a productive sunday

This girl came to spend the afternoon while her mom was hosting a wedding shower.  She was a little scared of the college guys in the house, so she camped out on my bed, looking nervous.

That's completely fine.

Outside Jay and the kids were rehabbing the doll house.  My parents bought this for the kids in the spring of 1989, our first summer we lived here, when Kirsten and Heidi were two and four.  Those little girls are in their late 20s now, and my own baby is nine, on the verge of being done playing with dolls, but we have grandbabies who still can enjoy this doll house so we're not giving up on it.

We've had it in other locations in the yard. Moving it is a big pain--they lay down pipe and roll it over the pipes.  That works great, but it's slow going.

It's been in this spot for a long time.

And the flower boxes under the windows are cute, but they're a source of rot over time, rot out the walls until the box falls off and a hole is left behind.

So he replaced the rotten wall, and also put down new linoleum. The old flooring had been worn to holes.

Holes!

That's never a good thing--linoleum with holes in it.

 But it's looking perfectly gorgeous now. This is the flooring I want in the cabin someday--throw away that disgusting, filthy carpet and tear up the 80s linoleum and put in this.  No worries about wet towels or bathing suits on the floor, coolers or dog dishes.  Just get on with your life.

 He replaced all the shutters too that had fallen off and it's looking GREAT now, ready for fresh paint.

Rabbits and other little creatures hide under the doll house at times, and this drives the dogs in the family entirely NUTS.  They have dug and dug at the back thinking they're going to find a rodent of some sort.

Keep digging, Fools.

 They hear your frantic slobberation and just exit out the other side.

A week or two ago I was concerned that this ivy was entirely DEAD. I moaned about having to peel all those old dead ivy vines off the house and what a mess.

But no. It just took a while to get the sap flowing from one end to the other.  It's fine.

These guys were here, guys who have been scattered at different schools, lots of homework and schedules, have hardly seen each other in months, but that's all over for the summer, so they were all here at once today having fun.

When they were winded and tired they sat down for a break on the toilets leftover from a remodel job Jay was involved in last week.  I told them to smile.  

They tried, so then I suggested maybe NOT smiling would be better.

So we've got some smiling and some not, all hot and out of breath.

What a great Sunday this was.  love you all, Mom, aka Val, aka GRANDMA