92 County Tour: LaPorte County

Do you have it in you to see one more county this week? It was the third and final county from our little weekend getaway, and it also marked off the last of the "top row" counties in the state! We've seen all of them that sit on the northern border.

I presumed the county got its name because the neighboring counties were Lake and Porter. It had to be a mash-up of their names, right? Well if you can believe what you read on Wikipedia (or the internet in general) the name is French for "the door" or "the port." Apparently back in the day (like the 1800's) some French travelers discovered an opening in the forests that provided a doorway to land even further west. Who knew? Wikipedia knew!

By the way, that doorway is reeeeeeeeeeeeally wide now. The forests have long been cleared!

We visited LaPorte County for the first time Saturday evening (after all the dune hiking and such) when we went to visit my friend from college and her family. I'd told her we were coming in case she wanted to get coffee or something, but she just opened up her home and prepared a nice home-cooked meal! We had a wonderful time with them. (I would post a picture but I didn't ask permission, so I better not.)

Sunday morning, we drove to Michigan City to see the Washington Park Beach and the cute lighthouse. You know I'm a sucker for a lighthouse! We got there early enough that the place was still fairly deserted, and it was so calm and lovely.

 There was a marina right beside the lighthouse area, and boats were beginning to set sail for the day. A beautiful day to be on the water!

They also had a miniature "dune" between the marina and the boardwalk, so we walked that, and it was fun!

After we walked around there for a while, we drove over to an outlet mall nearby. We wanted to look for deals!

Know the main deal we found?

Yes. We went to an outlet mall and split a pretzel. LOL!!!

Monday morning, before we left to come home, we went back to LaPorte to get our coffee shop visit in! Based upon recommendations and research, I had carefully selected the KarMel Coffee House. It looked like it would be the PERFECT place for us.

It was going to take us about a half hour to get from the hotel to the coffee house, so we packed up the car, checked out of the hotel, and drove to LaPorte.

Made a wrong turn.

Ended up here.

 3/4 of a mile later, back here:

And shortly thereafter, we landed right in a front row parking spot at KarMel. FRONT ROW!

Here's why:

In case you can't read that, it says, "Sorry. We will be closed from Wednesday September 27th-October 8th. See you back here on Monday, October 9th." That was a whole week away! Our thoughts on that:

Fortunately I had a second recommendation for a coffee shop, and double fortunately, it was about a half mile away.

Rocky Mountain Cafe! Per a photo I saw hanging on the wall, the building used to be a filling station, but it has been transformed into a lodge-looking coffee shop. So cool!!!

Then:

Now:

(I blocked out those ladies' faces - they were in a 100 mile an hour conversation the entire time we were there!)

It was so cute inside - all lodgey looking!

Ryan got fresh brew and some delicious snack/dessert looking thing. I got a peanut butter/chocolate frappe that goes down in history as the most innovative and scrumptious frappe I think I've ever had!

This day happened to be our 58th monthiversary, too, so it was a really fun way to celebrate the day!

Thanks, LaPorte County! You were fun!

92 County Tour: Porter County (Part Two)

Earlier this week I told you about our hike at the Indiana Dunes and our visit to the little town of Chesterton (plus a couple of other things). All these were part of our visit to Porter County in the northern part of Indiana.

Today I'll wrap up the sights we saw in Porter County!

Sunday afternoon, we visited Valparaiso, Indiana, which you might have heard of because of Valparaiso University. On a whim, we decided to visit campus, and we also checked out a few other things around town. Here is a peek into our visit!

Our first order of business, upon arriving in town, though, was to find some ice cream. This part was kind of a comical debacle. In my pre-vacation research, I'd stumbled upon an ice cream shop called Valpo Velvet Ice Cream. It had great reviews, so I wrote it down as a place to visit. Ryan did some research of his own and also found this place on a list. He said to me, "We've got to try this Valpo Velvay Ice Cream place." I said, "Velvay?" He just looked at me like I was nuts, and I said, "VELVET?" We both cracked up. Apparently we are not high-falutin' enough for velvet to be pronounced velvay.

