For the first time since we completed the house, my niece Rachel and her boyfriend Rob visited this afternoon. Maya and Kyle joined us for the mini-reunion with their cousin, Uncle Mark, and Aunt Marie. Nico was in Denver for work.

Mark came to my soccer game this morning and watched us systematically take apart our Russian opponents. The score at halftime was 1-0, a fair reflection of the match play to that point. In the second half, however, we ground them down and scored an additional 5 unanswered goals. It was a particularly satisfying win because our opponents played a very “dirty” brand of soccer and tried to physically intimidate us.