Its been a busy week. We've had some kind of get-together every night this week, and its been really fun. Things are coming together with the house, furniture has been purchased, some pictures have been hung, but we kind of forgot to start settling in socially. Its nice to have started that. Even Milena is making some friends.

Claire definitely has the advantage. She's friends with EVERYONE in her class. Then a few weeks ago she moved from Kindergarden to first grade, and so now she's friends with TWO classes. We'd put her in Kindergarden again because of different age requirements in WI vs.

Maine. We figured a second year of kindergarden never hurt anyone, but I guess she was paying attention last year and didn't need a repeat. First grade is awesome, I'm told.

I've done a bit of painting. Claire's room used to be pink PINK! Pepto-pink. I thought it would be fun if she got to pick the new color. But she's artistic, and that didn't go well. She was talking about painting squares and stripes and swirls and using 17 different colors of paint. So I told her that I would be picking the colors, and she finally agreed to that as long as there would be 'more than one color, Mom'. So there are three, and it turned out really well. I have before and afters, I'll post them later.

Then I gave our bathroom a facelift. It used to be a lovely mint green:

And now its so much better:

It felt good to paint over the green with a really nice brown. I took out the big bulky white blinds and put window film up, which I love. I hung some pictures. Then I got some towels and rugs that match, a new shower curtain, and suddenly its like a new room. Milena's is next.

Also, last weekend we went to Green Bay, and the highlight of the trip was the zoo. I love this picture:

Claire drops the giraffe's cracker when she is surprised by its tongue poking through the fence, looking for that cracker. Good stuff.