Welcome to the jungle

This last week has been kind of a blur--a very busy one. Evelyn came through her surgery with flying colors, only to come down with a high fever the next day. We were worried that it was a post-surgery infection; a long visit to the after-hours pediatrician told us that it was not, in fact, a bacterial infection in her ears, but a virus: hand-food-mouth, to be precise (not to be confused with hoof and mouth, or mad cow disease). She wasn't down for very long, but she did manage to get Andrew sick, and we kept both of our kids out of church today.

We've also spent a fair amount of time packing (naturally). But I did find some time to pick up some new furnishings for the kids (on sale at Big Lots). Evelyn thought she was big stuff in her overstuffed chair. And Andrew might be persuaded to finally give up his spiderman chair.


This week also featured another trip down to the house to get things in order: Dan and his dad put some light fixtures in and tried to fix the sprinklers; I spent the weekend decorating Andrew's room. To be specific, I painted a mural on his wall. Not a full-scene mural, but a series of safari animals around the walls of his room. I think part of me has wanted to do something like this since before Andrew was born; the fact that Evelyn's room already had a mural was only added inducement.

I think it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. (As well as I could have hoped, in fact). I was a little nervous going in that I'd simply mess up the walls and have to repaint. And it was fun to get paint under my nails again. It's been a *long* time since I've done that.

Here are a couple of distance shots to give a sense of the walls (you'll notice the larger giraffe cuts across the corner):



And then some close-ups of the individual animals.

We had to have an elephant, which is Andrew's all time favorite animal.



Close up of the baby giraffe:



And a monkey between the window and the closet. (Appropriately enough, since we often call Andrew our monkey). The monkey wasn't part of my original plan--I'd sketched all the animals on the wall and told Andrew what I was doing and he asked, "where's the monkey?" So monkey there is. It's tailless in the picture--I finally figured out why it looked so strange and added a tail after I took these pictures.

All I can say--I hope Andrew appreciates this!