What you see in this picture is the old fence on the left side of our house. This fence was built without much love before we bought our house in 2003. The wood was bad quality and the construction terrible. As a result, it only lasted for 10 years, which is not much for a fence. According to my research, a good fence should last about 40 years.

We had to think a lot before deciding to replace our old fence, mainly because of the cost involved. But the strong winds that hit California once in a while didn’t give us too much time to think. One day, while Bill was traveling and I was home alone with the kids, the fence started break-dancing with the wind, to the point of making Natalie and Diego jump up and down with great excitement. It is a miracle that it didn’t fall apart. I had to attach a chain from one of the posts on the fence to our deck to make sure that it didn’t collapse.

After the wind stopped, our old fence had to wait for the next step. We could have hired someone local to build a new one, but I really wanted my brother Alex to do it. He is the  person that I trust when it comes to building anything  for our house professionally and with love. The only problem was that Alex  lives in Florida and is very busy. He is a general contractor with a lot of work going on all the time.

But after 6 months, on August 3rd to be exact, Alex arrived with his family to build us a new fence. Yay!!!! It has been wonderful. We’re all having fun eating the delicious cuban meals that my sister-in-law cooks (she’s the best cook ever!).

Watching my brother build a new fence from scratch is not only fascinating but inspiring. I cannot wait to share the lessons that I have learned from this experience with you.

Alex is the person with the long t-shirt hair on the photo above. Can you spot him? You don’t see our old fence in that picture because it is gone. Our house wanted you to know that she feels very exposed showing her underwear. Can you see her little rectangular eyes looking up with a shy expression? The pick up truck on the left is the one we rented to transport the materials. The tree on the right is one of 3 illegal specimens that we own. They were  illegally planted by the person who owned our house before. But the truth is that those trees haven’t committed any crime. We demand that the city absolve them 🙂 When the city sends their tree trimmers to our neighborhood, they ignore our illegal specimens as if they were delinquents. So we’re in charge of doing their haircut once in a while. My studio is on the right extreme of the photo, covered by the tree.

I wanted to give you a sneak peek of what’s going on in my life now. We will be taking a break during the weekend, specially my brother who hasn’t stopped working since he arrived. The plan is to drive up to our cabin in the mountains, so we can continue eating cuban food in a natural environment. But I will be back here on Monday.

Happy Friday and have a wonderful weekend!

Elsita