Ella Posing

With just over two weeks at home until our departure from St Pete for the summer, I've realized we better wash the summer clothes. It's hard to imagine, since we just cracked 40F today...and it felt freezing, with a cold wind and hidden sun.

Ella wants to put on every item of clothes that she sees, sometimes all at once! She especially loves hats, shoes and dresses. She wanted to put on a wet dress that I was hanging on the line, and I convinced her to accept this shirt instead. And then she posed in front of the mirror. I grabbed the camera halfway through, and love the images!

Dad, I think your photos last summer weren't accidental--I think she was posing even then!

Replacements

Our skyline. The strange building is some scientific computer lab/office, we think. It's not on all the maps. To the right is the southeast corner of our lovely Pinetree Park.

I've counted 25 working smokestacks. I love them because they're very useful as a windguage. Click on the photos to see them enlarged, and check my count.

That's our replacement couch/bed in the boxes. And the kids loved to climb into our blanket-on-the-floor-bed the next morning.

And you ask why the bed is still in its box? At 10:00pm, the night before, we started to put it together. When we finally reached the 'bed' section, Eric thought to check out the springs. On the first one, they were popping off from the first day. But, it turned out, the new one had it even worse!

Those white plastic clips are supposed to be holding the metal springs onto the wooden frame. Guess somebody either made it poorly or dropped the whole shipment!

After two nights on the floor, we received and assembled our new couch/bed. It's not as pretty or comfortable as the previous one in couch-mode. But much more so in bed-mode. Maybe not having broken springs helps.

We've had quite a crazy week of household crises. Last night, I had to get up every two hours to change the drip bottle for the leaking radiator. For weeks it's been dripping. But at 1am, it started pouring. At one point, it filled 20L in 2 hours. Today, the plumber was here for 2 hours to replace the valve, known as the "Amerikanka" (female American). Interesting. I wouldn't mind being replaced for a few days so I could catch up on sleep!