Heat Wave

We didn't do much outside this week. After a slow buildup, we set records with around 100 degrees for three days in a row. No thunderstorms for relief, just a gradual cooling off period that we are in now. This coming week should be better, but getting the house cooled down at night is difficult since we can't leave many windows open due to burglars. At least it is comfortable this morning.

Today is our anniversary, 7 tumultuous but good years. Maybe this will be our first year of stability. We are going to visit some gardens and a nice town nearby. Finally get to be outdoors!

Since doing anything more than sitting with our underpowered A/C on wasn't really an option, I made some good progress on the website. We also renegotiated our land purchase and should be able to wrap things within 5 weeks or so. Sure wish I could visit it this fall!

We visited a model rocket launch to celebrate 50 years since landing on the moon. 

Then we went to the beach.

Dress-up time.

Fun with Mommy at the water museum.

So It Begins

I was feeling pretty wiped out from the last week of school, but Naomi insisted that we go to Zutphen yesterday for a celebration lunch at our favorite Moroccan restaurant. The girls had another good report, so it was a treat for them, and a celebration that Naomi is finally done with her unpleasant colleague and fully back to work. We even got a chance to see my school and have fun at a nearby skate park first. A nice start to the vacation. I am wiped out though!

This week is supposed to be super hot. Lots that we want to do, but it will be hard to do anything at all when it is in the mid-90s and humid! Maybe we will have to take a trip to the beach or something.

For once, we had a nice meal at school. Usually the food is terrible. This time they found some refugees to cook for us. Nice little cultural bridge that a former refugee set up. Great middle-eastern food. Moral of the story: if you want to eat well in this country, don't ask Dutch people to cook for you.

One of the neighbors filled up a dumpster with cedar siding. I turned some of it into usable boards this week.

Too much fun at the skate park.

A delicious celebration.

Almost There

This week at school was a lot of work. Wrapping things up with the students, starting the report meetings, and doing some prep work for next year. At least I got to come home a bit early on Friday. This coming week will just be some meetings and more prep work. Feels like it should have been summer break a few weeks ago, but we are almost there.

Came across some cedar lying in a dumpster just down the street. It was the cladding on a house. Some of it was still in pretty good shape, so I have been working on salvaging it. Hopefully I can get a bit more today.

The weather has been cooler and and rainy, which we really needed, but it has slowed down the tomatoes and I have felt a bit crummy all week. The girls have had a cold too.

Haven't been working too much on my business lately. Focusing more on finishing up the novel (again) and planning out the dome. Don't seem to have motivation for much else. Yesterday we took the girls to the skate park for the first time. I was crushed to see that they had fenced it off, closed it down. We practiced a bit on the basketball court instead. Abigail is really learning to rollerblade. Amélie likes the skateboard, but gets bored with it quickly.

We have a few baby tomatoes.

The girls built a tower that they wanted to send to Auntie Claire.

Old Friends

We had a nice dinner last night with some old friends from Mali. They both happened to be in the country, so we invited them over. Finally got my meatless burgers to the point I was hoping for. Hard to tell them apart from the real thing!

I also built up the cages for the tomatoes. They have doubled in height these last couple weeks. Now it has cooled off for the next few days at least, so that will slow them down. We have our first green one out front!

I haven't been waking up quite as early. Was hoping that trend would continue. Things have been quite busy, so maybe that is it.

This week was a bit disappointing at work. For my business, I had an install that didn't go well. Ran out of time and made some measuring mistakes. Will have to go back. The clients seem happy, but I am not.

At school things didn't work out so well either. I was given two large tasks to focus on by the management team a couple months ago - developing a new math program in the first three years, and helping to develop/coach the new project based learning program. When I met with my team leader about the hours I would get for these tasks next year, she said she would have to check with the director about the math development, and for PBL I would have nothing.

There are a lot of teachers involved with PBL, and I was basically in the #2 position as a decision maker, advisor, coach, etc. When I told the #1 guy that I wasn't going to have a position next year, he went to the team leader and said that if this was the case, he wouldn't do it either. They can't afford to lose him, so chances are I will get some hours. Rather demotivating to have to fight for something the school wants us to do though, so we are both losing a bit of steam with this task, because of this and many other reasons. We will see how things go.

In other news, we got our fourth front door this week. It is, once again, sadly made. Sharp ends of staples sticking out, large gap in some trim, jamming in the heat, paint drips, etc. We can't understand how this keeps happening. We said that we don't want a 5th one this time, we want them to fix this one and give us a partial refund. It is taking up a lot of our (mostly Naomi's) time to deal with all of this. We will see how things go.

Abigail's first birthday party! She went without Amélie.

New tomato cages.