Our new backyard 'ornament'

Work pace continues at the old Copland homestead -- as you can see, we have a new addition on our back lawn! I am impressed with how quickly the guys are moving with the clearing and excavation. We anticipate that the first concrete will be poured early next week.

We are finding that we are fairly pressed for time these days -- to say the least. For those of you who don't know, Tami, the kids and I will be off to Istanbul, Milan, and London in about 1 week. "Ahhh, sounds great." you say to yourself. And you are correct, it will be great. But in the meantime it has put the pressure on us BIG TIME to choose the decor, tiles, etc, as well as thin out the house (ie, move stuff to the storage locker), and prepare to move into the basement within 48 hours or our return home! So, as you can guess, it has been more than a bit chaotic around here.

We've had a friend staying with us for the last couple of days (sorry for the mess, Ryan!), and that has been an OUTSTANDING distraction from our activities, so we are thankful for that break.

Tempers do tend to be a wee bit short as we work through our preparations -- and the gender differences of comment interpretation is a fascinating field (or it would be if I wasn't always getting into trouble!) As an example, I made the following statement:

"I know that the tile you choose for the backsplash in the kitchen will be great, so go ahead and choose it -- I know I'll love it."

Now, my intent of the statement basically was to tell Tami "I trust your choices, and I am totally happy for you to do this because I know you enjoy hunting for just the right tile." (Guys out there, support me on this...)

WELL....

....apparently, what I actually said was, "I don't really care about this renovation, and choose what you like because I'm sure I won't like it, and I'll use it against you at some point in the future."

Maybe I will write the sequel to "Women are from Venus, men are from Mars" before this is all over!