On the homefront [by Matt]

Like most of you, I am waiting to hear the details of what has been happening in Bulgaria! I have received a few emails with little blips of info. All in all it has been a good day with some complications, but nothing that has caused major problems at this point.

One of the emails that came through was also an updated itinerary for Adam. He has changed his flight to one day earlier, so he will now be arrived in Sofia on Wednesday afternoon and will have one more day to help Andrea with Tsvetomira before traveling home on Saturday.

In Minnesota, other than Reuben have a rough 24-36 hours with seizure activity on and off, things have been going remarkably well. All of the kids have been doing better than expected with Mom gone. Even when we did Skype on Sunday, we were worried that Gloria might not respond well to hearing and seeing Mom and Leah on the phone, but she thought it was the greatest thing and when the call ended, she was just fine.

I can't wait to see Gloria's face light up when she sees Mom and Leah and Bogomila (and Tsvetomira, though Gloria will not be as excited about T, since she is not used to us talking to T over Skype like we have been with B) on the next Skype call, whenever that ends up being. There will not be room for all of the family to come along with me to pick up from the airport, but I think Gloria will be one of those coming, as she and Bogomila have a special bond that they developed when Gloria traveled with us to meet both girls.

Anyway, I have to note a BIG reason things are going so well at home is that Grandma F (Carolyn) is here helping. She has been reading a ton of books, helping with homeschool, washing and folding laundry, picking up the house and doing all sorts of other things I probably am not even aware of. She is making it possible for me to get business work done as well as get some time to work on the new room in the basement. I lost half a day of taping time when I was holding Reuben on Sunday afternoon, but that was the more important thing to be doing anyway.

Here are a few pictures I took when all the drywall was up, but no taping had been started. As of tonight, most of the 60% of the joints are taped and all of the larger gaps have been pre-filled in preparation for taping and installing corner bead tomorrow. The goal is to have everything first coated by the end of tomorrow.

 

Looking from the window area to the hallway and closet.

The window wall. Working at night means it is always dark outside, but during the day, these windows flood the room with south light.

Owen's bed cubbie awaiting the mattress platform that will be put in after the drywall is done and the cut outs for two books shelves.

Time to get a couple hours of sleep before Gloria wants to snuggle with me, since she can't nurse with Mom this week. So far Reuben has been out solid for about 3 hours without any seizures. It would be wonderful if he could get a full nights rest and be a little more back to his normal self tomorrow.