The Best New Coffee Shop in Town

Since we arrived at the Harpers Ferry KOA in January, we have had Christmas just about every day. No snow, no manger scene, no snowperson-shaped cookies, but definitely a new surprise around every corner. Usually it is not a good surprise, like that the store roof had a small leak..."small" meaning large enough to cause flooding of the theater and almost 100% rottage of the stuff between the shingles and the ceiling. Or that the foundation of our house is caving in in the garage. Or that many of the full hook-up sites were improperly wired, causing power outtages and a few sparks here and there. Or that all of our first aid supplies expired two years ago. Or that our laundromat was THOROUGHLY infested with termites. Or that 0% of our propane lines were up to code. And the list goes on. As we frequently say, "We are in a rebuilding stage. Right now you go to fix one thing and ten other things break."

But we did actually have one nice surprise yesterday. Nate discovered a relatively new but hardly used coffee grinder and espresso machine in some random storage area while trying to get the snack shop together. Thinking it would be great to follow up on the coffee craze and add coffee drinks to our menu, Nate decided to bring the machine home to try it out. Let me remind you this is an industrial sized espresso machine and that he wanted to bring it HOME. :)

It sat in the kitchen for 24 hours before I made him move it, and it has since been relocated to the laundry room. The funniest part is that it is set up to be hooked up to a faucet; it's not the kind you just fill up. So Nate ran a hose through the laundry room window to the water spicket outside. I've included a photo to help your imagination.



It is not quite working yet...the hose leaked all over the table/ironing board. But Nate assures me he can fix it. :) So we're not open for business yet, but the Lail Laundry Room may soon be the hottest coffee shop in Harpers Ferry. Just step on up to the window to order. And while you're out there, turn on the water for the espresso machine.

Told you so!

See, Jerry, I told you we'd updated our blog!!!

A Taste of Home...not the cooking magazine...

We just got back from an AMAZING weekend in South Dakota...it was so hard to come back east! We headed back last Friday for Nate's mom's wedding on Saturday. It was a beautiful ceremony and it was great to finally meet Jim. Phyllis had done her best to describe him to us, but "ohhhhhh" and "*sigh*" and **big smile** don't really paint a very definitive picture. :) We got a wonderfully clear picture painted for us on Friday night, though, when his kids started sharing stories of him over dinner. Let's just say that when Jim gets excited, you'd better have on a helmet and at least a towel across your back, especially if there is any sort of gun (air, paintball, water, shot, etc.) within reach. ;) He is a wonderful guy, though, and we are thrilled to have him in the family. He and Phyllis are just like two kids on cloud nine but way more wise and mature. Photos of the bliss are at: http://photos.rcfirst.org


One other highlight of the trip home...my dad met us at the Minneapolis airport and rescued us from a four-hour layover by whisking us away to the Mall of America. After driving completely around the mall about 8 times, we finally figured out how to get in and we had a fabulous lunch at Rainforest Cafe. We tried really hard to remember where we parked...and did such a great job at it that I still remember we parked in P2East Georgia B10. Hey Dad, remember to not put your mug in the dishwasher. Wash by hand. :)

Another great part of the weekend was "just" hemming Nate's pants! Aunt Pat saved the day with a crash-course in hemming, and now Nate has three very wearable appropriate-length pants, and I have hemming skills! We also got to sneak in a couple games of disc golf, Balderdash with the Johnson clan (yes, all 80), and a night at the campground in Hill City, where all our craziness got started. We really packed stuff in and still feel like we didn't get to do everything we wanted to do.

So that was our weekend. :) Okay, so I wasn't going to say this, but it is Wednesday night, 9:30pm, which means another contestant from American Idol has just been sent home. All I'm going to say about this week's results is IT'S ABOUT TIME PARIS WENT HOME!!!!

:)

5 Things

Amy, this list should've been in that series you did a while back. These are my top five things it is difficult to find when you move to a new place:

1. A church
2. A trustworthy auto mechanic
3. Friends
4. A decent stylist that does not cut your hair like a mullet. Unfortunately, I am speaking from experience. More on this later.
5. That one photo from that one time...

Hmmm...

I have been spending some time blog-hopping lately, catching up on friends, family, acquaintences, people I met once, and people I've never met. It's been nice to capture little glimpses of lives I'm not really a part of...it's really neat to see where people end up and what they find to do with their lives!

One common theme I have run into over and over again in all my blog travels is BABIES. Everyone is having them. Some people have already had them and are still having more, and those who haven't had them are at least talking about having them, or are talking about other peoples' babies and wistfully commenting on the "someday" when they will have their own babies.

So I read these blogs and I look at the pictures and everyone looks so happy, even the pregnant people. These people are all so thrilled with their children and are excited to have more and the moms are loving being moms and the dads are just beaming with pride; they are taking family vacations to Disney World and are buying sippy cups and first sets of utensils and "manly" diaper bags...and it all strikes me as so odd because at the mere mention of the word "babies," I have the exact opposite reaction. I shrink back on the inside and the pit of my stomach drops somewhere into my legs; I almost feel nervous...even fearful, perhaps. And it's not that I don't think I could be a good mom or that I worry about Nate's parenting skills...this is not an issue of the ability to parent. It's the whole idea of having them around. It's the realizing all the things I wouldn't be able to do anymore, or that would at least be more difficult to do. It's worrying about gaining weight. It's being protective of my sleep and my time to spend with Nate and just plain feeling like I could not handle having someone who needed so much from me so much of the time.

