In April

Allison and Ben at work in the kitchen.

These things would be so much shorter if we could just get to posting regularly again. Sorry.

The week following our trip to Ohio was spring break here for the schools. So Allison and Ben's project for the week, which really only took them about 2 1/2 days, was to replace the ceiling in the kitchen. If you remember back to early January and this post about things falling apart around the house, it was soon thereafter that a leak in the hot water pipe running through the kitchen began. We ended up having to replace some pipes creating big holes in the ceiling. Luckily a few talented individuals from church came and aided Mike in this project.

We decided then that it would make the most sense to just replace all of the ceiling tiles, which were showing their age anyway. What a perfect project for spring break, right? Then just this past weekend while McHugh's were gone, the ceiling in the next room, the TV/computer room, started leaking! Allison was first to discover it and was about to be very upset if all their hard work in the kitchen was a waste, but alas, it was contained to the TV room and turned out to be our water heater. So before we returned home, a couple of those talented individuals from church came and replaced it with a new one. Now what to do about the bulging ceiling and water damaged couch and carpet... sigh.

On to happier matters! We celebrated Abby's Friday the 13th birthday. No bad luck for her!




That same weekend was our church retreat in Montrose, WV at a beautiful retreat center. Before heading up for the retreat, we took a detour and went to Blackwater Falls in Davis and took lots of pictures.





At retreat we helped with children's story Sunday morning and "performed" Stone Soup, which then was lunch. We really crammed a lot in that weekend, because Sunday evening we went to Morgantown for Mountain Stage, a radio show on NPR. It is usually recorded in Charleston about 3 hours south, but since this one was only about 1 hour away and it included the Punch Brothers, we decided to go for it! We were joined by Mike and Cheryl from church and we ate at an Indian buffet before. It was a fun show with the Punch Brothers, Joan Osborne, Leftover Salmon, Sylvie Lewis and Lera Lynn. You may hear it on a NPR station near you on or after June 8!

All the artists performed a song together at the end.

The next weekend Micah's parents visited from Oregon. It was fun to have them here, and they were able to join us Sunday afternoon for a baseball game in Pittsburgh. We found dollar tickets a few weeks before so we snatched those up! It was a cold day for baseball, but it was fun to watch the Pirates take on the St. Louis Cardinals, though they arguably didn't take them on very well and lost 1 to 5.