Dottie and Larry's visit

Dottie and Larry arrived by train last Saturday and since then we visited the zoo, the science center, took lots of walks to a couple of different parks, had a great lunch out for Mother's Day, Larry and Mark installed my new dishwasher, they hauled a bunch of someone else's junk out of our crawl space and laid down a plastic vapor barrier (which immediately eliminated the unpleasant crawl space dirt smell we had going on), we worked well into the wee hours scraping wallpaper glue off the dining room and kitchen walls and prepping the kitchen for painting (which somehow or other involved the use of a crow bar (you know how it is--if you're gonna paint, you might as well rip out the backsplashes), Dottie and I spent an entire day figuring out paint colors (which is a miracle because normally it takes me months on my own to make a decision), we spent lots of time eating and laughing and telling stories and playing with the kids and watching Matilda take her first steps. What a wonderful wonderful week!