Some friends of mine (Hi, Jonathan and Jaclyn!) actually recommended this too, so we knew we had to go. When I double checked the hours online that Sunday afternoon, the website said they were closed on Sunday. But Facebook said they were open. We were so confused! We decided to just go see for ourselves. We found them open (although a sign painted onto the building said closed Sundays), but they only served ice cream and not the regular food menu on Sundays. Whew!

The inside of the shop was so cute. They even had painted all the chairs according to ice cream flavors! Ryan had to sit in the mint chocolate chip chair. Oh! And they actually HAD mint chocolate chip ice cream! (Remember how every place he has visited this summer has been out of mint chocolate chip when he gets there?) So it was kind of a red letter day. I really wanted to get a big fancy pants sundae, but we also needed to visit a coffee shop, so I was good and just got a single scoop of ice cream in a waffle cone.

 It was a really pretty afternoon, so we walked around the downtown area and searched for a coffee shop. We'd been told about a handful of them (college town = abundant coffee) and decided to just go into the first one we happened to encounter. And that was how we ended up in the Blackbird Cafe.

It was very much the kind of coffee shop you would expect in a college town (and close to campus, at that)! A cozy little place with local art on the walls, some baked goods, and multiple kinds of coffee. Ryan went with fresh brew, but I spied apple pie chai on the menu. (If you heard the podcast last week, you already know this story, so I apologize for the repeat.)

Apple pie chai is a drink I have only ever seen on the menu at McConn Coffee at IWU. It is my favorite non-coffee drink of all time, and actually ranks pretty high as my favorite drink of all time. It is truly like apple pie a la mode in a cup. I have never seen it on the menu at any other shop, but as soon as I saw the words, my mouth started watering and I just HAD to have it. I should have known when I asked for it to be made with nonfat milk, and the girl told me it didn't have milk...that I needed to ask more questions. But I didn't.

You guys, I tried SO HARD to like that drink but I just couldn't. It was a lot like drinking straight apple cider (with pie spice added) and I don't like apple cider all that well. I was SO SAD!!! It's the first time I have ever not liked a drink at a coffee shop, and in fact, I couldn't even finish it. Ryan did. I went back for fresh brew, and IT was really good. (Ryan said their fresh brew was the best he'd ever had at any shop.)

Apparently the key to the apple pie chai I like is that it's a chai latte. Important word.

We did enjoy sitting right by the front window that overlooked the street. We watched people out for walks with their dogs...very relaxing!

We walked around a bit more ourselves, after our coffee break, and then we decided since we were so close and the day was nice, we'd stop by the college and look around.

Valparaiso is a Lutheran college founded back in 1859, and it has some beautiful architecture. My favorite was the ENORMOUS chapel that was wide open for anyone to walk in. We took some photos. Breathtaking.

 Yes, this is the CHAPEL!

 View from the main doors.

 View from the balcony...amazing.

 Ryan had to take this one. Looking over the railing was too much for me.

When Ryan is set free in an empty church:

He cracks me up!

Also cracking me up...some rows were short on leg room:

We walked around for a while and saw some other really nice pieces of design:

We did get dinner before leaving the county - another of Jonathan and Jaclyn's recommendations turned out to be excellent. Tomato Bar Pizza was some of the tastiest I'd ever had. I loved sitting where I could see the guys hand toss the crusts. (Wanted to take a picture, but they could see me too, so I didn't want to be a creeper.)

So there you have it! Porter County did not disappoint! I'll wrap up our trip tomorrow - LaPorte County was our final stop on this tour!

Walk a Mile in My Shoes Wednesday: Stay At Home Moms

I approach this week's "Walk a Mile" post gingerly, because I know the whole stay-at-home-mom/work-outside-the-home-mom/work-from-home-mom thing can become quite the heated debate, and I plan to feature all three angles at some point throughout this series. The hope for today's post is not to make moms who work outside the home feel any kind of guilt, but rather to help all of us who don't stay home full time with kids understand what that lifestyle might be like!

It's ironic that I'm featuring this today, because just yesterday, I saw a post on Facebook from a friend who is not working outside the home for the first time ever, and she commented that while she has held a dozen or more different kinds of jobs over the years, this is the first time her job has been mothering full time, and in truth, she feels a bit lost. It is a job, and for many moms, it's a whole different mindset to settle into - and that takes some time.

