Last night Salome climbed on Ephraim's old bike with training wheels and started riding it just like that. Pretty impressive for a not quite three year old. Ryan is ready to take her on the trails.

I took these two pictures in our yard and love them, the because the tiny new fawns are the cutest little frolicking things I have ever seen. One morning I saw one doe with three fawns all playing together-so special. The second one is cool because all the bucks are regrowing their antlers which are super fuzzy at this point, so amazing to see this cycle of nature.

So I haven't blogged for a while on the house, feeling like there wasn't much to tell. There aren't a lot of visible changes, but as I sorted through the last few weeks of pictures I realize I am wrong, which is a very good thing. Although there are no finished walls, floor or ceiling, things are moving. We hired Ryan M., our brother in-law, to take over the main construction and he has been working on taking off siding, building stairs, reinforcing load bearing walls, replacing beams, not very fun work but necessary.

Plumbing has been under way for three weeks now, most exciting but difficult to photograph is the solar water fixture on our roof and solar water heater. Less exciting is the concrete slab trenches dug out everywhere to accomodate pipes and radiant floor heating in the bathroom. Our plumber has been working hard to get our house city approved to meet a state rebate on the solar heating, he is also working a couple other homes to meet the same deadline which makes for a busy plumber.

One odd discovery is the house's main water shutoff valves were cemented in under the floor inside, so the plumber is moving it outside under a mini manhole cover. Exactly what the thinking was to completely make them completely inaccessible we will probably never know. Now we are trying to decide if we should dig a 5 foot hole for the new water service or just leave as is and hope nothing goes wrong. Guess which one our plumber recommends.

The most recent discovery occurred last week. While taking siding off, Ryan M. found this leaded glass window placed above the main entry. Curious because there are no signs it was ever actually exposed and it appears to be much older than the house. We are debating on how or if we could reuse it. It is missing some glass, so that makes it tricky... we have some fun ideas though.

Summertime is in full bloom here. The first few weeks after preschool ended we had some time on our hands and have had fun with various creative projects.

Homemade face paints (or should I say body paints?):

Painting a shark in its actual size (Ryan and Ephraim get the credit for this one):

We had a great weekend with friends.  While Salome and I were only able to stay for a night, Ryan and Ephraim stayed two and did some serious rock climbing.  This was Ephraim's first time with ropes on a real rock, and of course he loved it.  This is the best part of being in back in Colorado, it is so beautiful.  It was also nice to not think about the house for a weekend.  I will put up pictures soon of the progress there.