The living room remodel continues at breakneck speed. The Mayor finished installing the wiring during the week, and Uncle Matty came over for another productive Saturday. The living room now has insulation, drywall, and a new door. 
Here's the outside of the house as of this morning. We now have two little porch lights, as well as an outdoor outlet and flood light for the driveway.
Here's Ela in an old-fashioned dress that the hobbit wife used to put on her doll, "Letty," when she was a wee lass (the hobbit wife, not the doll).
For reference, the picture below (courtesy of GranDma) shows the hobbit wife, circa Christmas 1983 with her doll "Letty."
This past weekend, the Lloyds and Uncle Matty came over to help with remodeling. Here are Matty and Chad posing with a new hole in the living room wall.
Here's the work crew posing with the front window.
Here's the bundled-up hobbit boy. With three big holes in the wall and the drywall gone, it got quite chilly.
And here's the living room in its current state. The new window allows actual sunlight into the living room and makes the entire room much brighter. The Mayor is taking a night class to prepare for his Professional Engineering exam, but decided that he would fill up any extra time with remodeling the living room. Thanksgiving is the target completion date.
And here are the girls.
And here's the whole family.
Mommie and Auntie Jen took the hobbitlings to the Woodland Park Zoo as a last hurrah for the summer before Auntie had to go back to school. Here's the little hobbitling girl in her zoo outfit.
And here are the hobbitlings on the way into the zoo, each wearing their "zoo hats."
Here's Boookie practising "prowling" at the zoo.
Here he is watching the monkeys.
The little hobbitling princess had the mother of all blowout diapers. Mommie came in to find her virtually swimming in her Princess onesie.
Here's Boookie helping Daddy wash the car. Apu and GranDma gave us SheBe car, so we're selling Gordon the Fizzing Whizbee.
The Mayor has been busy finishing up the room, and here is the finished product.
Here's the Boookie getting ready for a bath.
Boookie has an outside squirt bottle that is his to play with. He has two rules about the bottle so far - the bottle can't be brought inside, and he can't squirt Mommy, Auntie Jen, or Ela. As you can see from the photo, Daddy is fair game. The little guy is pretty accurate, but that's not surprising, with the genes he has to work with. One of his parent's first pseudo-dates was at the gun range, where the Mayor shot a smiley face at 15 yards to impress the future hobbit wife.
The Mayor's remodeling efforts continued full-speed this weekend. The weekend commenced with adding a final coat of drywall mud. Over the course of the weekend, the walls and ceiling were primed and painted, the doors were replaced, the wiring was completed, and the floor was installed.
Here's the Boookie "Helping Daddy." We don't know why he's wearing ear muffs to mop the floor...
Starting to lay the flooring.
The weekend concluded with moving the bed from the living room back into the bedroom. Baseboard and crown molding will get installed over the next week.
And here is Pastor Kelly baptizing Ela.
Great Grandma Ruth came to see the baptism and to meet with her namesake.
And here are four generations of ladies from our family.
Ela and Boookie in their jammies.
Boookie talking with his mirror friend. Like his relatives Auntie Sexist and Uncle Matty (and his daddy), the lad enjoys looking at himself and talking to his reflection.
Here he is walking in Daddy's shoes. The Mayor remembers clomping around in Grampz' shoes back in the day and enjoys watching the tradition stay alive.
And here is Ela in her Bebe Pod, a parting gift from her friend, Amos. Michael Delving will miss their family, but we know that they have gone to a better place. Indianapolis. 
The Mayor recently spent two weeks in Cambodia on a volunteer engineering trip organized through a church in Gig Harbor, Washington. He went along with an architect and a facilities manager, and the three of them prepared a master use plan for a 7.5 acre site in Cambodia near the Thai border. They also designed and drew up plans for traditional Cambodian-style housing at the site. The future plans for the site include a school, community center, and agriculture training facilities.
The group that they went to assist, Cambodian Hope Organization (CHO), is a local group with 34 employees that is dedicated to stopping child trafficking along the Thai-Cambodian border. The group already has economic development, education, and vocational training programs, and the housing the Mayor helped design will serve children who have been involved in trafficking and need a place to live so they can get out of the trafficking cycle and participate in the CHO vocational training programs.
The picture shows a group of boys, all formerly involved in trafficking, who are learning how to repair motorcycles. When they finish the program, they will be able to get microloans to start their own business, giving them hope and control over their future.