Daley Ponderings

How do I begin? Not really at the beginning.

June 15, we sold the house we were living in and drove to New Hampshire in two moving trucks and a minivan. (A very hearty and grateful "thank you!" to Ron and Ron for driving the trucks!)

The days preceding that day were extremely full, including two funerals for people from families dear enough that we felt it necessary to carve out the time to spend with them.

We did not technically buy our new house for another couple of days, but it did eventually work out.

We are staying at Jon's parents' house while renovating our new house.  This is for the very most part a good thing.  The only disadvantages we've found so far involve having things in two places.

Renovations are right now at the "rather overwhelming" stage.  There's a lot of work to do and we wonder how it will all get done.

At the end of June, we took a break to spend a week at the Maggie P with lots of family, including the Swiss cousins, and Noah and Joseph had their birthday together.

After we got back, Jonathan, Noah and Faith had two weeks of swimming lessons at the lake.  Jonathan started learning official strokes, and Noah got to the confidence level Jonathan had last summer.  Faith made progress in being comfortable in the water as well, though she still wouldn't put her head under by the end of the sessions.

For the past week, Jon and Noah have been in Pittsburgh finishing the fixing up of Carroll St, and getting some work done for Lime Daley customers.

I've been meeting with a bunch of contractors - plumbing/heating, painter, plasterer, chimney guys. A local college student has been coming over nearly every day for a few hours to scrape wallpaper.  It turns out when you start taking down wallpaper, it just goes and goes and soon you have two whole hallways including staircase of wallpaper to take off.  About four layers of it, too, a hundred years' worth.

Speaking of a hundred years.  Jon took off part of one wall in preparation for building a built-in bookcase, and he found a treasure!  A Mother's Day postcard from 1912, from the Sunday School of Smith Church (Jon's parents' church).  It is really neat.  We're going to copy one side and then frame it with the copy so you can see both sides.

Time to start getting ready for bed.  I will try to post updates more frequently, but it's hard to find the moments. Tonight, I found myself alone with the computer while all the kids were outside playing with the neighbors.  After some grueling looking at curriculum stuff, I thought I'd have a nice little blog time. (: