The Groundhog Chronicle

We're Gracie, Ian, Isaac, Evelyn, Max, and Hazel, and we need to write this stuff down.

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Year One

Well. We did it. One year with twins. One year of life full to the absolute brim. (And yes, one year without a good night’s sleep.) Tonight Gracie and I celebrated the two fo us surviving the year just as much as we celebrated Max and Hazel’s birthday. A year later, the fact of the matter is- the twins are so much freaking fun. Yet exhausting. But adorable. And inescapable. And it sorta feels like they’ve always been here. So who- for posterity- are they at one?

So Max is a beast. The dude eats everything you put in front of him. He has four pounds on his twin sister already. Not kidding. He’s Isaac’s look-alike, and I’m seeing a lot of personality similarities, too. Max has this sensitivity about him. Max lets you know- at an ear-splitting octave- when something’s bothering him. But then he’s got this sweet smile that lights up the room and he’s always so sweet and gentle with Hazel.

And then Hazel is this sweet, mellow little hunny who I’m pretty sure is going to end up being our naughtiest kid. Calling it. I’m not sure if most sets of multiples feature one baby that dominates their sibling/s, but ours sure does. Hazel is soooo physical with her brother that we’re constantly breaking up these one-sided fights where she’s shoving him facedown into the carpet and wailing on the back of his head while he alternates between passively smiling and taking it or screaming bloody murder.

As Gracie and I have stumbled bleary-eyed through this year we’ve concluded- perhaps unsurprisingly- that this is the last hoorah for babies for us. And that knowledge leaves a bittersweet taste. This is the last time we’ll be going through these first precious stages and experiencing these first precious milestones. And so, like I did for our first two, I thought I’d capture some of those special twin moments in a ‘Year One’ video.

What a ride this first year has been. So excited for year two. Fingers crossed they start sleeping.

Until next time,

-Ian

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Bunnies

Freaking bunnies keep getting into the garden.

Until next time,

-Ian

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Ringmaster

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls

Welcome to the really, really big show-

The one- the only- KINDERGARTEN CIRCUS!

With thrills and chills for young and old

From the Merry-Go-Round up and down

From the clever tricks of the clown

The lions’ great roar, the monkeys four

We’ve studied hard and learned our parts

and now the Kindergarten Circus starts!

Here comes the parade!”

Pretty stinkin’ proud of this kid for absolutely crushing his lines as the ringmaster of our little town’s 53rd Annual Kindergarten Circus. Isaac had put in sooo much work memorizing his part in the weeks leading up to the show. He didn’t look too sure of himself as he stepped onto the stage and approached the mic to kickoff the circus, but once he delivered that first line he was off and running. 

Fun note- Evie’s already got all the lines memorized, too. Maybe she’ll take up the mantle of ringmaster in the 55th Kindergarten Circus in a couple years. 

Until next time,

-Ian

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Flipped

About 14 months after we first ripped it apart, Gracie and I have finally wrapped up our laundry room remodel. We took a big bite out of the project last summer, racing to get as much done as possible before the twins’ anticipated arrival last fall. The room sat untouched for about six months after Max and Hazel showed up until this spring when we finally started up work again. For the most part it was so much fun tweaking literally every square inch of the room.

For starters, there were a few days of demolition to reset the room to a blank canvas. We exposed the old brick chimney, too. Not sure why people cover their brick.

If there’s one thing I know about old farmhouses, it’s that they’re never square, and they’re never level. Some have bats, too. After demo we had to level the floor AND the ceiling. The floor’s still not perfect, but it’s far, far better than it was.

You know that tin I salvaged last year? So I had 70 or 80 identical pieces of this one pattern that I thought would look pretty slick on the laundry room ceiling. A little blasting with a pressure washer and that sad beige paint gave way to reveal the original chrome look. So shiny. Hanging it was an absolute pain, though, but it felt good to make use of some salvage so soon. Hopefully within the next year or two I can use some of that wood flooring I pulled, too. And the fact that Dad worked right under these tiles for years is a super cool family history touch to add to our home.

