jesser – Page 12

July 9, 2014

South Dakota Here We Come

Well I had no idea that when we tentatively planned a trip to South Dakota for 4th of July weekend that my kids would be SO into it. We didn’t know when we’d be closing on the house, so we booked a cheap campsite with the intention of backing out (and only incurring a $20 fee) if we needed to stay close to home. What I didn’t know was that there was NO WAY my kids were missing out on seeing Mt Rushmore. Seriously!

Anyhow, so as July 3rd dawned, we piled in the car and towed the pop-up to South Dakota. It’s 6 hours away and unfortunately, most of that 6 hours is a super desolate drive through Wyoming. Population 12. With 2 gas stations. And no where to eat.

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July 2, 2014July 16, 2014

House Update

We are almost there! We close in 20 days!!

My close-quarters (799 sf, people!!) meltdowns have become more frequent. I spent a good portion of my afternoon on Saturday cleaning up the house – it hadn’t looked so good in weeks!! Only to have it completely destroyed yesterday when we had a sewer issue and the house had to be dismantled to get to it. We lost Tabby’s music book for two whole days when a bag of dog food got set on top of it. It was only on the floor because the 3M hooks I’d been using had failed … repeatedly.

So our shiny new house is my happy place. I am in love with this kitchen. I cannot wait to cook in there.

Our fireplace turned out great too. Of course someone has a giant TV to mess it all up with ….

And this shower … oh boy. Can’t wait to try that out!

It’s big! and it has two heads! !

And our porch is getting really close. It’s decked and has most of the trim.

Today we have our pre-flooring walk. Basically all that’s left to do is our carpet and wood floor. But in practicality, it’s more than that – drywall and paint fixes, some miscellaneous electrical work, and of course our landscaping. We have to take care of the backyard ourselves, but they put in fence and anything outside the fence they put in and the HOA maintains, including snow removal (yay!). It seems like a lot for 20 days, but the experienced crews and big equipment make the job much quicker.

And we’re getting ready to move in too. We filled my teeny rented Nissan Rogue (was in a little fender bender right before vacation and borrowed this while my car was being fixed) with flat-pack boxes from IKEA. Those are for the office.

We’ve also been considering lighting options. Fans and a chandelier for the dining area don’t come with the house and I think the pendants over the island are too small, so we’ll replace those. I like this one from Home Depot a lot, but I’m not sure where we’ll end up on that. We saved the kids’ light fixtures from our old house …

… but Ben saw a fan he was in LOVE WITH. It’s a bit on the tacky side for my taste, but what the heck? He’s only a little boy for a little while and he loves it and it really doesn’t fight with his whole treehouse bed decor. So we will probably take his fan (it’s a pretty classy mid-century modern affair) and put it in the playroom or our bedroom.

So the countdown is on! Matt is hard at work practically every evening making the cabinets for our mudroom in the new house. Estimates to have these done professionally ran over $6k, but Matt bought everything he needed to make them for less than $1k. Since they’re more typical cabinet configurations, the savings might not be as pronounced for our laundry room and bonus room, but we’re going to price things out to see what the best course is.

Once we close (on a Tuesday), we have a bit of work to do before we can move in (on a Friday) but we will be arriving to closing with our cars packed to the gills with everything we need to get to work on (IKEA furniture, for example) and enough provisions so that we can spend our first night in our new house. It’s getting so exciting!!

June 30, 2014July 1, 2014

Scenes from the Beach

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since we got back from our Florida/New Olreans vacation. Fo sho.

But that’s not entirely why I haven’t written about it. A tragedy occurred while we were in Florida with our Nashville family – Matt’s Dad, stepmom, sister, niece and brother. My sister-in-law’s ex-husband and father of their beautiful daughter died suddenly a few days into our trip. It’s a sort of an “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” kind of situation. The tragedy trumped everything and we were bound in place, trying to sort things out and cope. And yet there were three little people all but incapable of understanding and still very much at the beach wanting to have fun so we went on.

And I don’t want to let go of the many nice memories of the trip we had. So here are a few of them.

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June 18, 2014

A Quick House Update

I really didn’t mean to go on this long without an update. I thought I would post while we were on vacation. But yea… that didn’t happen. We were just having too much fun hanging out. We had lots of long days beaching and sunning and practicing keyboard (not kidding). And we went to NOLA and had good food and saw cool stuff. It was rough, but someone had to do it. Updates on vacation later.

We got back Monday late and I offered myself up to the office if they needed me, but happily, they did not. So Matt and I spent the day catching up on all of those little things you have to do … and the house. They got quite a bit done while we were gone.

