Lisa and I have each had separate, unrelated thumb injuries. That's right, thumb injuries. Lisa discovered that a pocketknife is great for cutting open boxes as well as thumbnails. I decided to see if a small jewelers drill bit would penetrate the thumbnail. It does. A tetanus shot later and we are able to empathize with each other very well.

We've been busy around the house. We've had a couple of small plumbing issues I've been chasing down. I've still got a washing machine leak to figure out and then I'm going to attempt to repair our irrigation system.

Lisa and I planted our vegetable garden yesterday. We decided to try something called square foot gardening which we're hoping yields a lot of crops in our little yard. It's really simple and was a lot easier to do than having to tear up our yard and add a bunch of nutrients to the soil. We just built big boxes to hold our plants and a special mix of vermiculite, compost and peat moss. We found out about it at http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ .

Gracie is learning more and more everyday, including lots of new sign language. She is able to tell us when she wants to eat or have a drink of milk or water. She also tells us when she's tired (not that it was tough to figure out before) and when she needs help or when she wants more of something. The best though is when she wants something really bad she'll sign "please" over and over again. She's teething again which has made for some rough nights.

I'll end the post here because I know everybody just wants to see pictures, and Lisa tells me the house isn't quite ready yet.