Knock on Wood

Hi all,

So, I must say that things are going very well in my house. The new co-worker is funny, good with the children and more than competent. So far it seems to be an almost perfect match (knock on wood). Our house is definitely one of the challenging ones, so I'm hoping we won't scare him off. The children don't seem to intimidate him, and they made him their personal jungle gym today.

Today was an end to our gorgeous and sunny weather we've been enjoying so much. Although it wasn't snowing, the rain kept coming down at various degrees of intensity throughout the day. And although I thought orchard tree-pruning might get canceled, it wasn't. We only had about half the group show up (1/3 were gone, and the other 1/3 had excuses, except one), and I'm not sure any of us knew what we were doing. At all. Because "trim the ones that go straight up" starts getting tricky. And boring. Especially in the rain! However, we hacked away for 1.5 hours, had tea break and went home. I actually had a fun time wrestling with the "brambles" (vicious raspberry plants) and it felt good to be outside working. Better cold than hot.

In the most exciting news of the day:

I BOOKED MY TICKET TO GERMANY!!!

Not excited at all, can you tell?

Now my brother just has to book his ticket and we'll be set. I used studentuniverse and I got a pretty good deal. With travel insurance it was right under $635 round trip. I can't wait.

But I have to, because it's in August.

: (

However, the first few months here have already flown by, and I'm sure that summer will only seem to accelerate the process.

Hope all is well,
Steph