Granny Time!
So yes, our little trip to my Granny’s house in Huntington, WV was focused on a makeover mission – but that doesn’t mean it was all business.
My parents joined us for the trip, so they spend much of the day having fun with Granny and Clara while we worked on the bathroom. But one night were able to sneak out with them after dinner for a quick trip to the playground at Ritter Park, our favorite green space in Huntington.
But most of our “free time” came the last morning while we were waiting for Granny to return home so we could reveal the space to her. While Sherry worked on some last minute bathroom touches, Clara and I used the time to browse Granny’s many box-fulls of old photos. Clara even got into character by borrowing one of Granny’s hats.
I could’ve looked at these all day.
And apparently Clara caught the house-sprucing bug while we were there and wanted to go “paint” outside with water.
We love this pic because it looks like some old-school Huckleberry-Finn-esque picket fence painting.
But as cute as that moment was, this one below totally takes the cake as our favorite of the trip. Clara was OBSESSED with the stairs (perhaps the first carpeted stairs she’s ever encountered). She slid, jumped, and made her parents nervous in all sorts of other ways on them all weekend.
It’s also a special photo to me because I have fond memories of playing on these stairs myself. Though my sister and I preferred to highjack a mattress and turn it into a slide. I’ll give it a few years before I let Clara in on that little secret…
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Very cute. Very cool.
Something else to (possibly) teach her that I learned from my 13 year old and his cousin involving carpeted stairs this summer…
*Put a mattress at the base of the stairs.
*Find a just-right-sized laundry basket and line it with blankets/pillows.
*Put self in basket and launch from the top of the stairs.
*Possibly use helmet and elbow/knee pads as needed.
*Have video (or video on phone) ready for shooting other person.
*Laugh til you cannot stop.
*Proudly show your parents what you’ve been doing at your cousin’s!
Hahah! Love it.
xo
s
YES! Laundry basket down the stairs was a faovirte past time at my house growing up! We would empty the linen closet and throw all the extra blankets, towels, pillows, etc. at the bottom of the stairs. We also had a small cutout at the top of the stairs that we would jump out of onto the soft pile of linen closet supplies. Luckily, it was only about 7′ off the ground. Don’t tell me sister that I’ve recently shared this information with my 8 year old nephew! :)
Sit in sleeping bag at top of stairs, launch self down stairs on your backside….
Our yr10 ‘camp’ week discovery about 20yrs ago…
Clara pictures are ridiculously cute. She’s such a ham on those steps & in the tutu painting.
BTW – I dig the new header here.
Cute cute photos ~ love the hat :)
We definitely pulled out the twin mattress to slide down the stairs when my parents were out. So. Much. Fun. If you really want speed use a crib mattress. They are made for speed!
So sweet of you to fix up Granny’s bathroom! It looks great! You guys are the best! Happy Blogiversary!
Good call on the “waiting to tell Clara about the mattress-slide” decision! :) Ha haaa…
And I’m sure someone already wrote in about this, but I’m almost positive it was Tom Sawyer who did the whitewashing of fence… or rather, tricked someone else into doing it for him. :) You got the right author, at least!
Haha! You’re right.
xo
s
LOL, I was just going to comment! Yep, it was Tom Sawyer :)
Clara is just too cute!
So cute! Our steps look similar, at the top there is that a landing and then are four more steps on the right going to the second floor. My little man likes to pile pillows and stuffed animals on the landing then lay there and read books. Just something about stairs and kids….they love’em!!!
I grew up across the street from Ritter Park and spent many childhood afternoons exploring the playground too! Later in college, my now husband and I spent the first weeks of our relationship cruising the path walking our dogs. It’s definitely the best place in Huntington!
That’s so cute!
xo
s
when I was a kid we used to put empty 2 litre bottles of pop at the bottom on the steps. then wed ride a magic carpet sled down and see who could knock over the most!
we called it human bowling.
hahahahaha if our parents only knew!!
Hilarious!
xo
s
I love love the idea of painting with water. I need to introduce my two year old to that!! Looks like it was a lot of fun in Huntington!
When we were young we would use pillow cases or sleeping bags to slide down the stairs with. Just stick your legs in the end and down you go! Thanks for bringing back awesome memories!
I’ve mentioned before how I went to Marshall U. but I lived a mere block away from Ritter Park and walked there every day! Some know this little tid-bit but some don’t: The city was developed by Collis P. Huntington. A lot of things were purposely modeled after NYC and Ritter Park is supposed to be a mini version of Central Park =) I’ve never personally verified all this but was told this by many people that I lived around/worked with.
