We’ve been insanely busy here, but I’m finally ready to post some new house photos. There were some monstrous, gnarled juniper bushes in front of the house, almost completely obscuring the views of the river. I took a chainsaw to them, and had a friend remove the two young maples, which were badly placed and only going to become a bigger problem over time.

Just this week, Malcolm (my father-in-law) dug out the entire front planting beds, which took several days. Earlier today, Malcolm and I planted about 20 plants along the front, which will fill in a little over time.

Next up, a small hedge along the top of the front beds.

Pics of the inside coming soon….

We headed over to my friend Simon’s house yesterday for his daughter Grace’s 7th birthday. Evie loved feeding the chickens (including a bunch of 3-day-old chicks, not visible in the pictures).

There was a fantastic moonbounce in the front yard (I think these are called “bouncy castles” in the UK), so Emma decided to let Evie go down the slide solo. The first run went great, which I didn’t catch on tape. Evie’s second solo run, however, was a little bit of a catastrophe:

After a few seconds of bawling, Evie was game enough to try again, though this time on Emma’s lap. Things went much better.

Non-accidental words to date: Mama, Dada, Lenny (her stuffed cat), up, down, ball, bubble, pop, cup, hi, bye-bye, night-night, boo!

Possibly accidental words (or words said in context only once, never again to be repeated): Book, powder, light, and high-five (”hine dive”).

Here’s a sequence of the kitchen renovation—which is still unfinished. There was initially an add-on staircase down to the basement on the right, which took up a good chunk of the room needlessly. We also tore out all of the old cabinets, which were damaged and pretty useless. The one difficult decision was the old fireplace. The chimney had collapsed years ago, so it was unusable. After a lengthy debate, we decided to use the mantle and bricks elsewhere, and take it down. There’s going to be a pantry in its place.