So like I said, most of this remodel was fun. The issues we had with our new front door over the span of eight or nine months, however, were not. We’re talking problems with the three point locking system right out of the factory, identical problems with the replacement door they sent us, continued problems AFTER a representative from the lock company drove all the way to our house to fix the broken replacement- yadda, yadda, yadda. The icing on the cake came when we eventually decided to wave the white flag and get a different door with a different lock and we were told we’d have to pull out the entire door frame, sidelites and all to do it. I’ll put it this way- I was so frustrated that at one point I told Gracie that I wanted to sell the house and move away. Glad it didn’t come to that.

My wife wants shiplap and subway tile, my wife gets shiplap and subway tile.

I’d grabbed those lockers about six years back when we lived in Colorado. My neighbor had pulled them from the old Cortez middle school and wasn’t using them. She’d offered them to me for free but I gave her five bucks for them after she helped me carry them across the street. I didn’t know when, but I knew at the time that someday those lockers would be in our entryway. We moved them across the country and stuck them in our garage for our first few years back in Wisconsin. It was pretty exciting to clean them up and bring them inside after all this time.

Building that bench, those shelves and those countertops was so much fun, and there’s a fun family history touch here, too- the lumber all came from my grandparents’ farm in the middle of the state. Pretty awesome to put it to use and on display.

So. I’m two or three days removed from finishing the laundry room and I gotta say- I’m kind of restless. There’s currently a debate between Gracie and I. See, she wants me to wrap up some of the projects I’ve already started and I kind of want to ignore those and start a new one. So. We’ll see where we end up.

Until next time,

-Ian

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Twinkies

Max and Hazel want to wish you a tasty Halloween.

Until next time,

-Ian

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Max & Hazel

Hey everybody! There’s a couple of little people here that I’d like to introduce you to.

At 11:36 pm on October 20th Max Vernon was born. He’s beautiful. Max weighed in at 6 pounds 7 ounces, and Gracie and I are convinced he looks just like his big brother Isaac. A few minutes later at 11:42 Hazel Louise made us a family of six. She’s gorgeous, and she edged Max by an ounce at 6 pounds 8 ounces. Isaac and Evie are on cloud nine, and couldn’t be more thrilled about their roles as big brother and sister.

Buckle up, Mama. This life’s about to get wild.

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Consider the Lilies

“See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow.”

Until next time,

-Ian

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Reveal

As it turns out, Gracie and I are having...

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A Visual Compendium: The Michigan Loop

I’ve been doing a lot of daydreaming lately about that trip to Michigan back in the summer of 2018. A few months back as we were talking about plans for this summer Gracie had suggested a trip back to Pictured Rocks and/or Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshores. The idea built momentum throughout the winter... until this global pandemic rewrote the rules of what the spring, summer, and beyond looked like.

So. 

There’s no official plan to go back to Michigan on the table at the moment, so I’m left to reminisce about trips gone by.

Until next time,

-Ian

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Flipped

Upstairs bathroom. Done. Finally. I gotta say, it’s been a process. What started with a two-week demolition in October of 2018 finally wrapped up with the hanging of a shower curtain in mid May of 2020. I poured weekend after weekend and night after night into this thing for months into more than a year and a half as basically every square inch of the room minus the floor got redone. You know, back when I was teaching kindergarten I’d update my class every Monday for months with the progress I’d made the weekend before. It got to the point where I remember one of my kids throwing up her hands and announcing, “When are you finally going to finish this bathroom remodel?!” It turns out the answer was “About the time you go to 2nd grade.” The breakdown:

Biggest change? The tub installation. We gotta have a tub for soaking babies, and my wife had always wanted one of the clawfoot variety. Fun story; I secretly arranged with the plumber to get the thing installed while Gracie was out of town for a few days at the February 2019 WSCA Conference. But before that I even went as far as to request a fake e-mail from the same plumber confirming a March installation date and let Gracie read it over my shoulder so she’d be totally misdirected- a move that would earn me my Master’s degree in Wife Surprising from Ball So Hard University.

Over the course of the remodel I’ve learned more than a little about tiling. That wall behind the tub represents my first ever attempt at tiling. It took something like four or five hundred tiles and about a month to finish, which felt like a slow process until I jumped...

... into the shower. I’d anticipated my second ever attempt at tiling would go significantly faster than the first, but booooy was I wrong. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; “glacial”. The pace of the shower project was glacial.

