showing off the house

Last night we had Bob, Aruna, and Jules over for an early dinner. It was our first time to have guests in this new house. The weather was gorgeous so we had the big glass doors open, with the sun spilling in. Zach made salmon with wild rice and a great salad. I had coloring pencils, markers, paper, and some stuffed animals out for Jules to play with, though one of her favorite occupations for the evening was watching Sierra, who amazingly didn't run up the stairs and hide under the bed as soon as she saw these new faces! In California she'd always been pretty open to new people, but since the move her tolerance for strange stuff has been much lower. But last night she actually hovered at the bottom of the steps quite a bit, occasionally coming down to sit on her rug or venture out to the patio. She even came within a few feet of Jules, of her own accord, which was another surprise. But to her credit, Jules was great about not approaching the cat, not making sudden movements, and in general not doing anything to frighten Sierra off. All around it was a great evening. I look forward to having more people over for dinner.

Today Zach and I had tentative plans to go into Geneva, but didn't really get up and dressed till the afternoon... and then we got a knock on the door at about 1:30pm that was Michele and Gerard, the neighbors. Turns out Zach had talked to them last Wednesday and invited them over for tea for this afternoon, then completely forgot about it! But they're sweet and very understanding and came back a little later, once we were a bit more ready. We sat together for about an hour, having a pretty good conversation (all in French!). They're such great people, Michele's gonna look after Sierra while we're in Chile which is such a lifesaver for us. She seems to really enjoy Sierra (who wouldn't?!? hehe).

Zach borrowed Bob's power drill this week so we could put up the curtains in the guest bedroom, which we got around to doing this afternoon-- yay! Slowly, but surely, everything's coming together in this house. I really love how it's looking so far, but there's definitely still a bunch more tweaks I want to do here and there, a few pieces of furniture to buy still. I don't want to rush it, though... just taking our time, making sure to find stuff that "fits" the feel of this place.