While we were busy getting the house ready, the pups were tied to our backyard stairs with a 50 ft. long rope each. Delighted with their newly obtained freedom, they explored every single inch of their parameter. They chased lizards, grasshoppers and showed incredible restraint by not getting into a barking marathon with the annoying Beagle that is staying “on the other side of the fence”. We are only missing a gate for the fence, which we worked on last night, but could not finish do to torrential downpours.

Yesterday, we bought an Ikea queen sofa-bed on Craigslist. Originally this three year-old couch would have cost us $900! But we were able to get it from a very cool couple for $200. We have new sheets, silverware, pillows and some food, today after work we hope to buy some dishes and pans move in by tomorrow!

None of this mattered today though, because Milton betrayed Yaku and Yana. I personally think Yana knew something was up, as she got pretty nervous when we put her on the operating table. Then again that may just be because she has finally built up an association between that table and having thermometers inserted in her bum. Anywhoo… In less time than it took for Caye to ask, “How long before the anesthetic takes effect?”, Yana was flat on her face and out cold – or apparently just REALLY high according to Milton. That’s where we left the two – with two huge rawhide bones for when they woke up and an extremely nice vet.

4 hours later, we picked up the puppies, who were super happy to see us, Yana even pee’ed herself with joy, and looking surprisingly good and  considering they just had their reproductive capabilities removed. Unfortunately, the good humor was not too last. 1 hour after getting home and Yana was in a lot of pain. She looked totally miserable, could not sleep and just cried a bit every so often. Then, she got lost… seriously, just gone! We searched in every nearby building, field, pasture, hole, river, every corner of the house and all of her favorite places. Nowhere. After 30 minutes of searching and calling her name in vane, things were seeming pretty desperate, especially because there is a bit of history of dog theft here. Caye started tearing up and I was ready to hop in the car and start searching the village. Before that though, I decided to peek inside of an old collapsed out-house and their was Yana looking up at me, drugged and confused. Very “emotional” Caye came over, we extracted the pup and headed back to the house for some serious cuddling. And that’s what we are still doing.

A lot of the photos are from today’s two round-trips to Ibarra. The road there is gorgeous and I finally got over my stubbornness (again) and took Caye’s very kind and constant advice to take photos while she drives. Have I mentioned that I am terrible at sharing cameras…?

Recently, I’ve been thinking about what seems to be a bit of a theme in our lives. Hardware stores. More specifically, visiting hardware stores every couple days for months, while making a home. If you’ve been following along here since last summer, you’ve probably picked up on this pattern a bit as well.

12 months ago, we were happily tucked away in our Beloit apartment. We were there for three years and made it into a great space. Nearly every single piece of furniture, we built ourselves, right there, with 40-90 year-old tools and salvaged lumber. We had so much fun making that space personal and filling it with plants, photos, art and a 1000 pounds of kitchen utensils and ingredients. Just a few months later, 36 hours after deciding to buy our boat, we packed up every last bit of that apartment into a u-haul trailer and moved our whole lives. The following 3 months were spent visiting hardware stores and making our small floating apartment into beautiful and comfortable home. We lived in Surkha for a total of 6 months, before hopping on a plane for a “short trip” to Ecuador. Then, surprise! we decided to stay for a year or two and guess what? We needed somewhere to stay.

Now, 3 months after beginning to rehab “the worst living space in the Hacienda” and dozens of trips to the hardware store later, here we are making more fun plant-holders, scrap-wood knife racks and shelves from salvaged crates. It’s all so so similar to the boat and Beloit.. – something that is both strange and very comforting.

So, long story short. We built a ton of stuff today. We created a huge “pantry” from flimsy wooden fruit crates and old flooring, a beautiful plant holder from hose-clamps, salsa jars and some wooden siding from a ancient shepard’s shack, a bar for hanging pots and pans made from a steel gate tubes and bent re-bar, a door-”plug” to keep the mice from entering under our front door, a scrap-wood knife rack for the three sets of knifes that family lent or gifted us and lastly a fantastic “bread station” with storage for my baskets, clothes, peel, razor, etc. (thanks beautiful!). We also cleaned every corner of the house, made another batch of yogurt and organized all our foodstuffs in the new pantry.

Now I am sitting in perfectly organized living room, listening to more French-cafe music, with incredible smells of a huge curry dish in from the kitchen where Caye is perfecting her art of phenomenal curry-making. We are both feeling great, accomplished and a bit more relaxed, with so much less left undone in our living space.

