Today is the last day of school and the day of Ana’s birthday party. She celebrated her ninth birthday at the Emory pool with a group of friends. Everyone came home with her on the school bus, got into their bathing suits, and walked over to the pool for swimming, pizza, and cake. Happy birthday, Ana!
Ana and her guests at the bus stop
Today was Ellie’s last day of elementary school.
Ellie, Abby, and Dinara and their fantastic art creations
Sold the Duplex today. Feeling a little sad and a whole lot happy.
We met with our architect, Bonnie, today and worked on the renovation plans and design of the remodeled house. Jean and I have been tinkering with different floor layouts for several weeks now, so it was fun to share our ideas with Bonnie. Now we go back and forth for a couple of weeks and work like crazy to finalize plans and get all our materials submitted for the next meeting of the Historic Commission.
Every year Fernbank Elementary School has a book float parade, where each class picks a book, builds a float based on it, and then everyone parades in front of the school while the fifth grade band provides the marching music.
Ana’s class chose The Lightning Thief for their float
Ellie and Dinara both played clarinet in the band
We decided to take ten trees down: seven of the unhealthy trees recommended for removal and the three near the house and driveway. Yesterday and Today the trees came down. Now the logs are piled high, and our backyard looks like some giants forgot to clean up their lincoln logs.
In the spirit of outside living, we loaded up the girls and two friends in the RV and headed for Florida this Spring Break. We spent a day with friends in Anna Maria, explored a few beaches along the gulf coast, visited the Everglades, and spent two days with Brother Stu, Amy, Alex, and Dylan. Waves were jumped; alligators were sighted; good meals were shared; fun was had.
At the Everglades with Hana and Brynn
Joyful jumping at Amy and Stuart’s pool.
We are seriously considering the possibility of living in our RV while we renovate. We could find a campground east of Atlanta, drive the girls into town to school each day, and save a lot of money by not renting a house or apartment. So today we took the RV in for some repairs so it will be ready if we decide to go for it.
We live in a historic district. The homes on our street were built by Emory University in the 1940’s for faculty. This means all changes to the exterior of the house must follow specific guidelines and be approved by the DeKalb County Historic Commission.
To that end, we met with the representative of the Historic Commission today to discuss our basic plans for renovation and to ask questions about what we can and cannot do. He was very nice and gave us a very good idea of how to proceed with our home redesign.
Today an arborist came to look at all our trees. If we renovate, we will want to take down two trees close to the rear of the house and maybe another if we extend the driveway a bit.
Well, it turns out we have several trees in poor condition. Nine trees were recommended for removal due to lightning damage and beetle infestation. Yikes!