The lane is now considered better by our drivers than the road leading up to it, so we declared victory. It was soon Thanksgiving, and we shared a wonderful dinner with the Laughlins.
It is absurd how fast things grow down here, and we found to our surprise that our view of the ocean was partially blocked! You can see our video of "The Return of the View" at :
Of course, there are always things that go wrong. We noticed a bad smell behind the Spiegel's house and soon determined that there was a blockage in the sewer line running down the hill. After some fruitless attempts to clear it, we called in the plumber. He was also unable to clear it, and out came the picks and shovels. What we found amazed us all - the line was flattened for about eight feet, including the part that went right under one of the Spiegel's column.
Moving the column was out of the question, so instead we moved the pipe.
Our resident family of streamer tail hummingbirds has grown. Here is one of two juvenile males that entertain us with their dogfights over rights to the feeder.
Bob Hollenback arrived, followed a few days later by the construction crew that are building his house.
In what seems to be a tradition, they all brought their broken tools for Tom to repair.
No problem, a couple of hours later they were all shipshape and ready for work.
Of course, Bob needed lots of building materials, and that means lots of trucks. Two at once makes for somewhat of a traffic jam!
Progress on the house has been amazing, with the masons putting up somewhere around one hundred blocks a day.
The kids came over for a visit, but as you can see our original group have grown up, and we now have another generation of little ones,
Most evenings we have a happy hour down on our porch to watch the sunset and talk about the days progress.
So now we wish you all Happy Holidays, and send our love from Jamaica, Mon.