This weekend, the kitchen was used to make butter, yogurt, cream cheese and plenty of delicious snacks. The bread oven, birthed three wonderful loaves of bread on Sunday and four amazing pizzas on Saturday (the other oven at my dad’s house). The garden was worked on, more garbage was picked up, rescued mint and strawberries were planted and a compost container built. The house was organized, future featured photos to hang on the walls were chosen and edited and the couch was used to watch the BBC’s AMAZING Frozen Planet Special.

The truth is that both Don Santos, the welder and one of the hacienda’s tractor drivers, and Lluki, the carpenter and one of the maintenance guys from the farm, are both super nice people and they like Jax a lot. Plus, if Jax sits right there with them, they work in our projects, which is a huge plus in our life, because we need the masonry heater door Santos is welding and shelves Lluki is putting together for our kitchen and living room.

Today, we worked, worked and we are still working and will continue for another couple of hours. Our stomachs are singing/crying, but we have so much to do! French cafe music is playing in the background, a wine bottle sits on the table, green tea is visible and we each have a glass of water, so it seems liquids will nurture us for now.

Although we have yet to cook dinner, I’ll have you know that we made a wonderful pasta this afternoon for lunch, using our new (accidentally frozen) veggies and we had a delicious beet, broccoli and walnut stir-fry yesterday.

Life is pretty good, can’t complain! Lots of love from Ecuador.

After breakfast and brewing science time, we drove circles around Zuleta picking up bits of furniture (mostly Fernando and Caro’s old stuff) from the countless storage sheds scattered around the farm. We made one trip after another up the muddy path to la Casita with boxes and benches in hand. Our last big job before lunchtime was to dissemble a futon frame in el Molino (the water mill) and pack it, the mattress and various other household things, all up into the car. This was a big undertaking, but went surprisingly smoothly and we even got the car back to the house before the daily 2pm downpour started.

After a great lunch of make-your-own sandwiches with freshly roasted veggies and oven-roasted tomatoes, we headed back to la Casita to begin a thorough cleaning. The biggest item on the to-clean list was the wooden floor on the ground-level. When we first saw la Casita 2 months ago, the floor was completely black with decades of built up grime, soot, mud, etc. After 2 months of construction in the house, lots of muddy boots and a 2-day battle with a sander, the floor was beginning to look like wood, but still had a residual grime that gave a “muddy feeling” to the whole place. Today’s attack involved sweeping, scouring (on hands and knees) with steel wool, vacuuming, scrubbing with water and a hand scrub-brush and mopping. This combination definitely helped the room out a lot and once dry tomorrow, we’ll see how the finished product looks and work from there.

A couple of items are still missing from the house before we feel like moving in. Namely, the bed frame is still in the car, the refrigerator and stove need to be moved and we need to add a gas tank to the water heater. That’s pretty much it. Everything else can get organized once we are living there. Tomorrow, we  will work hard to tie up loose ends and who knows…?

This morning, after the first goodnight sleep we had in a while, we took off to see “La Casita”. The list that Jaxon made, painstakingly detailing each and every final project, was almost entirely scratched out and the maestros informed us that we could MOVE IN tomorrow! Although we could barely breath from both nostrils and our energy levels were way down, the excitement made us smile and we are ready to start the process as soon as the maestros clear their tools from the floor. So yeah, tomorrow the moving in process begins and maybe we will even spend our first night there, who knows.

Rewinding though, we were up at 6:30am this morning and by 1pm, we had visited the construction site of la Casita 5 times. Delivering paint brushes, testing the wireless internet range, answering questions and just checking in kept us moving the whole morning. Lucky for us, it was a gorgeous sunny morning and the rain storms did not kick in until after lunch.

The up-to-date list of incomplete tasks is as follows:

• Install the toilet
• Finish tiling the shower (we ran out of tile and so did the tile store)
• Move all the ugly wiring (source of much stress) above the ceiling. Out of sight, out of mind.
• Add some bricks to the inside of the masonry heater
• Add bench beside the other masonry heater bench
• Pour a thin concrete slab over the L benches
• Fix up a couple loose bits in the upstairs ceiling
• Fill a few holes in the wall with concrete
• Build a small roof over the patio
• Paint the whole house
• Connect the water sewage tubes
• After dried: Cover the masonry heater with Adobe and paint it white.

That’s it. Nothing else. The maestros are dead-set on being done by Monday. They’ve been wildly optimistic about the end-date since the beginning, so we’re trying to keep our hopes in check… Actually we’re not really… basically we’re extremely excited and planning on moving in on Monday, yes or yes. Maybe we won’t be sleeping there Monday night, but goshdarnnit, we’ll at least start moving furniture in.