The house painters started Monday. Or maybe I should say, the house paint preppers. They've spent 3 days cleaning, scraping, and priming, and are nowhere near ready to paint. Maybe after a full week of prepping, we'll see some color on the house. 3 person crew x 5 days prep = one million weekends of me and Bill and Ruth time. I can't imagine how long this would have taken us. I'm glad we realized there was no way we could do this project ourselves.
Dear reader - and here I'm speaking primarily to myself, as I'm writing mainly to document these memories for my own future enjoyment - I must apologize. I barely captured anything here about our Costa Rica trip in summer 2024, and nothing at all about our two weeks in Prague and Vienna in 2025. Maybe someday I'll catch up, but in the meantime, let's forge ahead! This summer we're staying in the US. Time for a nearly 6-week long road trip! Why now? Ruth will be a senior in high school next year, so this might (?) be the last time we can all do such a long trip together. Bill quit his job in April (yay for FIRE, aka Financial Independence / Retire Early... but that's a whole separate post), so we've got this short window where we all have the time freedom to do it. Here's the plan: Leg 1 - Raleigh west to Denver. We'll visit Asheville, Chattanooga, Huntsville, Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and Great Sand Dunes National Park along the...