A little bit more siding

Look. Now there's a little bit more siding on the back (north) side of the garage! If you look *really* closely, you can see Bobbi's cat climbing the shorter ladder on the left! You can also notice that the bathroom addition (just to the right of the garage/entry addition) still only has the wood slats on one band around the windows. We now actually *have* all of the wood to finish the bathroom as well as where we're using it on the mud/entry/ramp portion of the garage addition, but having it and installing it are two different things. Maybe next spring???

Today is also a big day as it marks 25 years of marriage for me and Matt. :) It's been a busy 25 years! As many of you may know, we try to get a photo of our whole family on the Sunday closest to our anniversary, but this year wasn't good for that. First of all, Gloria left for a week of camp this week, so she was not around. Secondly, Bobbi hasn't been coming with us to church at all since February and wouldn't be up to coming just so we can have her in a photo. Thirdly, Owen unexpectedly came home a few weeks ago from a trip to visit two of his friends who are working on a very up-scale ranch in Montana for the summer, and announced he'd gotten a job there himself (work was slow here, and he had his boss's blessing to take a few months off to take the ranch job) and he was leaving in six days to start work! So he wasn't here, either. And the Sunday *after* our anniversary we'll still be missing Owen and Bobbi, and *Rinnah* will be gone. We've often had family photos that are missing one of the kids (because they're still in Bulgaria, like this one):

Thirteen year anniversary in 2013 

or because one's in the hospital like in this one:

Bulgarian Christmas party, 2017

or because one just wandered off, like in this one that I posted at Christmas years ago!

Christmas 2018

...but missing THREE children is just not okay. So no photo this year.

It makes the family photo we got back at Leah's graduation that much more special!

And here's another photo we took on her graduation day that is also very precious to me. Two things I want to point out. First of all, Baby was with us in this photo. It is very dear to me to have a family photo with ALL of my children. Second of all, this one has a friend in it who you may recognize from construction photos last fall...