Woke up to breakfast in bed this morning. Last night was homemade merguez sausages (lamb, curry, cumin, etc), and kale with cannellini beans. Oh, and we got called over to the neighbors for an impromptu concert on the new piano they got the kids. I taught the youngest the baseline to "Heart an Soul" (it's one of the very few songs I remember) and she spent the better part of the day getting it right. The kids are hilarious/smart and total hams, so it was pretty amusing. Your seafood sounds good, Michael. As does what I assume to be your summer off! Between boating, gardening and such, I bet you find an outlet for your energy... maybe you won't even require an insane amount of ibuprofen when you're finished. Thursday through Saturday was unbearable as usual. Our village promotes village-wide garage sales, and it seemed there was one at every sixth house. I've got nothing against garage sales, but imagine ten times the normal amount of traffic in your neighborhood, trucks pulling trailers making inexplicable U-turns, nobody obeying stop signs, and cars making stops for no good reason... I'm happy to see it end every year. Today is rainy and chilly, so I don't get to play outside, but here are two pics I took yesterday, and one I took a couple weeks ago. Is it any wonder spring is the happiest season of them all? Jaz and the tulips: Izzy smelling the tulips: Izzy smelling the daffies and looking at the trout lily carpet (a couple weeks ago):

Chris, where do you live? Don't print this photo. It is really a bad photo. Like the board going across to keep the net off the water. The net is still up, but not as obvious and the plants are starting to grow. Next year, I will post a photo, then you can print it. As for the pond, I love it. After losing a close friend ten years ago, my pond served as my "quiet space of reflection," and my new ponds serve as the same, even now that the reflections are much happier. My pond have become my favorite gardening hobby. I keep my fish pond free of algea with a UV filter. I had always planned on building a green house on our "next" house and using it to as a pond room. Our "next" house, did not allow for it which is why it is down the very steep hill by our house. My advice, build it close to your house or deck so you can sit on the deck and throw feed to your fish. Very relaxing watching the fish nibble. At least for me. If you did a stream bed down around the steps, that would be cool. Just use a skimmer and recycle it back up the hill via a pump. Go to the pond forum. Well worth the time with a plethora of knowledge and really good advise. The phot gallery there will give you lost of ideas and photos worthy of printing.

I thought I would give an update. Since our chat with the neighbor in November, there haven't been any more visits from the police. We're pretty sure that he can't hear the drums anymore, because even on the weekends when we are pretty sure he is home he hasn't called the cops. There's even been one or two occassions where he and my husband have had occassion to chat about something else. Things are much more peaceful, and I'm no longer fearful every time I hear the neighbor close his door or see him outside. The more time that goes by the less and less I believe the neighbor's story about how the cops and the apartment manager all told him that they were going to tell my husband to stop playing the drums. I'm just not buying it. It doesn't make sense that they would tell him that and then not put it in their reports. I only believed it when he first told us cuz he sounded sincere. Now I'm thinking he's just a very skilled liar. Based on his claim that the manager had told him she was going to evict all of us if we didn't settle things, and a few posts from property owners here and on other boards that they wouldn't renew a lease with a tenant that had a lot of complaints against them, I got worried that we wouldn't be offered a renewal. I didn't want to accuse the manager of telling us one thing and the neighbor something else, and I didn't want to bring up his accusation that she was going to evict all of us. But I wanted to make sure that we were going to be offered a renewal when our lease comes up in April. I had mentioned this to my husband, and just yesterday he had something else he wanted to talk to her about. So, while he was there he asked her if there was going to be any trouble with us renewing our lease after all of the trouble with the neighbor. She laughed, said if there was anyone she wasn't offering a renewal to it would be the neighbor, and asked my husband if he'd like to sign the new lease right then. I'm seriously doubting that she said anything to the neighbor about evicting us. So, given the evidence, or perhaps lack of evidence to substantiate the neighbor's claims, we're pretty confident that he's lying his head off. I figure that he realized that he wasn't going to be able to force hubby to quit the drums by calling the cops all the time, cuz they weren't on his side about it. He wasn't going to be able to get the manager to tell us to stop cuz she wasn't on his side either. Maybe he was even told by the cops that if he kept calling them they might write him a ticket for wasting their time after they had told him it was fine. So he tried an approach he hadn't tried before, he tried being nice. And it worked. So there's a tip for people with problem neighbors....if being nice doesn't work at first, try being an a-hole for a while. Then when you're nice again it'll be such a relief to your neighbor they'll be happy to listen. Now, why he felt he had to lie and tell us that the cops were telling him something different than they were telling us, I don't know. I think he was counting on us not having the police reports, or maybe that they wouldn't be as detailed as they were. Oh well, I don't care. I will feel more comfortable when he's gone, but at least until then things should be much calmer.

I've had two but not at the same time. The first was from Germany and worked out good. She was a real part of the family and we continue to keep in touch with her. She was here in 2001 at the same time as the terror attacks. I know that was a very scary time for her family in Germany. The other was from Brazil and was here in 2005. She was a nightmare and ended up going to live in another state. This was her goal all along. I found that most are from fairly wealthy homes which is why they can afford to come here in the first place. With the German girl, she told me that it cost her parents $18,000 alone for the program costs. She said that this covered her program in Germany (the one she pays to come here) and the program costs for the U.S. It also covered her airfare and her week long introduction course in New York. It did not cover her spending money. Her parents gave her $400 per month. We did not receive any money, but we knew we wouldn't. Also, we read thru many bios and picked the ones we thought would be a fit for our family. The info provided to us had written recommendations from their teachers, parents etc. We did have to do a little bio about our family but I will say that the one from Germany told me that if she would not have accepted us as her American family, then she would not have received another chance, in all likelihood. I wouldn't tell you not to do this because there are great experiences out there. I will say though that if something doesn't seem right, do not hesitate to get the kids out of your home. Also, when it didn't work out with the Brazilian girl, I demanded that they move her out of our school district. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.