Just wanted to show you one of the bug casings that are attached to the walls outside here and there.  We have found several and I love looking at them.  They are so detailed.  The actual skin that split down the back and let the newly grown bug escape and start over.  I looked up cicadas since we can hear them outside now and surely enough, it's their casing.  They leave this behind and emerge with wings just like a butterfly!  How fun for them.

And here is a picture of the beginnings of the deck substratum.  The man is making sure the boards don't touch the soil so that they hopefully won't rot out very soon.  He's placing bricks to hold the base boards above the ground and will lay the actual deck boards on top of those.  The planter looks better now too, doesn't it?  It has had time to cure.  

We are looking forward to seeing Heather this week on Thursday!  She will be coming for a week and we will take some time to visit San Antonio and Galveston and play around.  It will be fun to have another person in the house.  We two get pretty staid and don't do much.  

When we got back home from our trip we noticed the toilet had been running the whole time and surely had wasted a lot of water.  We didn't know how much till Jer got a call from the water company telling him our water bill for the month would be $700.00!!!  But they said if we could show them a bill from a repair they would halve it.  So now he has bought new innards for the toilet and will install them and show them the bill.  We will only have a $350.00 water bill.  :o)  You can be sure we will double check for that hereafter.

I was going through some of my old notebooks the other day and I found a paper whereon I had written many times, "We will find the right place for us."  And surely we have done just that.  I feel so at home here--so settled and happy.