Big enough house

So this is what it feels like to have a big enough house!  Sue is spending the night here, and even though both she and the boys have gone to bed, I can go back and forth to the basement freely, flipping on lights as I go, moving laundry, etc.  In our old house the basement was both Aaron's bedroom and the guest room.  Now the boys are together in the smaller main-floor bedroom, Sue is upstairs on a real bed in the larger upstairs room, and the smaller upstairs room has no current purpose.  How about that?!

This house is not excessive, but it has room enough to accommodate our family for the next couple of decades.  There's bedrooms for everyone when the boys are big enough to need their own, and even then there will be a room for guests and/or an office.  Someday we'll make the upstairs more full-fledged by adding a dormer, expanding the bathroom, and updating the insulation and wiring and so on, but for now, it's totally fine the way it is.  There's a good section of the basement that should do well for a music studio, with room for Dale's bandies too (whoever they may be) - and they won't even have to look at the washing machine.  That will leave plenty of room downstairs for repair projects, an art area, and well-organized storage (let me fantasize, all right?).

Sue spent the late afternoon outside in the yard with the boys, and they all loved that.  Jordan prefers not to get dirty but helped with the weeding anyway:  he told Grandma that he would use the shovel to scoop the dirt, but she should be the one to pull out the weeds where he had scooped.  Aaron doesn't mind at all being dirty; he dug with any available implement and said "Wormy, wormy, wormy!" every time they spotted an earthworm.  There were plenty - the soil is terrific in all the beds.  There's evidence of much successful gardening, including roses, blueberries, raspberries, peas, kale, broccoli, rhubarb, spinach, onions, and carrots.  We picked and ate some early arugula and admired the large rosemary bush.  The sellers let us know that there are lots of hummingbirds who would appreciate a feeder.  Sue is thrilled to have access to some garden space, and we are thrilled to have her go to town on our behalf -- she's an awesome gardener.  Dale is equally eager.  I'll play in the dirt too, but I expect my specialty to be cooking up all the fruits of their labor.

Sue had come not only to visit but also to free Dale and me to finish cleaning out the apartment.  We have now removed every item from there except the cleaning supplies, and 90% of the cleaning is done... I was disappointed not to get that last little bit done today, but it was better to just go home and have dinner with everyone at a normal time.  Scrub, scrub, scrub.  Every fingerprint on the matte white doorways, every mark on the beige carpet, every dusting of construction particles has to be cleaned up until the place is spic and span.  I feel like the Karate Kid washing all those cars.