Making Progress

For the past few weeks (months, even years now), this man:

has been working like crazy to get our house into some sort of shape. One of his most recent accomplishments has been to install this window in our basement. It replaced another "window" - if you can call several pieces of clear plastic caulked into place (and poorly caulked at that) a window. It is amazing what a change this simple upgrade made in the basement. In addition to the window addition, he cleaned and de-bugged the room it belongs to, set up some shelves, and even created his own office space. One-third of our basement is finally habitable. I think I might be in love.

As if that change wasn't enough, Aaron also contracted with some cement guys:

to come and lay our new and improved patio. Of course, he had to do a lot of work to prepare for this project, but he got it done in time, and over the course of the past week the contractor came and set up the forms:

and then poured the cement:

Yesterday we celebrated with a family gathering on the finished work of art. Would you believe that I didn't take any pictures?