A day of carpentry and spiders

We have a small outdoor area that we have some plans for. Part of the plan became reality today when Daddy and Nikolas went and bought a sandbox! At least that's what it said on the package. What was inside was actually a pile of wood and some screws. So here we go!

Mark claims he's not very practical, but I have found that to be untrue.

Almost done! Nikolas is making some final adjust-ments.


And, 150 kilos of sand later: Ta-ta! Now Nikolas can play in the sandbox while we make reality of the rest of our plans for this outdoor area , which means weeding, scraping the walls of the shed, planting flowers, and painting the shed, etc.!

Nikolas loves playing in the sand! He also loves Lona's old boots, even if it isn't raining.


Mark hates spiders. I don't exactly like them myself, but Mark is a self-proclaimed arachnofobic. Therefore it is unfortunate that our old house is full of them! After finishing the sandbox Mark went inside and found these two rather big and horrible ones. I caught them and carried them outside where they can start a new and better life far away from Mark. Nikolas was fascinated with them. He calls them "billekopp" which is a mixture between beatle (bille) and spider (edderkopp) in Norwegian. In English he calls them "pider".


They're rather big and horrible! The worst part is that after Nikolas had gone to bed and Mark was messing about in the room that is going to become his new studio, he found a much bigger spider in there. This time Mark (despite his terror of them he is really brave) managed to catch it in a shoebox, but we were too much in a hurry to get it out of the house to take photos of it. I will next time, when I have a huge spider safely trapped under a glass and not sitting in a shoebox that has big air holes in it and that isn't even see-through. Click the picture for a better view!