That’s so sweet! Never knew that!
xo
s
I remember sliding down my aunt’s carpeted stairs every Thanksgiving! They were the only ones I experienced on a regular basis too. Plus aunts are good for that sort of shenanigans. :) We’d give ourselves some awesome rug burns on our knees and forearms though, until we discovered a big sheet of cardboard. Then it was “lookout for the wall across the hall!” with dramatic bailouts at the end.
Clara = most stylish toddler ever…..I’m loving the hat!!
Ahh we were pillow sliders ourselves!
Is Clara tall for her age or I am just out of touch with toddler heights? I love that picture on the stairs.
Oh yes, she’s a tall girl. Gets it from her daddy.
xo
s
Hahaha thats too funny, I guess she hasn’t been around stairs very much huh :) Oh the little things!
Also, I wanted to tell you all how polite little miss Clara is. I was watching some videos the other night and there were more “thank yous” “sorrys” and “you’re welcomes” than I could have imagined. Way to raise a sweet little dumpling of manners!!!!
Love the stairs! My cousins and I would play spoons in the upstairs bedroom, but put the spoon to grab downstairs so we’d run through the hallways upstairs (shaking the chandeliers below), then slide on a mattress down the stairs to get to the spoons to grab. I think we only did that a few times before it was banned. :)
I dont know how to comment on your Instagram pictures. One of my boys’ favorite things to do is watch planes as well. We live pretty close (20 min ride) to the Boston airport and hence once in a while go the topmost open parking lot in the airport and watch planes for an hr. We just pay for parking and the boys love it!
Just a tip if you are looking for vantage spots!
Wow prety nice!
Clara is so adorable painting that fence and playing on the stairs. I had completely forgotten that sliding down my grandmother’s carpeted stairs on my butt as fast as I could go was pretty much my favorite game as a child. Thanks for the memory!
I had no idea that so many people did the whole stairs mattress thing. I never knew anyone else that did it except us. It was totally my Mother’s idea…my Father hated it!
Clara looks like she has super long legs with that skirt on. She is growing up so fast! Almost makes me a little sad to see her lose that baby look and start looking more like a little girl.
What a sweet post. How special that Clara gets to know her Great Grandmother. So cute!
I was just going to say the same thing! How great that Clara knows her (Great) Granny. I remember my great grandfather, and I’m so glad I knew him! Is Clara old enough to take an interest in the old photos? Some of my best memories are looking at old black and white pictures with my grandmother.
Yes, she loved asking “and who this is?” to try to learn all the faces and “what they doing?” to learn what was going on in each scene. So sweet.
xo
s
As kids we slid a long slick wooden coffee table to the end of the stairs for an extra slide. My almost 6 yr old introduced my 2.5 yr old to joys of slippery sleeping bags on the steps. At least there is a landing halfway down.
As the mother of a 13 month old named Huck I am drawn to the picture of Clara in front of the white picket fence with a paint brush. So cute! I’m going to have to get my Huck in front of a white picket fence soon for a photo session (even though it was Tom Sawyer who got the literary credit I’m sure that was just because Huck already had so many other adventurous story-lines)
I have that same picture of crossing the bridge into WV! (Or at least one very similar to it.) Everytime my family sees the sign over the bridge we spontaneously start singing, “Almost Heaven, West Virginia. Blue Ridge Mountains, Shanandoah River…” (John Denver, just in case you guys are too young to remember that classic)
Being originally from WV, it’s good to see they changed the slogan back to ‘Wild and Wonderful’. The whole ‘Open for Business’ thing was kinda…well…yeah.
Yay West Virginia!!!! (I’m from Charleston WV and I get way too pumped when I see you guys have been hanging out here.)
That last stairs picture is adorable I agree. For almost all of their lives our kids have not dealt with stairs. Our house is a ranch style and 2 years ago we went to NY to visit family and my son got “stuck” at the top of the stairs and started crying so hard because he didn’t know how to get down. He was 5… :)
My best, Lynn
Ahhh, I live a couple blocks from Ritter Park..I still am freaking out weeks after I knew you were here imagining what I would have done had I ran into you!!! eeeek.
Oooh, lucky person to live so close to Ritter Park! What a beautiful neighborhood.
-John
Clara’s tutu is too adorable :)
Spotted a typo for you- I think “meant” was intended to be “mean” in the opening paragraph.
I LOVE your blog. Thank you for giving me something to read during my short lunch break!
All the best to you and your family!
