Our family photo for church.  This is as good as it gets folks. 

Eli came over for a good chunk of the day a couple weeks
ago and showed up with his shovel.  His dad (Mark, who's
finishing the cement in the purple shirt below), told him I needed
help digging out my sidewalk for forms.  They made a good dent
in the first 4' of 80'

Forms running along the side of the house

A lot of time was spent thinking about water run off in the
design here.  I'm mostly proud of my curve mixed with some
polygons.  I thought for sure Alisa was going to call me on that
and ask for all smooth curves or all polygons.  As a
geometry teacher, I wanted both in the project.

We all learned a lot this day.  A lot.  Like mainly
that I bit off more than I should have and got
lucky because I have amazing friends
and neighbors who helped finish this job.

I'm pretty sure I've shed some pounds lately prepping and pouring this new sidewalk.  We poured 3.5 cubic yds yesterday (260 sq ft).  Cement is my kind of work.  There's no time to think.  There's massive pressure to work fast.  I love that.  Seriously.  There was a point yesterday where I started remembering things people were asking me and I know I wasn't responding.  I was in a complete zone and it was pretty cool.

All that said, I clearly took on more than I should have.  But we pulled it off.  I spent a few weeks prepping the yard: digging out the path.  Building forms.  Packing the dirt base.  But yesterday Mark and Matthew showed up an hour early and I started to think we weren't going to pull this off.

The driver was a godsend.  He coached me/us through a few different points in the project and told us when to shift to different roles based on how hard the cement was getting.  A couple neighbors jumped in and did a lot of the finish work and cut all the seams.  I asked the driver "so, you have seen dumber than me and this crew, right?"  He smiled and with a raise of the eyebrows: "Oh yeah!"  Thats all I needed to know  It turned out great.  Pictures to come.

Next, we landscape.  Right now we're having a near flash-flood type rain and I have no silt fence out there.  Pretty good chance that dirt yard you see is mostly in the street and on it's way to the Mississppi.  But the new sidewalk is shedding water like a pro!  Go concrete! :)

Alisa's been picking out some plants and we hope to just mulch and plant--no more grass.  If we do put some done, Prarie Moon offers some varieties with deeper root bases that will hopefully help drainage and not need as much mowing.  But we hope to cover the yard mostly with prairie plants and whatnot.

In other news, Alisa's been at her new job a few weeks now and it seems great from my point of view.  She's been home for dinner more often and has Tuesdays off!  It feels a bit more in balance already, but we need to give it a few more months as we adjust to this and of course Kindergarten.

Phoebe loves her school and her teacher.  The class assistant gave a great compliment the other day about her.  She's very into school and it's super great picking her up each day.  We walk or bike to school and Alisa is biking to work now.  It all seems to be coming together.  We are very happy with the life our location allows us to live.  I'd love to get rid of a car and just be a one-car family (so that one can sit and collect dust too!) but Alisa is assuming she'll need to drive this winter.  We don't live in a good place for transit, unfortunately.  All the good busses and all trains are just a bit too far to walk to.  Anyway, someday.

Peter saw Phoebe do this with her bowl.  Now he thinks this
is just an acceptable way to eat from the get go.

Peter's been wanting to drink my coffee.  This
is just water.  I'm hesitant to give him a taste of
coffee as he may like it.  I tried that with baking
chocolate (thinking he'd never want choc again)
and he wanted more. 

The tag-along has been the preferred way to get to school.
Alisa's been carrying on to her new job most days.
We talked the other day about how satisfied we are living
where we are, having Phoebe close to home at school and
now Alisa biking to work regularly--I'm still trying to
convince her that winter biking is pretty fun.  Help me out please.

I'm getting blasted with ice . . . of course. 

On her way to her first day of Kindergarten.
Her school is awesome.  I love picking her up
and seeing many close friends there with their kids
too.