to and from the other water slides.  It's great!  hehe!  Every so often, the alpine horn will sound followed by the crack of the avalanche...that's your cue to go stand under the Splasherhorn because an 800-gallon water avalanche comes falling. 

Mike & I completely turn into kids in this place.

I'll spare y'all the shots of me exiting the slides...  ;o)

Miss Amelia loves, and I mean LOVES the water!!  We kept having to take her out periodically to warm her up in the warm towels.  It was nice not to have to worry about the sun that day.  Here are some pictures of the real kid in our family...

These water fountain thingies in the kiddie part were a major hit with her.  She played with them for ev-er!  I think at one point she was trying to hug one...

Then, she ventured up to the kiddie play area and found...Oh! the excitement!...lots and lots of steering wheels!

My Mackinac

One of my favorite places in the world is Mackinac Island.  It's beautiful!  The style of the homes, inns, hotels, bed & breakfasts, shops, flowers, gardens, and tall, old trees are so inspiring to me.  And, being that it is an island, views of the water are everywhere.  It's perfect, I'm telling y'all! 

   

This is the phone booth where I called my family to let them know Mike had proposed.  Wow!  That was about 7 years ago!

In June, the island celebrates their lilacs with a festival.  We were there on the heels of lilac blooming season, but I still got to see some late-blooming varieties.

One of my favorite things about the island is that you walk, ride a bicycle, or ride in a horse-drawn carriage.  That's because no motor vehicles are allowed on the island (save for the fire and medical emergency personnel).  It makes everything so peaceful. 

And the only way to get to the island is via ferry.  (We always ride Shepler's because Mike went to school with them.)

Some views of Mackinac Bridge from the ferry...

Coming up to the island, there is a string of incredible, historic summer cottages lining the bluff.

I would give my "I" teeth to live in one of these.  Can you imagine?

And then...Oh My!  It's the glorious Grand Hotel!

 

I think one of my favorite things about the hotel is the color palette.  I adore those rich reds and greens with yellows and blues, all next to that crisp white.

 

And, of course, I'm all about the wicker... (Those floors were so shiny, I just know I could have put my makeup on in the reflection.)

Out in the gardens, little Miss Amelia was happy as a lark to be running free in the soft grass.  And chasing the seagulls...

Bye bye, Birdie!

We went up to the Cupola Room to enjoy a drink and the view from the highest point in the hotel.   

 

 

One of my favorite movies Somewhere in Time, starring the late Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, was filmed here at the hotel.  I'm not sure which came first...my love of the movie or my love of the Grand Hotel...

Bye for now, my Mackinac!  See you next time!

Vacation or Bust

Phewww!!!

We just got back a few days ago from spending several weeks on vacation.  It's so nice to get away, but...OH!  It's so nice to be back home!  We drove from Georgia to northern Michigan.  Yes, we DROVE...across the United States...with a baby...and lots and lots of STUFF!  We always joke that we look like the Clampetts (you know, the Beverly Hillbillies) when we travel, and this time was no exception.  We had everything but the kitchen sink, including Granny in her rocker (okay, so it was Amelia in her carseat...).

We stopped in and saw almost all of Mike's family on our way up north.  Mike grew up in a small town right on Lake Michigan called Harbor Springs.  It's such a beautiful little town.  It's on the bay (Little Traverse Bay) across from Petoskey.  This is a view of downtown Harbor Springs...

This is part of Petoskey's downtown overlooking the bay...

Don't they look like postcard towns?  Well, the downtown shops of both really look like postcards, but I was too busy shopping and chasing Amelia around to take any pictures.  (Okay, really...I just didn't want to look too fudgie-y.....all of the folks who live in these areas call the out-of-towners who come up in the summers "fudgies" because they usually buy lots of fudge from the many, many fudge shops). 

We stayed in a great cabin right on the lake just outside of Harbor in a little village called Good Hart.  There is a general store in Good Hart that sells the most delicious pot pies and fresh baked goods! 

We had the perfect place for some dining al fresco!  ;o)   

This is the road you drive to our cabin...it's a highway called M-119.  This part is known as the Tunnel of Trees.  It's such a beautiful drive, and it's always on those scenic highway lists of must-drives.

Here are some more views from our cabin...

Can you see the pair of swans below?

Even though we packed a lot into this vacation, it was completely relaxing.  Another wonderful family vacation with lots of wonderful memories...

Playin' Catch-Up!

Phew!  We've been busy the past couple of weeks!  But it's been the good kind of busy.  So, I am going to try to catch up.... (Warning!  Long, random, and rambling post ahead...)

Last Monday was my birthday...I'm 28!  Twenty-eight, y'all!!  It's so funny how I still feel like I am college-age.  (Sigh...)  Do you want to see what I got?