So, just to clarify, today's focus is on moms who stay home with their kids and don't hold a full or part time (paying) job in addition to being a mom. Again, being a mom IS a job, and I want to be clear about that! I asked my friend Jenna Holloway if she would talk a little about this, because truthfully, if I had ever had kids, I'd want to be a mom just like Jenna. (I kind of want to be like her in many ways "when I grow up," but growing up is unlikely for me, so I'll just settle for admiring her character!)

Fun facts: Jenna was actually one of my students when I worked at Indiana Wesleyan in Financial Aid! I didn't know her then, but in a fun twist, she married a guy named Nate who happened to be in Ryan's PTA class when he went through school. So after Ryan and I were married, we ran into Nate and Jenna at church, and we all became friends together. Small world! Nate and Jenna were one of our favorite couple-friends to spend time with, and then God moved them out of state, and we miss them so much! Thank goodness for social media and texting, right?

Jenna is the kind of girl that everyone wants to be friends with because she's fun, bubbly, upbeat, encouraging, compassionate (you get the idea). And she is the same kind of person as a mom. She's very intentional about parenting well, and that's why I chose her to talk about the stay-at-home-mom life. Before kids, Jenna had been an elementary school teacher, and she was just going into her seventh year of teaching when she gave birth to their first child, Tucker, and after that, she left the workforce to raise her kids. She and Nate have since welcomed a daughter named Olivia.

 (Nate, Jenna, Tucker, and Olivia)

So here's what Jenna has to say to anyone who wants to walk a mile in a stay-at-home mom's shoes!

1. The transition from being in the workforce to being a full time stay-at-home mom is not as easy as you might think!

(Disclaimer: she does acknowledge this may not be true for some moms, but of course she can only speak from her own experience.) Jenna truly loved her career in teaching. She loved all the kids in her classroom and thrived on seeing the excitement on their faces when they walked through the door every morning. It was a contagious thing for her and made her eager to teach! She was working in her dream grade in a fantastic school, and as much as her mama-heart wanted to be home with her little boy, her teacher-heart wasn't quite ready to close the chapter on impacting a classroom full of little lives.


Jenna looked around at other stay-at-home moms who seemed thrilled to have the opportunity to stay home with their kids, and she wondered what was wrong with her! For Jenna, adjustment took a while. (She also confessed she may have put undue pressure on herself to act like life was going perfectly smoothly when it really wasn't. Haven't we all done that in some way? Bless all our hearts!)

Though the transition may not have been as smooth as she hoped or wanted, in retrospect, she wouldn't change her decision to leave teaching and focus on her own kids. For Jenna, that transition was a time of growth in her personal and spiritual life and gave her an opportunity to grow deeper in the Lord in ways she hadn't expected. A group of women invested in her and prayed over her while she adjusted, and that was so helpful for her!

Now Jenna can't imagine going back to work in this season, because she so loves her at-home life. (She also has the chance to occasionally watch kids for other families, and that gives her the chance to love on others while she loves on her own kids! The best of both worlds!)

2. Being a stay-at-home mom can be lonely and isolating.

Jenna is an extrovert. (BIG time!) She thrives on interaction with other people and loves long conversations. Obviously when she taught elementary school, she received all that and more (in excess) every day! She came home tired, but it was an accomplished sort of tired that fed her soul.

Having a baby brought a flurry of activity to their home with friends and family coming in to visit, but after everyone went home and Nate went back to work, Jenna struggled with loneliness. On one hand, she loved the quiet times of snuggling a newborn, but on the other hand, she craved social interaction with adults who could speak words and not just baby-talk. Prior to staying home, Jenna never had to strive to make social interaction or adult conversation a priority. In fact, it was quite the opposite! She had to work hard to make quiet and rest a priority!

For the first time, Jenna was at a loss - trying to figure out how to foster this important part of her personality! Fortunately, she found a group of moms who were similar in temperament. They encouraged and uplifted each other and found ways to get together and just be. Sometimes Jenna showed up in sweats with dark circles under her eyes, but she always left the group time feeling refreshed and full of life.