They painted. It still needs to be cut in and touched up, but painted it is, and I’m really happy with our color selection. Interior color is beige and really not too interesting, so no photos.

They finished all of the masonry, including the rock around the fireplace. LOVE IT.

And they did a lot of trim work including the fireplace area inside

And our railings. This was a piece we’d selected that I didn’t know how we’d feel about, but we’re SOOO happy with it.

And in continuation from what we saw right before we left, cabinets are all hung and we have hardware on them!!!

They have also started to tile on the bathroom walls but I couldn’t take a photo of it because the windows were all blocked off to mask for painting and it was DARK.

In a couple of weeks we have the pre-flooring walk and then 2 weeks later we have the final walk, followed a week later by closing. YAY!

June 5, 2014June 4, 2014

Our Graduate

So we raced home from camping to attend this cutie’s pre-k graduation ceremony. The more practical side of me balks at the goofiness of all this – he hasn’t even started “real” school yet. But he’s had a great couple of years at this school (he won’t actually leave until the end of summer) and made lots of friends and learned a TON. It was also dang cute.

They had the kids sing a few songs about leaving preschool and going to kindergarten and then they marched them out one by one onto the stage to receive their certificate.

They also had them tell the audience what they want to be when they grow up. There were lots of painters and policemen, one “Yoda” and a couple of “Elsa.” Ben changed his mind from his blood-thirsty assertion of a few days before when he professed to do anything where he got to have a gun to “Veterinarian” – each syllable carefully enunciated.

Most importantly, he had a great time and felt very special. Can hardly believe he’s ready for kindergarten!!!

June 4, 2014

Camping at Leadville Salida

We had a call a few weeks ago – our third annual group camping trip to Turquoise Lake near Leadville was off! The campground couldn’t be open thanks to some crazy late season snow storms we’d had. Boo!

My co-conspirator and I scrambled to come up with an alternative, but group campsites that allow trailers and weren’t too far away and were AVAILABLE on very short notice weren’t numerous. One to be exact – Angel of Shavano. So we sent out a message to the group – Change in plans -still interested? They were.

And so that is how we found ourselves trekking down hwy 285 again, this time towards Salida. This is a crazy beautiful part of the state with mountains all around and lush greenery. Of course the picture above really only shows the mountains, but as you’ll see later, it’s LUSH.

We had many of our usual suspects joining us – 8 families in all, including the parents of one parent and my sister. Most of us have trailers, but a couple brave ones tent it. I personally had my fill of sleeping on the ground in my youth and for me, a tent is reserved now for when you absolutely can’t bring the trailer. It rained off and on, just light drizzly rain and we were very glad for the trailers then. We were even gladder when a large black bear decided to come visit. Large as in about 500 lbs. He was not interested in us though, just the dumpster. My friend, the other Jess, and some of the dads chased him away. I didn’t even get to see him in person – I’d gone to town for provisions (Doritos and liquor).

Mostly, we hung out around the campsite. Did I mention it was gorgeous?

A beautiful little stream ran through our campsite and it took the kids about 2 seconds to get their feet wet. Luckily it wasn’t chilly and since it’s CO, they dried overnight. They run around in packs or sub packs. Much fun was to be had finding bugs and inventing games. They even found a very large garter snake – which makes it overall a pretty small snake – they had to poke at.

On Saturday we took a couple of hikes – one as a big group, and one with just the moms.

It was definitely worth the hike!

Back at camp, we ate giant s’mores

And had way too much fun.

It was a great weekend, but even if it had rained the entire time, it would have been great – because we got to hang out with really great people.

June 1, 2014

To Mom On Her 66th Birthday

Dear Mom,

It still doesn’t seem quite possible that I’m spending your 66th birthday without you. We’ve spent birthdays apart before – yours or mine – but we’ve never been more than a phone call away and we’ve never let one pass without a special dinner or gift or outing. I remember one birthday that we spent at the zoo. We made quiche and hummingbird cupcakes and had a picnic. It was a beautiful day and we so enjoyed our time together.

I won’t lie – the last 9 months have kind of sucked. It’s been such an odd mix of low-level depression and getting by reasonably well with a few ugly crying sessions thrown in for good measure. I never know what will get me. Being at your house is somehow lovely and comforting. Being in your office? Terrifying. I can’t explain why.

And sometimes I’m really upset at how I’ve been able to move on – putting our clothes on each day, going to work, making dinner, reading to the kids, having date nights with Matt, having fun with friends, camping, traveling, living – because you were so important to us and it just doesn’t feel right that we should, could go on without you.