A clothesline!!  YEA!  I have had this on my wish-list for about three years.  I love it!  There is nothing like line-dried sheets.  I have been using indoor drying racks to hang-dry a lot of our clothes and everything of Amelia's.  I am so excited about my new outdoor line.  Mike had to dig through the rock-hard Georgia red clay for the posts.  I refrained from re-enacting a scene from my favorite movie (Gone With the Wind) with this handful of Georgia clay...."That's all of Tara you'll ever get!"

Amelia was daddy's little helper...

Thank you, Mike and Amelia, for my birthday present!

I hung some of my brown transferware dishes in the dining room...(The top dish was a gift from Momma for my birthday.)

I've been scrubbin' in the house.  Can you see the difference in my windows?  I know...not the most exciting of news, but I love having sparkly clean windows!  So I have to show them off.  "...I can see clearly now..."

Ta-Da!  I don't keep the screens in my windows because I certainly am not opening them...not in this 90-plus heat!  Even though, I do love to sleep with the windows open... 

Just for fun...a silly sleeping picture of Amelia...hehe!...

Now, for the best part...  We got to go to church this past Sunday. 

Let me give a little background, so that you'll know how truly exciting this is for us.  Several years ago, I had signed a contract to work every weekend, save four a year...night shift, that is, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.  At first, I thought I would be able to stay awake in order to go to church on Sunday.  Then, we moved even further away from our church, making our drive an hour each way.  I just couldn't stay awake.  When I was pregnant with Amelia, I would get migrains if I tried.  And after having her, phewwww, I was too tired to even think about it.  We knew we wanted to go back, we just didn't know how we could at that time.  We tried churches that were closer, but there was just something missing.  And without family close by, I needed to be home during the week to take care of Amelia, and Mike could watch her on the weekends while I was at the hospital working.  After a lot of thinking and praying (and financial figuring), we decided that I would come home, and just work a couple nights a month.  This past week was the first weekend I didn't have to work.  We spent all day Saturday together as a family, instead of me having to sleep to go back into work that night (we felt so normal!!!), and we got to go to church on Sunday morning.  I am beyond thankful for this, more than I can say.

We ate lunch on Saturday at Bugaboo Creek.  Have y'all ever been there?  The animals talk.  And there was a giant buffalo directly over our table.  Amelia was completely enthrawled...

For the remainder of the meal, she kept an eye on him, waiting for him to come back to life and ask for a cookie...

After lunch, we went to the fabric store where Amelia made the rounds, with Daddy trailing closely behind...   (I might add, these ladies are strangers to Amelia, but ladies at the fabric store are always the good kind of strangers, right?)

Note to self:  Now that Amelia is walking, shoes are a must!

But, c'mon, it's summer!  And grungy toes aren't nearly as cute when your older.

Then, it was church on Sunday morning!  :o)

This little sailor dress was mine as a baby.  I know I've said it before, but I am so happy Momma saved so many of my baby clothes and dresses.  Isn't it sweet?

Oh, mercy!

Such a big, big day for a tiny girl...

Oh...and this is a lizard that was on our front porch the other day.  I asked Mike why he was taking a picture of it, and he said he figured I'd want to put it on my blog.  Sooo, here he is.  At any given moment, I can go outside and find no less than ten of these little guys. 

Y'all have a great week!   

Married Up & Settled Down

That's what we did five years ago.  FIVE years ago...wow!!  We were married in the evening on May 24th, 2003 at an outdoor tent ceremony with all our friends and family.  We had met for the first time when I was sixteen years old, and I knew I was going to marry him one day.  Really.  I came home and told my Momma.  I had known his parents for several years before I met him at church one Sunday when he came into town.  But something inside me told me that that wasn't the right time for us.  (There is almost 8 years between us, and, at the time, that was a lot of difference between a 16-year-old and a 23-year-old.)  So, when I was in my sophomore year of college, his mother gave him my email address, and he used it.  He was living in Charlotte at the time, so we wrote each other every day for a month.  Then, he came into town (Nashville) for Thanksgiving that year, and we had our first date.  The rest is our history!  So, since it's our five year anniversary, I wanted to share some of our wedding pictures, because it was a perfect day when I married my best friend...

I loved my wedding dress.  I still love it.  And I love that Mike wore his blue suit.  They are both hanging in our closet now.

The bride-elect and future bridegroom in an engagment photo... (Gosh, we look so young!)

The girls...Brooke, Lisa (Mike's sister), Anna, and Kelly (my sister)...

The guys...Duane, Tom, Mike (Lisa's husband), and John...

Mike's dad married us.  It was so special for us. 

This is my mother (Momma).  Don't we look alike?  We laugh alike, too.  She helped me so much in preparation for our wedding.  We really did have a lot of fun with it.

I carried a bouquet of gardenias.  The fragrance was incredible, and they were just gorgeous!  But breathe on them, and they'd bruise...so I had to be so very careful.

I was so fortunate to have aunts and cousins and more from both sides of our families help with the food!  We didn't use a caterer, but we had tons of food!  In the months before the wedding, I stocked up on glass platters and compotes and footed dishes and silver service from antique stores to use for our food.  This picture is of some cheesecake bites.  Sooooo good!  (They are from Sam's.)

