January: The 3rd Turn

Back in high school when I did not deal with chronic foot pain and knee pain, I ran track.  I was not a stand-out miler and I really was not good at the two mile, but the 800 was a race I felt was my strongest and I think I competed in that event every meet of my "career."  It is a brutal race, where you run at a near-sprint (take that with a grain of salt: as a distance runner, "sprint" is not exactly in my vernacular) along 4 turns of the track.  The first lap is quick, the third turn is horrid, and the fourth is the with the finish in mind, when suddenly the body gets a burst of energy and excitement and a new speed that did not seem possible at the 3rd turn.  My dad always said the biggest difference between a good 800 meter runner and an average 800 meter runner was the guts they displayed at turn 3.

We're at the 3rd turn with our house.  The 4th turn is February, but January was all guts.  Trips to the dump, multiple daily trips to the house, small (and sometimes big) issues to handle, lost packages in the mail, so much mail, so many later nights, complete lack of recreation, and way too many days when subs say they will be there and do not show.  Generally, our subs have been good but we have had a lot more subs overextending themselves with our house than we had round 1.  I am acting like this is a huge part of my life, but in truth it is mostly Brady's life.  I hold the fort down and do a lot of more solo mom time with the kids, but he is the one with it on his mind constantly.  He puts out the fires and solves most issues without even involving me.

I make a lot of decisions, though.  A lot.  I would love to have a month without any decisions when we move in.  A month where Amazon isn't even on my radar.

The house is coming along beautifully, though!!

 My first glimpse of the beautiful "Rip Curl" tile we ordered from Canada.

The gray tile is the one I originally chose clear back in March when I was in Utah on crutches and with a sad baby in the stroller.

 Spending evenings designing our closets:

 Wainscot going in.

 Pantry:

 Master closet, more narrow than our last closet, and with A/C coming through the ceiling:

 Hooray for projects coming together like we envisioned!

Driveway prep:

 I hated not having railings on the stairs and I'm so relieved they are in now.  I did not want the kids to even come in the house for a long time.

 Just missing my beautiful chandelier--the one I made sure I could still purchase before agreeing to selling our house #1.

 Cement pads rather than a full sidewalk this time.

 Cement pad inside the rock wall should make getting the lawnmower out about 5Xs easier than when we had gravel.

 Kitchen crown going in.  If you evaluate closely, you can see our kitchen is three feet wider.  Our island is also two feet longer.  The crown is flat rather than the more traditional moulding we used last time.

 Our space age ceiling fans that are supposed to change our life with better energy efficiency and function.  They are not as pretty, so I'm banking on these claims.

 The kids' bedrooms upstairs have vaulted ceilings, making the rooms seem huge.  They are also two feet longer.

 Lanai tile work.

 Upstairs bathroom.  We went with a simple accent since the counters will be busy Costa Esmerelda.

 Another day, another crisis.  After the painters had done 1/3rd of the trim work on a Saturday, Brady called me and had me rush over to look and see if we could live with the difference in shades.  The colors are supposed to be the same shade, but clearly did not turn out that way on our custom cabinets.  It was easily resolved but had us stressed, thinking we would have to pay for all the labor to redo the trim.  Turns out, it was only coat one, and hopefully easily resolved.

Alright, turn 4.  We are ready for you.  Brady even wrote out on a calendar when he expects us to be done.  The running joke is "three weeks," which I feel like he's been estimating for the past three weeks.  We really should be done in less than three weeks now.  We are so excited to have our Saturdays back (just kidding, it's soccer season starting end of February), and we are more excited to have hot showers every single day.  Brady made a list of things he is looking forward to occupy his mind when the house clears out of his consciousness stream--books, photography class, investments, etc.  I think that's so endearing and makes me appreciate his efforts even more.  If I were him, I would want an hour every night where no one asked anything of me to watch TV, but he wants to be more educated.

In the meantime, we had a few other notable events, like the Ballistic Missile Threat.  My first thought when we got the warning and thought there was a decent chance our lives would change drastically was that we should have spent the last year at the beach instead of building a dumb house.  See?  That's 3rd lap fatigue.

 I was surprised by how calm I felt, even as we threw things together in the 5 minutes before we left the house and called friends to meet at the church.  Kate and Zachary both cried in the car, and we were concerned about the trauma they experienced.  They both seemed okay later in the day, and we talked through so many issues and "what if" scenarios with them.  We are both so glad I had a migraine and Brady let me sleep in that morning, or he would have been away from us when this all happened.

 38 minutes later:

 Several hours later:

 So glad we are all still alive.

 We had the Clark kids stay with us for three days and nights, and the kids loved having live-in playmates for that time.  Owen was given loads of attention, Kate and Shay were besties, and Zac and Tate did countless lego creations.

The kids also had their winter recital, each playing two pieces.  Kate performed first.  She was so nervous, but walked to the stage gracefully and played with confidence.  Zachary played exceptionally well, too, sounding so sensitive to the music on that beautiful, grand piano.

 I love Ms. Lois and hope she never retires, even though she is now 71.

 Uncle Dale and Aunt Linda came to Kauai this past week, and we spent a Sunday afternoon with them and also a Friday night dinner.  We love Dale and Dad E's twinner mannerisms.  Dale and Linda are both so genuine and considerate.  We love getting family to ourselves, even for short windows of time.

In the meantime, Owen and I find ways to enjoy ourselves while the older two are at school.  He's learned to take his own diaper off, and he likes it off.

 Whale watching walk:

 Meeting at the beach with friends, and wowing tourists with his shark suit.

 Kate and Ava at Brenneckes:

 Zac "surfing" Brennecke's.

 Hiking Maha'ulepu with Megan and Chase:

Playing finger skateboards on a finger-size ramp at Kat's:

 The new car ramp:

 Making disasters with Zachary's kinetic sand (aka the worst possible toy for a toddler known to mankind and makes play dough seem like clean exploration--and I really do love play dough).

 I went on a Kate Date to see "The Greatest Showman."  We both loved it and downloaded the album the second we got home, I downloaded sheet music, and she dances and sings to it constantly since.

 Rainy day acai bowls:

 More nakey-nakey, this time with another inappropriate toddler toy.

 He's barely had any scooter time since brother and sister love this scooter, too.  He likes it, especially when accompanied with binkey.

Zachary used some of his birthday money on a dragon and assembled it in one hour and twenty minutes.

 Owen cries every afternoon, begging to watch "Cars."  It was only a month ago that I wished he would plug in for ten minutes, and now as long as it's Lightening McQueen, he would sit at attention and watch the whole thing.

 Mr. Independent poured himself cereal and milk one morning, and as I cleaned it up, he went and showered himself off with half a bottle of shampoo.

 A rainy Friday night turned into movies and popcorn.

 Owen cracked me up one day in Ele'ele.  He was stir crazy from the rain (so much rain!!), and anxious to be outside.  It was not raining when we arrived but started within 5 minutes.  No matter!  This little man rode hard in the rain for 45 minutes while I tailed behind him under an umbrella.