Happy Birthday, Mom!

Yes, she changed our diapers
and woke us up for school.
In return, we played outside,
until the night grew cool.

She helped us write our state reports
and made us play our scales.
And in the case of arguments,
meted justice without fail.

So join me on this special day,
and wish her all the best.
It's happy birthday, Sandy.
You really are the greatest.

La Maison de la Porte Jaune

Well, I'm embarking on my fourth week in the new house. And since I've bored regaled so many of you with all the minutiae glories of this money-pit I thought I'd post some new photos to give you an idea what I've been working on.

First, I decided to put a new (used) front door, and I made it yellow, in honor of Lisa.


















I was about to clean my kitchen floor the other night, but I decided it would be far easier (and more fun) to simply tear it out. As it turned out, there were about four layers of flooring on top of a pretty nice maple floor.
























And one of the joys of home ownership is cleaning up the things that fall in your yard. Sometimes that's your neighbor's dog's "gifts." Other times it's the top of the silver maple that came down in the windstorm. UnfortunatelyLuckily, nothing was damaged (except for some of the fence). Here are a few pics I took before the clean-up.

I feel like quite the nagger, but...

I seem to recall writing a similar post to this one a few weeks ago. I'm just curious if anyone has good pictures to share from this past weekend. In leu of the correct pictures, I will now endeavor to recreate the weekend using similar pictures.



The cookout to feed five-thousand, or at least Daniel, Karl, and Andy


Aurora has quite the fireworks show





A romp through the sprinkler for the kiddies


The perfect end to a busy day