The end of the summer

Summer is over if you mark the end with Labor Day weekend. We had a very busy August. Skylar came to visit, followed by the Dau's, followed by Don & Judy (Bill's parents), I squeezed a trip to NJ in between the latter to help Cate move the office. Then we had one week "off" before Tammy flew in for a long Labor Day Weekend. Alex and Jason came up for a couple of days too. We had a cookout on Sunday with a good turnout of about 26.

Here are a few pictures from the end of the summer:

Of course Skylar and Aunt Em took a trip to Meijer Gardens.


Bill and I are ready to go to Chandra and Jason's wedding.


I also took the Dau's to Meijer Gardens.


The Dau's, Schrumpf's and Uebbing's met in Chicago to watch the Cubs host Philadelphia. Sadly, the Cubs did not win. But for the second time, Bill and I got to see Jim Belushi live. (The first time was in Vegas for a Blues Brothers show). He threw out the first pitch.
It was my first time at Wrigley Field. And then it was promptly sold the following day. I'm still not sure what's up with that...

And we (er, I) decided to paint during all of this!

The bathroom had this wallpaper in it, which wasn't too bad, but it was peeling. So I took it all down and painted the walls Lavender Blue.

For those of you who have never seen our house, or upstairs bathroom, there is white wainscotting 3/4 of the way up the wall. Only the top portion got painted. Everything else in the bathroom is white. We like it, even though Bill will try to complain about the purple bathroom!


The Living Room is being stripped of its paint. Painstakingly. Section by section. The first section we finished was the fireplace. The wall color is Solitude and the darker color is Montpelier (and yes, the bricks were already painted). The way we figured it, we have about six more weeks of scraping and painting before we finish. The stairway walls are painted now too. Our next big decision will be an accent color around the hearth (the white part), which may also be the upstairs hall color. My vote is for a cinnamon. Look for more pictures as we continue the process.