I know of course that the last thing you would want was for us to stop living life. You were the master of that art. Equal parts caring and fun and everyone’s friend, confidant and role model. We that knew you better than anyone else were the luckiest – are the luckiest. My regrets concerning you are few – mostly that there wasn’t MORE – more fun trips, more workday lunches, more Grammy stories, more birthdays. I suppose it’s greedy and I try to comfort myself with the fact that we got quality over quantity. I am grateful for that.

I felt sad about the fact that Kelly and I didn’t have our manic ritual of selecting the perfect gift for you this year. I gave the Leukemia and Lymphoma society some money for Mother’s Day and while I am happy to put money towards research for a good cause, a meaningful cause, the whole thing was just so hollow and crappy and banal. So for your birthday, I am making a tradition that I hope to carry on for years to come.

I am asking the kids to pick out something new that they want to try and we will do it so we can continue living in honor of you. We might try a new recipe, go find a new book to read, see a new movie, check out a new shop or visit a new museum. We will take us with you in our hearts and keep enjoying this big beautiful world for you.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you.

Jess

May 28, 2014

House Update

After over three weeks of seemingly nothing happening on our house, we have movement! YAY!

Apparently the insulators were the sticking point, getting behind on schedule and holding us up. While they were elsewhere, they did do work – it just wasn’t highly visible work – they did frame in our fireplace and build some more of the deck and got everything READY for drywalling.

But finally, after my threats to go in there and do it my own self, it is happening!! It is always amazing to me what the pros can get done in about a day’s time – like rocking most of an entire house. Despite how this photo looks, almost everything is done. And I’m sure what’s not done – namely one of the kids’ rooms and the office – will be done by the end of today.

Outside, the decorative masonry is going up as well and they have built the forms to pour our front walkway. It will be lovely to not have to walk on uneven ground littered with the (frequently sharp!) detritus of construction. It is full speed ahead on all fronts.

And that makes us pretty ham dappy!

May 26, 2014

Thoughts in My Head

It has been one crazy week!

A perfect storm of proposals and the departure of my coworker on his vacation led to me putting in a ton of hours last week. I was in early every day and left late most of them.

Thursday was the exception, when Tabby had her class presentation on their Standley Lake Habitat research papers and her Barnyard Mooosical. We got to gather the family together to have dinner and cheer on our little naturalist/singer.

But we have definitely made hay during the weekend! Friday I had Bunco and Matt and the kids met up with another Dad and his kids. Saturday I got a nice run in while the kids have karate. Then we ran errands before meeting up with adult friends for a night out. We went to Punchbowl Social, a hipster hang out home to great food, a great bar and fun activities, including bowling. It lives up to its name with a bunch of tasty cocktails served family style in punch bowls, complete with cut crystal cups. Sunday was all about being outside. Matt and I did loops around the playground while the kids played and in the evening, we walked down to our dinner destination in Golden with my dad and sister.

All the while, we’ve had some truly crazy weather. Observe the “lake” in our back patio.

And this is our oft-used walking trail near Clear Creek. Observe (upon enlargement) how the sidewalk and slide are now a rather wet proposition than before. And this is the minor stuff. We’ve had hail for three days straight and tornadoes! They have been minor and not much damage has been done, but yikes!!

All the while, I’ve been listening to a new book called Overwhelmed which tackles the culture of crazy work and not much life balance in our culture. It’s been a great backdrop to my madness. Happily it’s underscored my better-than-average life balance as well and given me some good ideas.

Originally, I’d decided not to leave for camping this week until Friday after work, feeling guilty for being gone again. But today I’m back in the office. I’ve just put in about 5 hours (plus 2 last night) and am ready to head for home. This, coupled with my crazy week last week and upcoming crazy week this week, has led me to the decision that I’m having my Memorial Day on Friday. We’ll be leaving on Friday morning whenever the heck we feel like it.

May 20, 2014May 20, 2014

Perfection

I am a bit of a perfectionist. You probably wouldn’t know it by looking at my house … or my desk …or my life. But I am. And part of why you probably wouldn’t notice it is because I spend a lot of time trying to perfect things instead of just being done with them. Or sometimes, I spend so much time thinking about doing them that I never actually get around to doing them. It’s not good. But I really feel like over the past year or so with everything that’s gone on, chiefly my new job and our house situation, that I’ve become quite a bit better about calling it quits when it’s time and moving on, figuring out when the returns have started diminishing. Just a few things I have learned to chill on:

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