Turns out lumber companies are not so excited to spend a lot of time helping you figure out what and how much lumber you'll need if they know you will be comparing prices with other companies. So right now, instead on starting the daunting task of getting together a lumber take-off while the kids entertain themselves, I am writing this post.

Finley is staying home from school today. She came home yesterday with a low-grade fever and a headache, and woke up with the same this morning. So I opted to let her stay home instead of suffering through a day at school.

I forgot to mention the strange noises we were hearing at night. Turns out an opossum discovered Dragon's leftover food on the deck and was making nightly visits to finish off anything he hadn't eaten. It would then crawl up and dance on the roof above our bedroom in order to wake us up at odd hours. So one night, we heard a disturbance on the back porch, and went out to see what we could do about it. We chased the possum around a bit in our jammies until we managed to corner it while Chris attempted to slam a big trash can over the poor animal. It must have been really funny to watch. I don't know what we would have done if we had captured it in the trash can, but when it started to fight back and lash out at Chris's bare feet, he gave up. He was later told he should have kicked it, because the possum might have played dead. Maybe next time if we have shoes on.

Eggs. One of my favorite ways to eat eggs is hard-boiled. Here, I run into a problem. Fresh eggs do not peel well. I imagine that I would have to let the eggs sit for a month or more (like grocery store eggs) in order to get them in a condition where they would be good to hard-boil. Oh, the trials we face.