Not a lot of posting going on here but I've got a good excuse!

The beginning of our summer has been nuts. A few weeks ago we got approved for a home improvement loan through our city. Thank goodness as there are several things, especially the roof, that need to be fixed. It has required multiple strangers coming to our home and we haven't even begun construction yet! We've had our field agent come to go over what we want done and whether it qualifies or not (so far everything does, but we do have a limit on the loan amount so a lot of stuff won't be done I'm sure). We've then had the Roto Rooter man out to inspect the sewer pipes and another gentlemen out to do lead testing. We have gotten some initial bad news; our sewer pipe is not in good condition and is constructed of a material that the city requires to be replaced, additionally the outside of the house tested positive for lead paint. The lead paint is not a biggie, if anything it could be good in that it could qualify us for another program that would pay to have the windows replaced and the exterior of the house repainted at minimal cost to us, freeing up money for the other loan for other things. The sewer pipe is the biggest problem as there is nearly 100 ft of pipe to be replaced that runs the entire length of our backyard and driveway. Two things worry me with this: how expensive it will be and the possibility of our chainlink fence getting destroyed. The backyard is no big deal, it needs to be dug up and redone anyway so this will just help us out in the long run on that project. But, we'll cross bridges when we arrive at them.

Now we wait for the work orders to be written up, then the bid process begins which means more strangers in and out of the house. Thankfully my parents live close by and we have lots of things we can do outside the house as strangers raise the boys anxiety levels to the "mom can't stand one more minute of this" level. I'm just hoping we can get work going before the end of the summer.

We had planned to start The Prairie Primer this summer, but that's officially on hold at this point. I don't want to start it just to have to stop due to the construction going on. I do plan to have the kids do their reading, writing, math and nature study anyway. We'll just have to see what happens.