I couldn't decide on my cake...so I had three!  Three small ones, anyway!  :o)  The white one on top was strawberry cake, the pink cake to the left was classic white, and the green one with the white dots was chocolate.  For us, the green cake represented the groom's cake since I thought the white dots on green was like golf balls on grass!  Now the cakes were one thing we did not do ourselves!  They came from Sweet 'N Sassy Bakery.  Isn't that a great name for a bakery?

In keeping with the very simple theme at my wedding, the centerpieces on the tables were small white paper sacks with a sweet bouquet of baby's breath.  And we had bought all those white table linens and napkins (at a very good price, of course!) and folded all those napkins on the table. 

This was our second kiss as Mr. and Mrs.

We left in a shower of rice.  If you look closely, you can see that we have our eyes closed.  And we were sorta running.  That's because the rice kinda hurt!  Haha!  We couldn't stop laughing!

   

And off we go!  We honeymooned in the Mayan Riviera, and it was a wonderful, unforgettable trip!

So how did we celebrate this big five-year anniversary, you ask?  With a GI bug!  It was horrible!  But, thankfully, it is over now!  I had just gotten back Thursday from a two-week trip to my parents with Amelia.  We were both sick all weekend!  But I have lots of goodies from my trip and pictures that I will post later this week!  It was such a nice trip, but it is so nice to be back home, too! 

Ah...ah... ACHEWWWW!

....cough, cough....sniffle, sniffle....

These have kept me company the past week...

Along with some old friends...

...and this new friend...

And, yes, if you noticed the Baby Tylenol in the picture, Amelia was sick as well.  This was her first time to be sick.  It was just awful!  I was so nervous that I called up to the unit where I work at the hospital.  I was so thankful when one of my mommy friends answered.  She said, "Katie, just take care of her like you do our patients."  If only it were that easy!!  Give me a sick ICU patient, I can handle that....give me my baby with a cold, I go all stupid!  Luckily, I was just getting better as she came down with it, so I was able to give her my full attention.  Nevertheless, the last two nights, she has been crying all night long and has not slept much during the day either.  Tonight, she has not had a fever, and I am hoping it is over.

And I also want to mention that I have really and truly The Best Husband in the World!  Not only did he take good care of Amelia while I was sick, but he took excellent care of me with nary a complaint!  What a man I got!

Now, I am off to go clean that TV.  Did you see all those fingerprints?  YIKES! 

Thank you, Lisa!

Since we weren't together for the holidays this year, my sister-in-law, Lisa, sent us some Christmas gifts several weeks ago.  Mike got a really nice shirt that he has already been wearing, and Amelia got a too cute outfit....I still have to get a picture of her in it (then I'll show it)! 

Me?  What did I get?  Ohhhh, looookk....

 

A beautiful (BEAUTIFUL!) envelope pillowcase with our "B" on it!  Two of my favorite things.....antique linen and a monogram! 

And this very pretty pillow case with white-on-white embroidery and the most delicate lace trimming it.  She also slipped in a block of Savon de Marseille soap (which I LOVE!). 

Isn't she amazing?  Thanks, Lisa!!

A Celebration!

After my sister and her husband returned from their honeymoon, we celebrated at our parent's house with a lot of family and friends.  Because the weather was so nice and the trees were starting to turn, we set up tables and chairs in the backyard.  I used white hotel-style tablecloths to cover the tables and cut burlap into foot-wide runners.  For the centerpieces, I used creamy white mums.  I left the mums in their store-bought plastic pots (since they would be getting re-potted afterwards) and wrapped the pots in burlap squares with brown satin ribbon.  I then put tealight candles into some of my tiny metal tart pans that I had picked up several years ago in an antique store.  Since I had all the white cloth napkins from my wedding, I wrapped the silverware in the napkins and tied each with some tiny brown ribbon.   I put all of those in a big basket that sat at the end of the food tables.  Now, the cake table was my favorite!  I took a larger piece of burlap and, with brown paint and a small brush, monogrammed the front of it with their new monogram!  I love anything monogrammed (um, even if it is not even my own monogram...)!  It was so nice to spend the afternoon with all of our family and many friends that we don't often get to see. 

Congratulations to the Newlyweds!

Congratulations to Kelly & Derrick!  This past month, my younger sister got married.  They had a small, intimate, and verrrry beautiful ceremony on the beach.  Kelly has always looked pretty, but, when I saw her on her wedding day, she was beautiful.  The two make a wonderful couple....they truly complement each other.  From the beginning, Derrick has always seemed to fit perfectly into our big family.  I have no doubt that he will be the loving, supportive husband that we always hoped she would have.  During the ceremony, the minister said something I had never heard.  He said any sorrow shared is sorrow divided in half, but joy shared is joy doubled.  I pray that our Heavenly Father will richly bless them with much happiness during their walk in this life and beyond.