A typical Saturday morning in our house..I reach for my coffee frequently. I am not a morning person, and I usually exacerbate that problem by staying up way too late reading at night. I MUST read at least 30 minutes before sleeping to decompress from the day. I like this picture because it shows a typical morning scene at our house. Noah lounging, staring off, playing with his cow. Mingus being ancient and wanting more pats on the head, and me nearly immobile, barely able to lift the cup to my lips.

Wich brings me stream of conciously, sort of, to our Coffee Mill. The Run Easy. Erin has long coveted grinding our coffee by hand. We had dinner with some friends of ours a couple of years ago, and they had this great crank coffee mill mounted on a cabinet in their kitchen. You could adjust the grind, and the manual labor of it seemed appealing, I guess. Anyway, we eventually found one last summer at the local junk shop. Erin snatched it up from a pile of not yet inventoried items, and it has lived in our kitchen ever since. I do agree that it makes fabulous coffee. And it generates this really great cracking sound when the beans fall to their demise in the inner workings. It’s also awesome upper arm exercise. My only problem is that in the mornings I have zero motor skills, and so it can actually be quite awful to try + grind out my daily cup. I often hit my own arm with the crank, or coffee grounds fly up out of the drawer (note the rubber band–this is quite necessary) into my face.

At 11.30 PM, we put our bike lights on, and in our usual bike formation, with Erin at the front, Noah safely in the middle and me bringing up the rear, we biked through the quiet Iowa City streets to our awesome local bookstore, Prairie Lights, for a special midnight Harry Potter release party. We made it into the bright lights of downtown in good time, and with Noah excitedly holding our hands and wearing his best wizard hat, we joined the very long, down around the corner queue.

The line was abuzz with costumed fans, anticipatory kids and parents from all over the city. There was excited chatter rippling through the line about what the last chapters would reveal and how the epic story would end. At midnight, the line began moving quickly and we started seeing happy people coming in the opposite direction, clutching their new copies of The Deathly Hallows.

The Prairie Lights staff was incredibly efficient. One of the staff members’ daughters was standing inside, dressed as Hermione, directing people into lines based on whether they’d reserved a copy or not. There were plenty of books for everyone, and we were in and out inside of 45 minutes. Then we had an incredibly lovely midnight bicycle ride home, speculating on the various possibilities for the new novel. Of course by the time we got home, we were exhausted; however, this did not prevent us from staying up even later to read the first chilling chapter.

Noah’s t-shirt design for our family bike gang.

Noah arrived for his annual summer visit on Friday evening. It is the usual month full of grand plans that will go by far too quickly as we try to cram in as much fun and mom-son bonding as we can in our short time together. But, one of the best things we do, really, is just hang out. So the past few days we’ve been moseying around Iowa City, and getting Noah acclimated to being back at his old stomping grounds.

We got him his first personal library card, and he spent lots of time in the 741.592 section (all the comics and manga) of which Iowa City Public Library has an amazing collection. We did equations outside Van Allen hall, and Noah blew us away with his amazing mad skillz.

The legos have come out of their bin and are sprinkled throughout the house. Old cat Mingus is at this minute nuzzled down amongst bionicles and classic Star Wars pieces. Noah is with his cousins this morning, but upon his return, there will likely be a trip to the comix store and other fabulous Iowa City locations.