China Doll

Caleb left us last week to continue studying in China. Annabel really misses Uncle Caleb. She very much enjoyed having him here with us, and she can't wait to see him again. Thanks for the help, your friendship and the laughs. Lentzylvania just isn't the same!




Sumo Annabel!

Water Baby

Annabel seems to have gotten over her initial distaste & fear of the water, although she still doesn't like to get her hair wet (see the last picture below). All in all, she very much enjoyed swimming in her pool on hot days this past summer.

Library

Our close friends and family (and anyone else who has ever visited us) know that we are both book fiends. Jordan, being a true Lentz, will scrape by on the barest of necessities, but we always manage to find money to buy books. This house is only one room deep, so we decided to build a nice big library on the back to store our book collection.

The library will have 18' cathedral ceilings with rough hewn beams, which is a little bigger than we could comfortably tackle if we wanted to move into the house before snow falls. So, we ordered roof trusses and had them placed by a large crane. The easy way out? Yes, but it sure saved us a lot of valuable time!













Voila! Instant library.

Eight Months

Bananabel is officially eight months old, and she is starting to make her wishes and desires known in a very, um, vocal way. She is also at that stage where she puts EVERYTHING in her mouth (the photo above was taken right before she grabbed the camera in a misguided attempt to eat it!)

Speaking of eating, Annabel prefers to feed herself, thank you very much. She loves feeding herself whole steamed carrots & broccoli spears, but she refuses to touch them if they are ground up and spoon fed to her. Sigh! We've compromised by leaving a few cheerio's on her high chair that she can munch on between spoonfuls of real food. Other than that, Annabel seems to like everything you give her, as long as it's warm and isn't sweet potatoe!

The photo above was taken on the morning of her eight month birthday. She may be going through the terrible 2's a bit early, but we think we'll keep her.

Fast Forward

I haven't been very good at keeping you all posted (no pun intended) on the status of the house, so I'll skip the boring stuff and go straight to the major projects that have been done since I last made some updates.












With the exception of the roof, the "addition" has been completed. The "addition" (located on the right side of the photo above) will hold the mudroom/pantry and a small play area for the kids. Upstairs, the addition will hold the master bedroom and bath. (We've done this mainly to monitor the comings and goings of any and all future teenagers we may have!)

The roof on the rest of the house has been completed, and the dormers have been added. Jordan has been busy shingling the roof, and he expects to be finished tomorrow. Here's a more recent view of the house.




If you look closely, you may notice a few installed windows. Jordan is going to build french style windows throughout the house, but this will have to wait until the spring. As it can get pretty chilly here in the mountains, we needed something to get us through the winter. We hit the jackpot at a second hand shop in Kettle Falls, where we were able to get over half of the windows for pennies on the dollar. The great news is that we'll be able to reuse all of the temporary windows in other outbuildings as the farm grows.