And I sit there, looking at the pictures, wondering if there is something wrong with me for not wanting to have kids. Everyone else seems to be enjoying it, and most of them keep telling me we will enjoy it too and we should try it. Seems like sort of a serious thing to just "try it." I have really enjoyed most of the kids I have baby-sat...specifically Jenna and Todd. They were highlights for sure. :) But I also really enjoyed when their parents came home and I went on with my life. I don't know if I could be as excited about spending time with them if it never ended, and certainly parenting is a 24/7 deal.

I'm just not sure what to make of all of this.

Adventures in Domesticity

So JC Penneys had a great sale on mens jeans a few weeks ago, and Nate and I went to try to find him a few new pairs. Two pairs, one of which the crotch is ripping out of, is not really adequate, we thought, so off we went in the great search for jeans. I don't know who they use as a model to make pants these days, but it is certainly not anyone built like Nate or I, so we always approach pants shopping with a bit of hesitation, knowing that it will take many days and rejecting many pairs before finding one that fits even sort of well.

The good Lord was watching over us on this particular shopping day, though, because in less than two hours' time we found three pairs that looked really good and fit well...except that they were about 8 inches too long. Realizing that this was such a small problem compared to the much larger problem of not finding pants at all, Nate looked at me and said, "Well, can't you just hem them?" I love that the word "just" almost always comes before "hem" whenever "hem" is used. It implies an ease, a certain confidence about the simplicity of the activity of hemming something. "Sure," I say, "I can just hem them up." It's easy.

Except I can't sew. I can't correctly thread the machine (that I don't even have!). I have not the faintest idea what a bobbin is, why I need it, or where it goes. The extent of my sewing experience is pulling the pins out of quilts before my grandma expertly passed them under the needle, and piecing together a doll dress when I was 13...and by "piecing" I mean that I cut out the pieces and my mom sewed them together. This has never been a problem until now, when my husband's wardrobe and our ability to make budget this month ride on my being able to alter the only three affordable pairs of pants on the planet that fit him.

Well, I borrowed a machine and had the woman show me how to thread it, and so far I have hemmed (not "just hemmed", just "hemmed") two pairs of pants and patched a hole. I'm down to the second leg of the third pair of pants and just now things started going horribly wrong. Everything on the machine looks the same as it did when I started, I think, but the stitches are all messed up now and it is making a big mess. So I stopped to calm down and try to call someone to come over and help me. I'm glad I live really far away from my Home Ec teacher right now...she'd be disappointed with me, I think. Well, I'm disappointed with her. Why couldn't she make that one week of sewing in 8th grade more memorable?!?!??!

Deep Thoughts from the Weed Patch

Well, geez, if we aren't delinquent bloggers...our apologies for the lapse in updates. There are lots of good reasons for it, none of which you are probably interested in hearing, so I'll save my typing space for more useful thoughts. :)

Anyway, here we are...in West Virginia...so many exciting things going on! We really love being here in Harpers Ferry running this campground, and we love all the cool things there are to do out here. We've been to DC a couple of times, took a trip to Atlantic City, visited Covenant Life Church a few times, found a great disc golfing course...it's endless! We have a dog now, too...his name is Jasper and he's a lab/shepherd mix. We'll post a picture as soon as we get to it...if I can remember how to do it. It took me 15 minutes to log on to blogger.com to type this post because it's been so long since I was last on that I couldn't remember the password to save my life.

Anyway, I didn't hop on here today to give you a total rundown of all our excitement; I've just had some neat thoughts lately that I thought maybe were worth sharing. I (Maria) am working as a landscaper here at the campground, and have spent most of my time so far pulling weeds, because it is rediculous to plant a flower in the middle of a weed patch and expect it to grow. If that isn't a great life metaphor right there! Anyway, it has been great fun, let me tell you. I have done my share of grumbling about it. But God has acutally used those long hours with the weeds to teach me a few things.

There is this kind of weed I've been encountering all over the campground that drives me crazy. I don't know what it's called or even how to describe it to you other than that it looks like grass but has the longest root I have ever seen, and the root grows sideways, across the ground about two inches under the surface instead of growing straight down into the ground. I am not kidding you, I have pulled up a clump of grassy weed and found myself unearthing a stretch of mulch several feet long where the root of the dumb thing was hiding. You pull up a clump of weed on your left and find out that its root actually begins 8 feet to your right. And it never grows in a straight line across the ground; it zigzags all over the place, often crossing back over itself on the way.

So I'm sitting in a bed of mulch, pulling up these weeds and roots that go for miles, and it occurs to me that these weeds are a lot like women. Being one, I feel qualified to make this statement. :) But seriously. Much like the weed begins in one place but actually appears in a totally different place, so do many of our issues/frustrations rarely appear anywhere near the actual cause of the discord. I get mad at Nate for leaving the milk out after pouring some on his cereal but the real reason I am mad is in fifth grade Kelsey told Amanda I had a bad haircut and that because of it I couldn't sit at their lunch table. I get mad at the dog for licking me and wiping his wet nose on me when the problem is really that some other landscaper took my golf cart this morning and I had to haul my heavy watering can all over the campground by hand. We women hardly ever get mad at the real source of our frustrations; we like to save it and let it pop out at the most random times, over the most random things.

Also similar to the way this weed acts is the way sin acts in our lives. It doesn't look too bad on the surface, but it is going to be a lot harder to get rid of than you think. It has deep, long roots, and often affects more areas of our lives than we are willing to admit. Sometimes our sin is even undetectable until it makes a huge mess in someone else's flower bed, and sometimes its our flower bed that is ruined by another's long-rooted sin weed. What sins am I feeding and watering unknowingly? What sins are you keeping under the surface, believing no one will ever see them?

Nothing profound, nothing earth-shattering...just some thoughts from the weed patch. And there are more to come...these are Tuesday's thoughts and it's now Thursday...I'm behind already! It's going to be an interesting summer.