It has been a while since our last trip to matthissen so we took advantage of the long weekend to get a snowy, frozen version of our favorite chicagoland hiking trail

We were ichatting with the Kennys today when some broadband issues caused the ichat to stop unexpectedly–catching us in these poses. By the last one we were preparing ourselves for it!

The in floor heating in the cement floor has been hooked up to the boiler and it's warm. Yeah!!! Also, Art put in the tubing in the ceiling so that our upstairs living room is also warm! These are amazing improvements. The floors in the living room are now quite comfortable–no longer are they freezing like they used to be! Of course the whole heating issue will be improved in another week when we get the front basement windows replaced… W. B. Prettyman & Co furnished the planks that are under our maple floors in the living room. I'll have…

A test and a preview for Newberry's online auction, coming soon! But right now this is just a test–I needed to post this to a website so that I can copy it to an email.    

Here's the basement with the new floor poured and smoothed. We'll be able to walk on it in a few days, but it will continue to cure for about 3 weeks. At that point the floor guys will come back and apply an acid stain to make it a light brown color, then they will wash and seal it.  I don't know what that piece of paper is on the floor– it was completely dark in there when I took the photo and it's the flash that lit up the room just for the photo. We may have a piece…

Here are the floors ready for concrete pouring. From the top down, there is tubing which will hold the hot water for radiant heating, a metal mesh, a foil mat for insulation, 4 inches of gravel, then the earth. There are pipes along the walls that collect any water that seeps up from the ground or though the walls. The plywood on the floor is just for the workers for this morning–they will move that once the cement truck gets here to pour the floors. EXCITING!!!

We got just a bit of fluffy snow and it nicely filled up the concrete handprint in back of our house!

Miles's science class has been studying crystal formation and he did this experiment at home over the Christmas break. He mixed up some salt water and left it out in this bowl. When we got back from Mexico, the salt water was gone and the bowl was covered in salt crystals. Very cool!

We're way past this stage now, but here are a few photos from the demolition part of our basement project.  

Much requested map