end of july

that last homecoming picture was followed by the discovery that the water pressure was oddly low in the kitchen.  tracking the funny sound that we had taken to be the air conditioning, I opened the basement door - to rushing waters.  water was pouring over the sill in front of the water tank enclosure, spewing in every direction.  we finally managed to remove the bookshelves and the panel, and ben braved the freezing water to turn every valve he could find, to no avail.  I ran outside to call a series of plumbers, none of whom worked on well tanks, till one finally suggested we flip the circuit breaker on the pump.  that finally did it. 

whew.. you can imagine the many calls to our brand-new insurance agent =p, the plumbers, the demo company, the adjuster.  the emergency plumber bypassed the burst tank so that we could use the other tank while the new ones were ordered, but when he came to install them, he found that the second tank had already started leaking, so we narrowly avoided a second flood.  whew again!  welcome home ;-)

here comes the dumpster

drywall, carpet, furniture - pretty much everything in the basement was carted out

the clean up was done within a week, but the remodeling didn't happen till november, so more on that later.





view from the patio behind the pool - we could usually find our turtle friend on that branch

 

downtown st. joe

being introduced to the community =p

first homemade pizza, a milestone ;-)

lunch making buddy

outside Nye's apple barn

boxes are endless fun

discovering the sprinkler

 

 

 

we took the train in to chicago to get a last-minute passport for little miss:

last time we used this, buddy was probably si's age

the infinity sculpture at millennium park

 

double thumb suckers

big sis

all of us crammed into the back of a taxi for Chinatown, where we had a delicious dinner before narrowly making it back for the train

 

 

 and back at home..

 

 



this girl can make things out of anything, I'm telling you - that's a person on a sled, made of grocery store twisty ties

pool and bikes, the essence of summer

stalking, at the age of 5 months

hmm, maybe this kid needs his own backpack

home is where these sweet kiddos are