We so love living here. The sun is now again rising shortly after we do.

One of the original builders of our masonry stove has been here repairing it. Today he came and replaced the composite surface with a neatly fitted one of soapstone. We darkened it up with mineral oil; unfortunately, the stove top gets too hot -- so the oil burned off....

We went up to Ikea in Montréal (2 hours away) and bought various shelving units for our living room, bed room, and computer room. The others are pretty bare-bones, but here you can see the fancier units we got for the living room.

Our mason also was able to find scrap soapstone pieces of a good enough size to construct a real mantel for us. The mineral oil does not burn off of the mantel. :-)

Daniela came to stay for a few days with Samuel, Sara, and Sonia and their au pair, Lena. The cousins really like playing with each other.

Don't miss the "Noah's Ark" panel above Timothy in the playroom. Janny gave it to us for Christmas and it fits in with the room perfectly.

We had a quiet family birthday party this year for Timothy, who is very happy that he is now Five Years Old! We opened a few gifts in the morning after breakfast. Timothy very much wanted to play pool with Karen, so we went to a great pizza place in Barre and did that and ate pizza, followed by sundaes at Friendly's. In the evening we had cake and a few more presents. A successful day, by all accounts.

Our friend Melinda came to visit for the day, with her daughter Carina. Carina and Clara really hit it off!