Not sure if I’d get a better shot of the gown–here it is! Carrying the gown to school

Yesterday was the last day of school for both kids (Liam because 8th graders are done after graduation, and Miles because he's missing the last 3 days) Liam makes me look short It's a big day for Miles too–next year he'll be in the upstairs part of the school, moving into intermediate science class, and eating lunch in the school cafeteria instead of the classroom. Yay Miles!

Liam and John heading out for graduation The students lined up by height to walk into the auditorium–as one of the 2 tallest, Liam was first to walk in! Liam's class sings the class song. Liam was in the back to the right–not in the view. Liam receiving his diploma from principle Mr Beaudoin. That's Liam's friend Val next to him. A surprise to us was that they announced 3 distinguished student awards, and Liam was one of the recipients! Yay! Teachers nominated 14 students based on grades, leadership and character, and the students voted.

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We took the bus to Navy Pier today and walked south along the lake to Millenium Park. The city has painted these trees and installed them on the west side of LSD, just north of Monroe. Salvia in bloom in Millenium Park. I've planted a few clumps of this in our backyard, but I'm not sure it will ever look this beautiful! The sculpture garden on top of the Art Institute's new Modern Wing has a new sculpture–these jet engines. In a case of liking a piece of art better before I read the artist's statement… I thought it was…

On Matt's instructions, we uncovered and swept the basement floors this weekend. We really love the mottled, tan color of the concrete! I'm thinking about painting the walls blue, with white trim.

The masons were here on Saturday and they bricked in the bottom half of the opening that used to be a door under our stairs. A window will go in the top half, but today it looks like a walk-up take out coffee shop! Another view. Note the fine new brick work above the opening. There was an arch there that was falling apart, so they dismantled it altogether and built a “lintel” using the same brick. Nifty! The main mason is Polish and doesn’t speak a lot of English but his vocabulary of brick-related terms is impressive. He had…

I did a lot of work in the garden this weekend, mostly in cleaning up the flower bed area that is out of the picture (and only about 1/3 done, yikes!) and the black-eye susan area in the center. We are thinning out the abundant black-eyed susans and containing them in a lozenge shaped brick enclosure. Liam commented from the stairs that it's a letter C, which I'm tempted to keep 🙂 but when it's complete it will be an oval. We've had a lot of rain, including two major storms this weekend that dumped sheets and sheets of rain…