The picture frame wainscoting was pretty fun, I guess, but in my opinion it’s outdone by one of my favorite details in the room, and one that I can’t claim as my own work;

In the late 13th century Pope Boniface VIII wanted to bring in an artist to create a number of paintings for St. Peter’s. As the story goes, the pope sent his courier to all of the greatest artists of the time and requested they each submit a work indicative of their skill from which the pope would then make his hire. When the courier arrived at Giotto di Bondone and told him of the pope’s errand, Giotto quickly drew- freehand- just a circle. A perfect circle. When the courier wasn’t sure if Giotta wasn’t just messing with him, the artist assured him that the circle was all the pope would need. He was right. Giotto got the job. So... where am I going with this? Gracie’s dad’s an incredible craftsman. How good? I say look no further than the door and window trim in the room. A couple other rooms in the house- the originals- feature the same exact trim, but all of the additions made to our home over the decades since were finished with different trim. To me, Todd’s ability to spot on replicate 80-year-old trim you simply can’t buy anywhere anymore is as fair a representation of his abilities as any. They’re Giotto’s perfect circle.

Todd also built that sweet sliding closet door. I just put glass in it.

For me, the vanity revision might have been the funnest part of the entire remodel, and between pallet wood and salvaged hardware the price was right, too.

Check that. Making that pipe shelf and toilet paper holder were the funnest part. I got a little impulsive and overspent on 1/2″ black steel pipe and now I’ve got tons laying around. Last fall Gracie went to this craft fair and sold something like $300 in gnomes she made out of striped socks stuffed with corn and more or less rubbed her success in my face for ever doubting the marketability of said gnomes. This year I’m making pipe shelves from my surplus black steel and one-upping her. Write it down.

Though we were advised against it... *cough* Todd *cough* I’m so glad we exposed the chimney running through the corner of the room. Something about old brick...

And there were other details I’ve either forgotten or not pictured. Painting that pattern on the closet floor. Homemade closet shelving. Patching a hole in the ceiling the old school way with plaster and lath. The list goes on, but it’s finally done now.

So... What’s next? Well, no time to rest on my laurels. It’s onto the mudroom/laundry room. Can’t wait.

Until next time,

-Ian

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Cleaned Up

It’s with a huge sigh of relief that I wrap up quite possibly my most painfully tedious project to date; the upstairs shower tear out, rebuild, and remodel. Par for the course, progress on the various stages of the shower ranged from lightspeed to crawling to standstill beginning with the old stall’s removal in early August ‘19 and wrapping up with fixture and curtain installation in mid May ‘20. The timeline:

With the room somewhere in the neighborhood of... 70% finished? we took the plunge on the last big leg of the bathroom remodel and ripped out a perfectly good shower stall last August. If I’d known then what I know now, putting together the new shower would’ve taken a fraction of the time, but it turns out it’d be nine and a half months before we’d be using the thing.

Building the shower out crawled through the fall and into winter, what with so many weekends dedicated to pulling tin, but...

...sealing the seams and waterproofing took just a few hours one weekend at the end of December.

Then it was on to tiling. For three and a half months beginning in early January the tedious, glacial pace of tiling sucked just about all the fun out of the project until it wrapped and was followed by....

...two messy afternoons of grout, then...

...professional installation of the fixtures a couple weeks after that and we were golden.

So. Would I do it all again? Sure. We’ve got another shower downstairs so Gracie says I have to.

Until next time

-Ian

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Curation

For historical context, our pregnancy announcements circa 2020, 2016, and 2014.

Until next time,

-Ian

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Holy crap. Gracie and I are having twins.

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Overhead

For most of his career practicing law Dad owned and worked out of a turn of the century brick building on Main in Marshfield. While it originally housed an old printing press, the passage of more than a hundred years and the need to repurpose the space several times over saw the building hide its grand original embellishments in favor of more efficient, albeit mundane office trappings. Fluorescent lighting. Drop ceilings. Sectioned-off floor plan. The usual soul-crushing office space look.

But as Dad approached retirement and the eventual sale of his building he overheard Gracie and I talking about the dream of someday putting an old tin ceiling (or perhaps something faux that gets close to capturing the look) in a room or two in our own home and he let a secret slip. You see, right above his head in the office he’d worked in for decades was a drop ceiling. And if one were to remove that drop ceiling and poke one’s up through it, you know what one’d find? A second drop ceiling. But if one were to then remove that second drop ceiling and poke one’s head up through both drop ceilings you know what one’d behold? Quite possibly the most detailed vintage tin ceiling I’ve ever laid eyes on. Granted, at some point (likely during its printing press days) it’d been painted a rather bland beige, but its long-hidden beauty was unmistakable. Not gonna lie- there was a serious adrenaline rush when I first stuck my head through both drop ceilings and shined a flashlight into the stuffy darkness above. It was like... laying eyes on the Titanic in its final resting place and being told I’m the guy who gets to salvage its bell.

