Kitchen remodel--DONE!!

My father recently celebrated a birthday, and if y'all know him well, you've seen him hard at work, tongue sticking out one side of his mouth as he concentrates...  Judging from the picture above, I guess that apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree!  Here I am, removing our previous counter top.  As you may recall from our last blog post, we've started a kitchen remodel project.  Kenny and Beth gave a token bit of help scraping the old linoleum flooring:  

But my true queen of the flooring was Hope, here caught laying out new porcelain tile over a plastic membrane designed to keep the tiles and grout from cracking:

It took us several weeks, but here is the more-or-less final result:

Okay, you probably can't tell too much from this picture unless you've been to our house before, but here's a list of things that we did...we put in a new tile floor, new granite-like laminate counter top, a new window, a new microhood, new lights, new cover plates, new trim, new paint, new hardware (drawer pulls and hinges), plus some additional cabinet space and shelves and a new kitchen cart.  Here is one corner of the kitchen, showing off the microhood:

 Another view of the microhood, with the cart between the refrigerator and stove:

Here is a close-up of the decorative, satin nickel finished leaf-and-vine cover plates and a carved wooden container we purchased for this remodel:

We were really glad to get this done--in addition to appreciating the improved functionality of this new kitchen design, it is REALLY inconvenient to not have a working condition for days on end--even little Draco looks relieved:

The kitchen remodel isn't the only thing that's been going on over the last few weeks.  I've been prepping for an archeology salvage project (starting tomorrow)--here's a picture of UAM station archeologist Jessica Howe in an impressive gum-cypress swamp right next to this site:

This weekend, Hope had an archeology meeting (yes, she too is involved in archeology) at Toltec Mounds State Archeological Park near Little Rock.  So, while she attended her meeting, the kids and I walked around this inspiring park (that's a large Indian mound we're walking towards):

We also went to another nearby state park:  Plantation Agriculture State Park, which had a lot of exhibits on how the early cotton industry operated in Arkansas.  Below, Beth and Kenny try a small, hand-cranked version of a cotton gin (this separates the cotton fibers from the large seeds in the boll):

Here the kids ham it up by some of the large equipment once used to work the harvested cotton:

And, of course, few things are more fun on a sunny late winter morning than throwing last fall's acorns at a tree:

We had to hurry back to Monticello so Hope could put together yesterday's Blue and Gold banquet for her Cub Scout pack.  Below, Beth hams it up with family friend Diane Lloyd, who the kids affectionately call "Bo-bo":

Stephen also gave me some good faces for his part:

Kenny got his awards and patches, and Hope (once she got past getting all choked up), was given a plaque from her batch of Webelos that were moving up to Boy Scouts thanking her for her years of service:

Kenny will finish Webelos next year, and Hope will get a couple of well-earned years off before Stephen starts up...