All of a sudden it feels like summer is just around the corner. The yard is all but bare of snow and bicycle helmets have taken the place of snowsuits in our front hall. It’s no longer getting completely dark at night and the grass is greening up nicely. In just six short weeks the kids will be out of school and Olof will be have a month’s vacation.

This year we’ve got nothing big like last year’s Legoland adventure in the works, but even so, we should have no trouble filling up the weeks. There’s a bunch of stuff around the house that needs to be done, and I’ll have to get cracking the whip over Olof’s back early on to make sure that we can cross a sizeable portion of it off the list. Honestly, most of it isn’t anything that he/we will have personally to do, but we will need to be pro-active in deciding what to do and making arrangements for the work.

The big projects we’re looking at are having the house drainage re-done and painting the exterior. The front porch railing also needs to be repaired or replaced, but we can’t really do anything about that until we take care of either or both of the first two things. In addition, I’d like to have the new flooring I bought two years ago for the hall installed, and Olof wants to put in an inside entrance to the attic crawl space. Probably we should have the bathtub plumbed in, finally, so we don’t have to fill it from the shower. And Tage wants to build a playhouse.

All of that will eat up a big chunk of time and a bigger chunk of money. I’m tired just thinking about it. Good thing we’ve got a vacation coming up.