The house is feeling ever more like a home. Just in time for us to head out the door. We're slowly cleaning up the yard, trimming the palm trees and raking eucalyptus, oak, and various other leaf debris from the ground. Florida, in case you do not know, is one big pile of sand. The grasses can take and cover here and there, but this yard is like the beach without the ocean. Sand everywhere. All around us, neighbors have geen lawns of thick grasses, but we know their secret: they spend a king's ransom on irrigation, making pretend that they live in a well watered soil district. We do not care to. We are making what will be a gradual transition to a xeriscaped yard, low water needs, native plants, etc., but it will take a few years. Last week we put two baby long leaf pine trees in the front. They have already started to shoot skyward. The kids are coming to like the new home. Some days they play in the back, under the carport roof with their various toys, but lately they have taken to playing on the front porch. The back get dusty and the surface is asphalt, the porch is tile. Maxim finishes her first year of kindergarten next week. Noah completes his first year of nursery school. They are both excited for the trip north and seem to look forward to our impending two months in California. Noah can pick out Massachusetts and California and Florida on a map of the United States. Maxim wants to know if there will be girls her age in California. We hope so, but you never can tell. Marcela has completed work on the books and materials she had from the Ringling Museum as well as just finished her work teaching book binding to the special collections librarian from Eckerd. I am done with classes this week and have two sets of final essays to collect next week. We head out two weeks from tomorrow! We cannot believe it has been less than a year since we moved from our home in Maynard and sometimes we all still think of this a little bit like a dream that we will wake up from to find ourselves again at Sudbury Street. Florida has been different, and interesting, and full of new experiences. We are happy to be settling into our new lives.

New Home
Well...we're here. We moved all day yesterday with the help of four students from school. They were convinced to help when they were offered money. The kids were great, they only fought six or seven hundred times during the day. ;) Today our backs and legs and hands hurt, but we have begun the slow work of unpacking and arranging and wondering where everything will fit. We moved up in terms of yard sized, as this picture shows, but we diminished our overall inside space. This was done for financial reasons, but we are happy to be closer to each other...for the time being. It reminds us of our Hull house, with the living room melding into the diningroom, melding into the kitchen. But Marcela has a studio, and we have space to expand the house in a few years if all else goes well. The best part, though, is the yard. This time, our backyard has room to kick around a soccer ball, strike a tent, and even put a pool. We will probably build a ground level deck in the next few weeks under the carport roof. Right now, as the picture below shows, we have put our outdoor chairs and sundry other things there. Today was windy, which blew it all into a pile. Ken R. and I assembled the plastic shed in the background last weekend. Too much house work has set me behind in grading papers, which I must return to shortly. The kids are playing ball in the back yard. Maxim has asked that we never move again. Noah still thinks we might be hiding the Maynard house somewhere. Although he has slept soundly during the night and during his nap, so the arrival has settled something in him. We are all tired, but relieved to be in.