We went to California for a little while to visit with the Queen of Paint, her husband (Stephanie's younger brother), and most importantly (sorry guys!) The Bundle of Joy, Stephanie's nephew. It was a lot of fun, although our time was mostly spent shopping, eating, playing with TBoJ, eating, shopping, and playing with TBoJ. We also went to a young hip temple that is kind of similar in genesis to Congregation Tehillah, and Stephanie talked best practices with her counterpart there, while I ate a lot of vegetarian Indian food. I also got to help buy a new macbookpro computer (which is SWEET!) and of course I ate far too much of far too many bad things. We didn't go to Disneyland, as Stephanie had an unexpected work travel on Monday, so I spent Monday morning at the airport, trying to get a different flight. Read a great book, TBoJ is a delightful kid-- always happy and smiling and giggling. Apparently, he has no concept of sadness, or fear, or renovating a house. He has a few words, a lot of teeth, loves dogs, loves to crawl, and he loves to eat. It was fun to be with him, and away from the pressures of the house. Another of the really good things about going away is how clean everything is that isn't in our house. Almost gives us hope! We do have some more construction photos of the house that I've put up on a separate photo gallery. They're not astonishingly beautiful, and they are not even very complete. Rather than spreading them around the internet for strangers to see, I've devised a cleverly fiendish method of allowing only people we know to see them-- So here it is: THE FIENDISHLY CLEVER PLAN Send me an email and if I know who you are, I'll write you back with a photo web address. Fiendish, clever, but not yet diabolical (Hey, I'm working on it!)