Thanks! All fixed.
xo
s
I live in Huntington. I am a placement as I grew up in the Eastern part of the state and came here for Marshall and it is almost 10 years later and I am still here! Anyways, hope that you have some near cities or places on your book tour!
Oh man, sand. My twins are 16 months old and we are entering the sand playing age. How do you deal with cleaning the sand off? I dread the day when they start playing with sand boxes, I just imagine sand everywhere!!
We have a rock box at our house that we love. Otherwise, if we’re somewhere with sand, we just try dusting it off and taking off her shoes to make sure she’s not smuggling it home. Haha!
xo
s
Baby Powder. I keep a small bottle in our beach bag and before anyone gets in the car, dust with baby powder and the sand wipes right off!
So sweet! And it looks like Clara’s hair may almost be ready for some pigtails… Sherry I’m sure you are pumped!
Wahooo!
xo
s
We love to paint outside with water, too! It’s actually something that other kids ask to do when they come over to play… always a great low-mess activity for a large group of kids! Unless of course, one of the younger ones sneak a cup of dirt into the mix and then we have a mud-pie mess… oiy! We’ve had that happen a time or two. Haha
Going down the stairs on a cookie sheet or inside of a sleeping bag (a slippery one made of nylon) was the best! Or vaulting over the railing onto a pile of sofa cushions on the stairs was fun too. Not sure how my friends or I didn’t break our legs?!?
We would sled down the stairs in sleeping bags – ouch!
Clara is a sweetie. I love how her hair is so downy like duck feathers! Is that weird? Hope not. My kids looked like monkeys when they were babies so I have a soft spot for the more delicate looking wee ones, haha!
Totally see the duck feathers thing! Haha!
xo
s
Can we write a photo-letter to Clara and explain with pics of a stairs-ride? Would that be too mean to you? :D
Hahah!
xo
s
Slippery sleeping bag all the way! In fact my childhood friends’ house has two knee holes in their drywall at the bottom landing from a particularly wild night;) I never thought of letting my son paint with water – what a simple awesome idea!
That’s so funny about the stairs! We have carpeted stairs in our house and our two-year-old girl Lily just recently decided that she needs to take a “cat nap” on every one of them when she goes up. Makes for a pretty time consuming trip just to go change her diaper.
My (mean older) sister stuffed me into a soft-sided suitcase (ok, I might have participated willingly) and then pushed me down the stairs at my friend’s house. Their parents were horrified and my sister was not invited back.
But don’t teach Clara that one – it hurts!!
Granny is adorable, by the way :)
No way! That sounds like quite a ride…
xo
s
I lived in Huntington WV with my family from 7th until 9th grade. Love Ritter Park, to this day I believe its one of the best parks in the US! Cool to hear about it again in your post :)
Love old photos too!
A great way to make sure they stay safe and let everyone have a copy is to have them all digitally scanned. I know you are total DIY’ers but scanning all of those would take a “Sandlot” for-ev-errrrrr!!
I’ve used http://www.ScanMyPhotos.com and I’m in love. They are efficient, attentive and super reasonable. The nice thing is that you can pass out the DVD’s to everyone and then when you upload the photos you can make a photobook and get your DIY kicks from that! You have such a large and connected family I would imagine that it would be so meaningful.
Such a great tip!
xo
s
I am a Huntingtonian, and I had picked out the perfect house for you to crash while here, but the owners were out of town! So close to Ritter, too! By the way, I’m pretty sure that I saw your aunt at the Huntington Mall, but when I realized I recognized her from your blog pics, I felt like a creepy stalker and vowed to get a life!
No way! That’s hilarious!
xo
s
That last photo is super adorable. Frame-wall?
It made my stair memories come flooding back. It’s funny to think how many memories you can have as a child while on the stairs. To name a few: first time using a slinky, stair-sledding (involve a sleeping bag and sore tush).
YAY West Virginia! I grew up in Hurricane, frequented Huntington and have lived here in Richmond for 15 years now (near Nickel Bridge). Lots of good times in Huntington. I even worked at the mall. Every time we drive to WV we roll down the windows, lay on the horn, and sing two rounds of “Almost Heaven, WV” with John Denver when we cross the border! I hope that besides Ritter Park, you also visit Tudor’s Biscuit World when you’re in WV. I can’t go home without getting some biscuits!
Just catching up but wanted to comment that when we moved from a one story to a two story with a long flight of stairs, our 10 year old boy (of course) and 4 year old sister (eek!) used a laundry basket (large pillows at the bottom as I recall.)