did we disappear?

no...we are just crazy busy. i have been working on the yard and the house--i actually fixed up rich and gus' bathroom (as much as i could). we aren't planning to seriously remodel the bathrooms or the kitchen for another few years, but the moldy sliding glass shower door had to go. it looks much better now. i did something really, really stupid (and really, really funny in hindsight) during my renovating haze. i thought i would try and level our bedroom fan while the fan was running on high, and i don't know if you have noticed from the pictures but our ceilings throughout the house have large beams (vigas) that run the length of the rooms and are about 8" from the actual ceiling. anyway, i learned that a moving fan and a very short down rod do not mix when one tries to adjust the pitch of the rotation. i basically forced the fan to smash into a viga, which solved the unbalanced problem. we will be getting a new fan shortly.

sophie's first birthday is in 4 days and we are planning a three-day celebration for it! on friday (her actual birthday), my sister lindsay and her intended, jake, are coming to town to stay with us for a bit. we are having a little party for sophie saturday night, so, we need to clean the house. then, sunday night, we are having a bigger party for sophie, so we need to clean the house a little more. then, on wednesday the 23rd (after we are all birthday partied out) i thought--also in my renovating haze--that it would be fun to have gus' end-of-the-year class party over here so now i have to clean A LOT. there could be as many as 70-80 people here; hopefully it will be much less...and it won't rain...300+ sunny days a year in albuquerque are pretty good odds. it could kinda be like the fan smashing into the viga all over again, though.

we had a lovely mother's day yesterday--gus and i went to flying star for breakfast then rich actually made dinner for everyone. i literally cannot remember the last time he did more than put a digiorno pizza in the oven if i didn't cook, so it was a huge deal. and it was good! we fired up the grill for the first time ever and had grilled chicken and grilled broccoli. yum.

i have shot several hundred pictures over the past couple of weeks that i desperately need to edit--this is from two weekends ago when gus decided he wanted to go camping (in the backyard). i'll post more of everything later.

gus and max being totally silly in the tent