Happy Birthdays and all the other news!

Happy Independence Day! We hope everyone enjoyed the holiday! We are way, way behind on the blog, so we have a few shout-outs and a lot of news!

From July 2nd we wish to say HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY TO KRISTEN, our sister-in-law (shown left with all the Haus boys). Kristen is a terrifically fun and beautiful person with a hilarious, sassy sense of humor, and we love her very much. Her big 3-0 celebrations are actually happening this coming weekend, and we are so sad that we cannot be there. We hope she has a wonderful time, as she very much deserves it. She has a baby and a toddler to run around after, so some wine country time is just what the doctor ordered.

Also from July 2nd, HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY TO JENNI, a dear friend (and from back in the day, Sherry's Lil Sis from Chi Omega!). Speaking of babies and toddlers, Jenni has three and, with her husband David. is preparing to move the whole brood abroad to continue their work. So, she's in need of some R&R as well, and we hope she got some on her big day. Jenni and David just started their own blog, The Williams Family Journal (click to link).

Also from July 2nd, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO BRAD AND ADAIR. Sherry's brother and his wife are an inspiration to married couples everywhere!

Also, we are still behind on uploading pics and blogging out our California trip for Julie and Raul's wedding. We've hit a picture glitch, but hope to blog the heck out of their amazing wedding at some point this week. Sorry, blog-watchers.

We can, however, update you on all the events since we returned. We need to start with a giant THANK YOU TO ERIC. We returned from California on June 25th, with Brian's brother Eric joining us. Brian had a few additional days off, so Eric came out and the two of them set to work on our house. Eric was so nice to come out to visit and help us with some home repairs, but we had no idea how nice. Eric looked around the house and decided he wanted to replace our kitchen floor. He's incredibly skilled in home improvement, so he hauled Brian to Home Depot and went to work. They ripped up the old tiles and tore out the floors all the way down to the sub-floor. Then, a portion of that was rotted so they ripped some more out. Sherry came home from work to find a hole in the kitchen floor looking down at the washer and dryer in the basement. It was crazy. They then replaced that wood, added more wood, and put in a brand new slate floor. The kitchen now looks amazing. However, the two of them worked so incredibly hard over four or five days, that they were up to all hours of the morning working on the floors and other projects around the house (fixing doors, raising kitchen cabinets, putting up drywall and shelving in the basement), that they barely ate or slept. Sherry felt bad for them and was beginning to worry that the neighbors were going to think she was running a prisoner work camp in her home. They did get out to see a Red Sox game, which they enjoyed, and we got to take Eric to one of our favorite fun local restaurants, The Barking Crab, but it was definitely a working trip. We have pics of the work in progress, and will post them soon. We are forever indebted to Eric for his direction, dedication, skill and hard work, and our home is beautiful as a result. We are so lucky.

We are also blessed with great friends. While Eric and Brian were putting in the new floor, three friends, COURTNEY, ABBY AND MICHAEL, asked if they could come over and help. We told them we did not need help, but they insisted. Courtney and Abby are fellow residents of Brian's (pictured right with Brian) and Michael is Abby's fiance is getting ready to make the move up to Boston from Nashville. The three of them went to work painting our office, with Michael providing experience and direction, and all three plus Sherry providing labor. At one point, we all laughed that we had three surgeons, a fire engineer, a lawyer, and a Ph.D. working on the house at one time. What a skilled workforce! Abby and Courtney also helped Sherry with the last moving load, and we are very grateful for that as well.

We spent the rest of the long weekend working on our house when we weren't working at our jobs. We cleaned like crazy (and are now way too familiar with the inner gross-ness of our heaters), bought new appliances for the kitchen, put furniture in the office, purchased curtains and rods for the office, painted and bought new hardware for the second floor bathroom, got new accessories for the third floor bathroom, installed our downstairs phone and several other little items like that, installed a new doorbell, had some art framed, bought new hardware for the kitchen, and so on. We shopped for (but didn't decide on) all kinds of stuff for the house, including curtains for our bedroom, a sleeper sofa for the guest room/office, and several other things. We made way too many trips to Home Depot.

Last night, we celebrated Fourth of July in a low-key way. That's pretty hard to do in Boston, which really goes crazy for the holiday, given its history. We had a wonderful, quiet dinner on a rooftop of a charming Italian restaurant in the North End with fireworks sounding around us. Then we headed home to our roof deck. There were parties EVERYWHERE around us on the roof decks around Charlestown, including all of our neighbors. It was a whole different world of parties up there, and we decided we have to have one next year! We haven't seen so many people on rooftops since Mary Poppins. We had a great view of the fireworks from the Esplanade. We hope all of you enjoyed Independence Day!