Last week's games concluded the 2014 World Cup. On Wednesday afternoon we saw Germany thrashing Brasil -- beating them 7 to 1 in a stunning game.

Sasha, Milan, Wouter and I were in Elephant & Castle where we sadly saw the Netherlands lose to Argentina on penalty kicks. I was quite disappointed.

The Netherlands won 3-0 from Brasil to win the 3rd place, and yesterday Germany won the final.

It was sad to see the Netherlands being eliminated in the semi-finals but this was a terrific World Cup with excellent games. Very enjoyable.

Elephant & Castle, 75 minutes before the game.

Before the game.

Today I replaced 15 boards of our deck, the smaller part at the entrance of the backyard.

Our deck is from 1996 but the wood hasn't been cared for very well so some of the boards were cracked and splintered. The main deck is in better shape, thankfully.

It was a fun project to replace the boards but it was hard work. I started at 11.30 am and finished around 6.00 pm. Milan helped me get started and I'm proud of the end result.

The most exciting part was at the end, when I had to cut a board to fit in a smaller opening. I used my own circle saw for the first time.

Saturday we watched the game between the Netherlands and Costa Rico from Secaucus. When Nora woke up from her nap she watched the last hour of the game on my lap.

The game was exciting, even though the final score before penalty kicks was 0-0. Nora repeated the things we yelled at the TV.

Guus: "Oh, de bal tegen de paal!"
Nora: "Oh, de bal tegen de paal!"
... a few moments later...
Nora: "Waar is de paal?"

She really enjoyed the moment when the game ended and we all jumped up and shouted and clapped.

Nora is having a great time with her grandparents.

Here she is with Dyado, who is reading her a new book.

Nadya helped us in the yard this weekend. One of the things she did was pruning our roses. They are mature roses but hadn't been pruned in many years so it was time to cut them back drastically. Nadya has a lot of experience with roses.

It's nice to make progress on the yard. There are many more small projects we want to do but slowly but surely it's truly becoming "our yard".