We went for a walk in the woods over the weekend. We were a little disappointed in the nature to people ratio. I guess we shouldn’t expected huge swaths of nature considering we were within Chicago. Oh well. We did see this neat building on the grounds of an old tuberculosis sanatorium. Look at the great…

We went for a little walk at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Isn’t it funny how a little bit of life poking through like in the picture below can bring us such hope at this time of year. The girls were chasing some frisky chipmunks. They asked Brian to catch one – as if that were…

Our floors are done – yeah. I’m so pleased with how they turned out. I’m happy with how they fit with the traditional elements of our house. I feel like they’re too nice for all our stuff and I’m afraid to get then dirty. Look how pretty! Too bad we had to move our funiture…

Today, after I dropped Claire at preschool, I went out into my yard and it felt so good. I did a little cleaning up and looked around for some signs of Spring. Everything is so grey and brown and muddy right now but I’ll keep looking and I know I will see some green popping…

I have to decide on the stain color soon – like today. I think I was dreaming about stain color last night. It’s such a big irreversible decision. Yikes. My next post about floor will show finished floor!

Brian left for Vietnam on Saturday and he won’t be back for a few days yet. The girls and I decided to go down to the city and do some touristy things. First we hit the Sears/Willis Tower observation deck. 103 floors up – a good thing to do without Brian because he doesn’t like…

Not much happening here other than the floor being worked on and lots of wishing for Spring. Here are some photos from the weekend. Brian is removing the tack strip in the picture below. We let the girls color on some of the old carpet before we chucked it. And I uncovered that checkered linoleum…

Well, the work on our floor upstairs is done. We are just waiting for the finish to dry and then we can move all the furniture back up there. I can only peek from the stairs, but I think it looks really nice. Just having everything clean and even througout all the rooms is great.…

We found out on Saturday morning that our floor guy could get started on the refinishing and installing of our wood floors on Monday. Today! So our weekend was unexpectadely filled with shifting furniture and removing the last of the carpet from upstairs. By Sunday night I was pooped. We’ll be camping out downstairs until…

We were in the car talking about names. I said “Claire do you remember what your middle name is?” “Illinois” she yelled from the back seat “No honey,  your middle name is Eleanor. Just like Great Grandma Dice”   Here’s some of her recent artwork: