Inspired By Color

Thank you all so much for your sweet, loving and encouraging comments on my last post. Unfortunately we heard today from the computer "doctor" that nothing was able to be retrieved from my water-logged hard drive. I will seek a second opinion, but I am not optimistic. I'm torn between wanting to think about each series of photographs that was lost--while I can still remember them--and wanting to not think about them at all. We are feeling very grateful for this blog and the pictures within it. They are small and low-resolution, but certainly better than nothing. And, of course, we continue to ground ourselves in our many blessings.

Yesterday we signed the papers and became the homeowners of our very own house. We are still getting used to it; the lack of rules--in the absence of landlords--continues to surprise and astound us ("we can just take down this hideous ceiling fan!"). It really does feel as though the possibilities are endless. Last night we had a bit of a celebratory dinner in the new backyard with Katie and Aaron and their boys (and several hundred mosquitoes), and it was so fun to get a taste of what our new life will be. We are planning to move at the end of the month, but will be spending lots of time at our new address up until then, getting things ready.

We are doing some construction work on the house (or rather, hiring some friends of ours to do it for us: taking out a popcorn ceiling, tearing up the carpet in the playroom and putting in a wood floor, building some kitchen shelving, and installing a woodstove & hearth), and painting as many of the rooms as possible in the next couple weeks. This afternoon we spent several hours trying to pick out paint colors while drawing lines on the kitchen wall, designating where we want shelves to be.

In one way the process of packing and moving and preparing a new home has gotten easier with practice and repetition, but on the other hand, having a larger quantity of children each time we move does seem to complicate matters just a bit. It's also that the current ages of our youngest two are not particularly well suited for any project that requires Lena's and my full attention (such as painting an entire house in one week). Luke and Jaz were happy to watch a new dvd from the library, upstairs in their new bedroom, while we worked downstairs today.

Luke and Jaz: in dvd heaven
Zeb: not so much

But Zeben and Leo both require more parental entertainment. Our experience today pretty much pointed to the necessity of getting a mother's helper to come and be an extra pair of hands if we want to finish painting before we move. That said, we did get one productive stretch while Zeben was "helping" me to measure things in the kitchen . . .

Zeben measuring the oven

. . . and Leo was happily hanging out on the kitchen floor.

Leo at 2.5 months

Leo is lying on the blanket that Katie (our beloved) wove for him, and this afternoon we decided that it looked so good in the new house that we're using it as the sole inspiration for the color scheme (if you can call "crazy, funky, multi-colored" a scheme). I am so excited to live in such a colorful home! The sky is the limit (and yes, there will be at least one painted sky ceiling when we are done).