Jenna says if you're a stay-at-home mom, find other women who are in the same season or who have walked through that season before! Allow them to fill you with their wisdom and learn from them. Don't let sweatpants and piles of laundry keep you from inviting someone over to be part of your life! And if you're the other mama - the one who has been there and survived the transition - find a new mom and walk alongside her! She needs you!

3. Your "schedule" is not your own anymore. 

Jenna said she would wake up with wonderful plans to have a productive day, and then the baby would wake up early, spit up all over himself and her, and as soon as she would get herself and the baby into clean clothes, he would have a blowout and she'd have to start over. She found herself running late all the time, and that was maddening, because in her mind, early is on time and on time is late. (PREACH!!)


For Type A people everywhere, this loss of schedule control was maddening, frustrating, disappointing, and just plain hard. But in that season, she learned it was okay to let the day just roll. No one was clocking her time with a stopwatch, and if she was late to something, the world did in fact still rotate on its axis. (Well lookie there! Jenna has learned something I still haven't mastered!)

Through all of the loss of schedule control, Jenna learned in new ways how God shows His goodness and faithfulness. She experienced a closeness to Him during that transitional time several years ago, and it continues to carry her today!

Jenna's oldest (Tucker) just started Pre-K, and now he's gone for the majority of the day. She misses him so much, although she loves the one-on-one time with her little girl. (Olivia is 2 and Pre-K will come too quickly for her, Jenna knows!) Jenna plans to return to teaching when both their kids are in school, but she is grateful for this season of staying home! Double blessing? Right now she gets to be Mom AND Teacher!


So there you go! A mile in a stay-at-home mom's shoes! Great insights that can help not just the moms, but those of us looking in from the outside as we strive to understand a bit more what they're managing. It also shows us how we can offer grace and support!

Linking up with Tamar!

 

92 County Tour: Porter County (Part One)

Happy podcast Tuesday! We've got some stories from our week (which was apparently entirely centered around food) to share with you! Enjoy!

 Listen here!

Wanted to tell you about the second of three counties we visited in northern Indiana last week!

Our Porter County tour was actually spread out over three days, because we saw a little of it every day! (Our hotel was in Porter County, so it served as our home base.) This county was named for naval officer Captain David Porter. (He served in the war of 1812, so a little before my time.) The three counties we visited were all in a row, and this was the middle one. It borders Lake Michigan on the north!

The Indiana Dunes are in this county, so my post from yesterday fits in with our visit to Porter County!

Other highlights from this county included...

We ate dinner Friday night at Wagners, a local BBQ place that wasn't too far from our hotel. (It was in the town also named Porter!) We had arrived at our hotel in the late afternoon, after touring Lake County, and we didn't have specific dinner plans. Ryan looked online for a local place with good reviews, and this one won!

If you heard last week's podcast, you heard about our debacles here, accidentally ordering the wrong appetizer and shocking the locals by choosing chicken instead of ribs. HA! All our food was delicious, though, and the portions were extremely generous.

This was while we waited for a table. We were so hungry, we totally forgot to take pictures of food! We arrived right at the start of the dinner rush, so we had to wait about a half hour to be seated, and the place was packed the rest of the night!

After we were done hiking the dunes on Saturday, we drove a few miles away to the little town of Chesterton, where we visited a coffee shop! It was called the Red Cup, and it was in this really old downtown building with all kinds of character. I dearly love coffee shops like this. Ryan got fresh brew and a little sammich (which I promptly shared) and I got a caramel latte that was very good.

There was a Farmer's Market wrapping up across the street in the park area, and the coffee shop had screen doors, so we could hear the music and the sounds of the people milling about. It was all very quaint and darling!

(I took this picture when we left, but we sat at that table right in that window front!)

 Chalkboard signs = yay!!!

 They had a whole vinyl collection!

 Loved the tables....

 We looked a little rough, but we were happy!

After we finished eating, we walked around a bit, checked out the Market, and then I found this old bookstore with tall shelves and genuine old books. I was in book-sniffing heaven. Ryan...well, he took a rest!

And one last Chesterton find: Peggy Sue's Diner. (PeggySue replaced me as the Mid-Morning producer when I left the station. Clearly not the same Peggy Sue!)

So Porter County is pretty big, and we had a whole visit to Valparaiso that I want to tell you about, but this is already pretty long, so I'll save that one for next time!!