So let’s talk salvage.

Remember those floors? Salvaging tin ceiling tiles was infinitely more difficult than salvaging those floors. Working overhead balanced on the top of a ladder in poor visibility and stuffy heat while masked was just part of the challenge. There was yard after yard of ductwork, electrical, and plumbing from the upstairs apartment to reach, bend, and work around. Positioning, climbing, pulling, descending, and repositioning the ladder ad nauseam meant progress was painfully slow. And the flaking paint and grime that rained down on the carpet below required massive amounts of cleanup. Ohhh, there was soot. Sooooo much soot. Mary-Poppins-chimney-sweep levels of soot.

“Order now and receive a new longsleeve t-shirt with purchase of each tile!”

From October ‘19 until the end of January ‘20 I think I spent six weekends on a ladder up in the ceiling of that office pulling tin. So what do I have to show for my efforts? Well, in my garage I’ve now got a pile of hundreds of pieces ranging from incredibly detailed 2 foot x 2 foot squares designed to create a larger image when laid in a grid of four to gorgeous little 6 inch x 6 inch rosettes. And the value of it all? I guess if you were to reference AmericanTinCeililngs.com for some insight into the cost of a new tin ceiling, one could say every time I was up on that ladder I was pulling anywhere from $6.00 to $43.00 bills off the ceiling with a pry bar. Gracie and I’ve always preferred vintage to new anyway, and you know what? The price of a salvaged tin ceiling is a bit better than store bought. 

And now what do we do with it?

Well, we’ve got enough material to redo the ceilings in several rooms. It just so happens the mudroom + laundry room’s on the shortlist for a remodel now that the upstairs bathroom’s wrapping up, so realistically I can see our very own vintage tin ceiling going up in the next six months for the low, low cost of my own sweat and blood. Yeah, I learned the hard way that tin tiles are sharp.

Until next time,

-Ian

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Of Mushrooms and Men

For those of you unaware, morel season is rapidly approaching our neck of the woods in Northwest Wisconsin. Never in a million years would I have thought just how fascinated I’d become with wild mushrooms. Though mushroom hunting is an admittedly obscure (read: borderline cultish) hobby, it’s provided me with yet another reason to get in the woods- and one that’s far more esoteric than the mainstream hiking, camping, hunting, and fishing.

But why? How?

Well, a fascinating NPR radio broadcast about harvesting wild plants a few years back lead to my enrollment in a super engaging two-night community education course about edible mushrooms which has now lead to me finding, trying, and SURVIVING! three different wild mushrooms- the Morel, the Chicken of the Woods, and the Oyster (not pictured). I gotta give my wife a lot of credit- Gracie’s had to endure more than a few one-sided conversations about my sudden enthusiasm for all things mushroom hunting. Here’s hoping this season is a productive one. Insert bad fun guy joke.

Until next time,

-Ian

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Honey?

On the other side of this door Gracie’s currently in a Zoom live-video meeting with many- if not most- of her coworkers. They’re doing a ton of a incredible things as a district right now and I’m especially proud of my wife’s heartfelt contributions at a time that’s really difficult for just about everyone and every industry- including schools.

But then again it’s still my daughter’s bedroom. And she’s still my wife.

You know, I’ve always felt I’m pretty funny. But as Gracie’s been good enough to teach me over the now seven years of our marriage it turns out I’m not actually as funny as I think I am. In fact- she’s patiently explained- it turns out many of the things I find funny are actually just the opposite; very, very unfunny. This critical dialogue between us has led to some great personal growth on my end and I now find myself pausing to think before impulsively saying or doing many of those things I feel would be funny.

So here I am, standing on the other side of this door pondering just how well it would be received and weighing the consequences of my actions if I were to pull a LEGO Movie and barge suddenly into the room in my underwear bellowing “HONEY? WHERE ARE MY..... PAAANTS???”

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Cheese

When you’ve had about enough of the Christmas card photoshoot...

Until next time,

-Ian