Family Photolog

Safari Legos

Basement wall after cleaning, and cleaning,
and cleaning the crazy rotten wood.

Legoland! Phoebe liked it, but I'm not sure
if she liked it more than I did. Coolest store
on earth!

So what have we been up to . . . Well, Phoebe's liking preschool. She often doesn't want me to leave, but doesn't get upset when I do. She loves it as far as I can see, but that's not very far yet.

She's super into Legos which I think is about the coolest thing ever. I found my old space legos from the early 1980s and killed an entier morning building with them. Most brilliant toy ever created.

People talk about nesting. Whatever. I get it. But I said to Alisa that that term sounds like something suburbanites do when they go to the mall and pick out a bunch of color-coordinated crap for the babies room that they really don't need. I removed a rotten workbench that was mostly compost, but was once some solid 4x4s. You can see the beautiful basement wall left behind above. Nice, eh?

We had 6 cubic yds of composted soil trucked in for garden health and to fill the new 3'x15"x16' box I built from decking. Pretty fun to put together and fill. Gonna plan some blueberry bushes this spring. Should be a fun new endeavor. As you can see, I put my first year's hops to good use doing a fresh hopped IPA. Haven't tried it yet. Ask me in November how it turned out. I'm already scoping out a couple other areas in the yard to grow a couple other varieties of hop. So there's my version of nesting for ya!

Our garden was great this year. We still got some broccoli, kale, spinach (under a cold frame), raspberries, and carrots out there. But our squash/pumpkin patch produced about 70 squash total. What a great crop. We did well with peppers this year as well! I can't recall, but I think I filled about 30-40 pints total and have them frozen. A lot of nice greens right before our first frost last week.

Finally, we await child #2. Everything's going well. Alisa's doing well and we're finally wrapping our heads around having a second child in the house. I've struggled to comprehend that this child is coming since my life has revolved around Phoebe in a very good way. I'm still adjusting to being home. But I think the arrival of our new child will force me to stop puttering on projects, sit back and enjoy the great time we will have together as a family this winter.

We look forward to see you all when we do!