Mama's Got a Fuse Box, Daddy Never Sleeps at Night

It's been a while since we last posted, and a lot has happened! Namely, the Aldrich Family Reunion in Estes Park, CO. Although Bren and I only got to go up the mountain once, we were lucky enough to spend some serious quality time carousing with the likes of:



Mom O.!



Dad O.! (Check out the new grill he got us!)



Cory!



Wes...and the fancy lad behind him is Porter!



Porter smells chicken.

Unfortunately, both Wes and Porter were stung by hornet/wasp/bee things (otherwise known as the jerks living in a crack in our porch stairs). Thus...



No, we didn't throw a meringue pie at them. It's insecticide. The directions said to use it at dusk, when the jerks would be "at rest," so we went out at 8PM, thinking it was pretty dusky. Apparently we were a bit early. After we sprayed the crack, one by one, the curious pests began arriving at their former outpost. Bren sprayed each one into the gunk...we stopped at TWENTY FIVE, intent on saving the rest of the spray for a REAL dusk attack tonight.

On to happier happenings on our front porch:



Also with Mom O.'s help, I transplanted our geranium and zinnia. I have terrible luck with plants, so I hope she's right when she says geraniums are "impossible to kill!"

Like I said, we were able to visit the extended family in Estes for one day. We spent the night in my grandad's cabin on the Big Thompson River. While we rested peacefully and safely inside...



Miles slept in a parachute and warded off raccoons. He's so hardcore! Kids, if you wanna be tough like Miles, you have to...



Eat your veggies. (Note that our other, itty-bitty grill has been happily demoted to side dishes.)

Cory, Wes, and Porter stayed with us for a few days in our sumptuous guest quarters.



Now our only tangible reminder of their visit is temporarily immortalized in plaster dust...



How could we get anything done on the house with all this excitement, you ask? Have someone else do it! Yesterday, the electrician came to replace our infamous fuse box. Now it looks like this:



And here's the shiny new one:



An expensive couple of hours of work. So, when the power went out for two hours this morning, I was more than a little concerned. Guess it was just a coincidence. Whew!