Sauder Village

We were given a gift certificate to Sauder Village in Northwest Ohio almost two years ago and it just recently worked out for us to go.  We started out going for one night and then we were given the gift of two extra nights.

We stayed at Sauder Heritage Inn and this was the view from our window - unlike any other inn or hotel I've stayed in!

 On Friday we went to the Village.  It was Homeschool Appreciation week as well as Artisan week.  I am not sure how much that was going on is normal vs. what was special for the week.  This is the doctor's office, the doctor's nurse was showing us all the pharmaceuticals and tools he would have used.

 This was the one-room schoolhouse.

 A broom maker shows how to make brooms.

 The carpenter's shop, all the tools were man-powered, no gas, no electric

 The barber's shop, shave and a hair cut for $0.10

 The flowers and gardens all around the place were gorgeous...my photography skills are severely lacking the ability to convey the beauty.

 The print shop.

 A cabin from the 1800s

 Jail house.

 The Thinker making "beaten" biscuits.

 The train ride was a nice break in the middle of the day.

 This was my favorite, a wagon for Hungarian migrant workers.  Add a bathroom and some plumbing for the kitchen and this would fulfill all my "tiny house" desires.

 Glass blower

 Someone got all tuckered out before the day was over.

 On Saturday we just hung out at the Inn all day.  This was an area just off of the elevator and down the hall from our bedroom.  We put together part of a puzzle and at night after we tucked the boys in, Mr. Steady and I slipped down the hall and played cards out here.

 This was a nice eating area, where we ate the continental breakfast every morning and ate our packed lunch on Saturday.  The pool area is just behind Mr. Steady and The Reader.  We spent a LOT of time in the pool each day.

 

Several areas with wood toys for the children to play.

 A huge faux tree in the foyer.

 

The Inn also had several sitting areas all around with water fountains, koi ponds, couches, overstuffed chairs, it was just a really fun place

 There was a game room with basketballs, fuseball, air hockey, and ping pong.  This was, very obviously, a favorite of the boys.  And dad. :o)

We went out to dinner each night, the first night we had dinner at a friend's house, the second night we ate at Barn Restaurant at the Village where we enjoyed a delicious buffet dinner.  The third night we found a local pizza place and on our way out of town on Sunday we stopped at a place called Mom's Diner, which was modeled after a 50's diner.  The boys were impressed with the jukeboxes on the wall, even though they didn't work.

We wanted to do something really fun with the boys before this baby comes and rocks their world.  It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend and we were all so glad we took the time and made the sacrifices to do it.

Hello Monday!

Deborah has been doing "Hello Monday" posts for quite some time and her week always seems so full and intentional compared to mine.  I had a very fun and full week last week so I decided to jump on board.  I actually remembered to pull out the camera and document some things as well!

Hello long weekend trip!  We visited Sauder Village in Northern Ohio last weekend.  It started out to be a one night trip, then slowly morphed into a three-night trip, which utterly blessed our socks off.  More in depth post on this to come.

 Goodbye to old paint in the baby's room.  Mr. Steady and his friend put a fresh new coat of aqua on the walls.  Full reveal of the nursery will come when it's complete, which may or may not come prior to her arrival!

 Hello to fluffing up old things and making them new.

 Hello to Girls' Night In!  Mr. Steady and I started meeting with several other couples to pray & share our lives about 2 years ago.  These ladies have become so precious to me and even though we haven't met as couples lately, most of our husbands get together weekly and us girls try to get together once a month or so.  We had a healthy {cough, cough} dinner of pizza, chips, pop and Ho-Ho Cake.  Luckily, C brought fresh pears so we could pretend it was a well-rounded meal :o).  Then we watched October Baby, which is a must see, if you haven't yet seen it.

 Hello to science projects right outside our window.  If you hadn't gathered by the blog name, we live in town.  Hawks aren't something we see around here.  I would never have noticed him sitting there, outside my kitchen window, devouring a squirrel, if my neighbors, who go for twice daily walks hadn't walked soooo slowly, soooo apprehensively past him.  He didn't flinch as they walked by.  Then he waited for a while to make sure the coast was clear and had himself a tidy little breakfast.

No pictures of these last events but hello to finding out baby girl is head down and not in some other position as I feared - praise the Lord for hours spent in the pool trying to get her to flip!

Hello to date night, we haven't seen you in such a long time and it will likely be a long time until you visit us again.  That is okay because we make time to be together and laugh and play together as often as we can but there is something special about a quiet meal with adult food and conversation.

Hello to family reunions!  So fun to see people you haven't seen in a year, especially when you have news they haven't heard!  News used to travel fast in my family but it seems several didn't know we are adding to our family, Lord willing!

Hello to comments being turned back on.  Several of you noticed I had turned the comments off on my blog.  They should be back on now.  I appreciate your comments and although I don't respond very often, I do read each and every one!

Goodbye Summer!  We officially bid adieu to summer and I, for one, couldn't be happier.  I happen to adore fall to begin with, and the promise of meeting my daughter is the sweetest reason I could think of to say hello to autumn!

What did you find yourself greeting hello or wishing farewell to last week?  What does this week hold in store for you?

