Millstadt: you've got it going' on

I love Millstadt. There is a chance if I had viewed this lovely village prior to moving into my neighborhood, I would have lived there. Truly marvelous people (a koala stuffed animal and golf ball were given to my children for free), adorable old houses, and a Subway that ran out of coffee at 8:10am. Ok, so this wasn't a positive. But anyway.
The above picture is of wood. Regular readers of this blog (hi, 6 followers!) will recall (if they were paying attention) that I like wooden things. (For the quiz later, Nancy likes metal things and Samantha likes glass.) Old wooden things are even better. I saw this delightful stack of wood at a sale and gave the nice proprieteress my number so she could tell me the square feet, type, and price. Ah, the sounds of my husband freaking out!


Nancy noticed this most clever use of a ladder and snapped this photo (ok, she took all the photos. I was late picking her up since I had my kids and forgot my camera) of an excellent way to display yard sale items. Brilliant! Must remember this for later!

Nancy referred to the best treehouse ever. Here it is. Not only is it solidly constructed, but someone lovingly and carefully sanded/stripped the entire tree so their kids wouldn't get splinters! Love it! What kid wouldn't go nuts?

Here is my 6 year old Campbell, joyfully and incessantly ringing this little bell that he found in a free box. Free boxes + children=happiness. Free boxes containing bells+ children=adults with headaches. But look how happy this made him.

Here is Hudson. His favorite color is yellow. Can you tell? This was towards the end of our spectacular day. He was tired. I was tired. Everyone was tired. Hudson says, "I can't walk very good" when he gets tired and drops his arms to the floor like an orangutang. (How do you spell orangutang?) He hunches over and eventually falls to the ground like this. Luckily, instead of doing it in a dirty thrift store like he normally does, he found this lovely patch of green grass to lie down on. He is holding his free golf ball.


I spent about $9 today and got lots of goodies: a very old chalkboard, a wooden sign thing with our neighbor's last name, countless toys and books and children-related items, kitchen towels and cloth napkins, and I can't remember what else. It was a perfect day!