Another Travel Tip

I shared my vast and  profound {cough, snort, guffaw} traveling-with-small-children knowledge back in the fall. 

This past weekend I accidentally found another great tip and thought I'd share it with you.  We had the privilege to attend a home school convention on the other side of our state and The Reader had prepared a list of the states prior to leaving so he could play the License Plate game.  Problem was....he left the list at home.

I pulled out my daily planning calendar, which has maps of the country and world in the back of it, and handed it back to The Reader.  He put a check in a state every time he saw a license plate from that state....AND he worked on his geography and state location at the same time.  Double win.

No more lists for us - I'll bring copies of the map of the U.S. from now on.

Tips for Traveling Without Going Insane

I do not consider myself a seasoned traveler but I've made a few road trips in my life, seeing as how Mr. Steady and I dated long-distance for almost a year.  I drove the 1400 mile round-trip several times by myself, stopping in truck-stop parking lots (because I was a poor and also naive college student) to sleep. 

But this is the first 1500 mile one-way trip I have ever made and we did it with three children!  So I thought I would share a few traveling tips.  I got a few ideas from Monica's blog, borrowed a few ideas from other blogs, and {gasp!} even came up with a few of my own!

Our rental car trunk on the way out - filled to the brim!

Goodie Bags - I saw several ideas, from wrapping Dollar Tree toys and giving the children a gift every hour, at the entry of every state and several other ideas.  We decided to do one goodie bag a day and let the boys learn to budget their fun and snacks.  My dad's girlfriend very thoughtfully gave the boys a large bag of goodies so I combined her gifts with things I had bought.  On the first day (of the road trip my mother gave to me....oh, sorry), they each received an ink pen, personal package of tissues, fruit snacks, beef jerky, a curly straw and Sunday comics.  Yes, the Sunday comics...I'd been holding them hostage for several weeks.  The other days bags contained items such as peanut butter crackers, personal bags of Oreos and Chips Ahoy cookies, dot-to-dot pages, the seek-and-find pictures from the local daily newspaper, word searches, candy, more fruit snacks, more beef jerky, and recent issues of Highlights magazine (also held hostage for this specific purpose).  On the first day of the return trip they received new ink pens and new curly straws because they are boys (or maybe just kids?) and had either lost them, broke them or used them for swords.

Our friend, Mindy, gave us two sets of Roadtrip Bingo and I saved some of the bigger gifts Sue had given the boys (spiky inflatable balls, a slinky, a small chalkboard, and a game) along with some bigger things I had bought (a Lego minifigure and a book for each of them) as prizes for winning.  I had one big gift per child per day on the way out.  Thanks, Mindy - they were sure a hit and they boys were disappointed to find there were no more prizes for the return trip!

I downloaded several ebooks from the library onto my iPod and requested several audiobooks.  Instead of taking all the cases, I loaded up the CDs into a small CD holder - that way all the CDs were together and we didn't have to store all the cases.

Anytime we are on a long trip and are planning to stop overnight I pack an overnight bag with just the necessary things for our whole family for one night in it.  That way, when we stop at the hotel the only thing we have to take in is that one bag.  Since we were staying overnight two nights this time (or is it because their clothes aren't teeny tiny anymore?) all of our stuff wouldn't fit into one bag.  But I did manage to get everything into two bags.

 One thing I did to save on space was only pack one pair of pants in the overnight bag for each person.  You're already wearing one pair and all you're doing is sitting (and sitting....and sitting...and sitting....and occassionally whacking your brother....and sitting some more).   So you wear a clean pair of pants the second day and by the third day the first pair has aired out enough you're good to go.  Some of you may think that is gross but when we are at home we wear our pants (well, to be fair, I wear my skirt and they wear their pants) more than one time before washing and we're not just sitting around so why not save room on the road?   There was a washer and dryer where we stayed so I only packed 5 outfits plus church clothes and we were able to pack everything into 3 suitcases.  I don't know about you but I think that is pretty good!

A dear minister and his wife gave each of our boys a gift card for different fast food places.  What a treat for them to be able to pay for a meal.  They each got to pick lunch one day and kept their eyes peeled for their choice.  We also gave each of the boys their allowance plus an extra $5 to spend however they chose.  Next time I would wait until we got to our destination to give them the money because even though our intention was to let them spend their money however they wanted, I knew I didn't want them buying junk on the way out and not having anything left for the duration of the trip.  The Reader (who has become my spender) bought a sand art picture from Lorraine, polished rocks at a trading post, and who knows what else.  The Thinker bought a book on our way out of town in Albaquerque and The Entertainer spent a whopping $1.29 on a package of Vanilla Sugar Wafers at a gas station in the middle of Texas.  It was a good thing too since we ran out of cash and had to borrow some of The Entertainers money to pay for a toll to get out of Oklahoma! 

The boys found a cattle skull the day we left and they considered this the ultimate souvenier!  Mr. Steady was hoping I wouldn't let them  didn't think I would let them bring it home but I thought it was as cool as they did!  We took our groceries for the week and left a few clothes there so we thought we would have gobs of trunk space on the way home but we were wrong!

 See the cattle skull on the right in the garbage bag?  Too cool!